MM01-04 - Miami Jones Florida Mystery Series Box by Stewart A J

Author:Stewart, A J [Stewart, A J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cThriller
Publisher: Jacaranda Drive
Published: 2015-04-22T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifty-Three

Hospitals get busy at the strangest hours. Accidents and sickness don’t follow the sundial. Wellington Regional was a smaller facility than Broward General, but it was still a tangle of humanity. I parked in the lot out front of the new building that looked like an office complex, and asked a nurse at the front desk for directions. For all I knew she may have been the same nurse I got directions from at Broward General when I visited Jake Turner. Those pink or blue pajamas they wear make them all look the same.

Danielle’s colleague Burke stood in the hallway outside the room. He was on a call, but when he saw me he cut it off and walked to me.

“She’s okay,” he said.

“Define okay.”

“GSW to the arm and lower torso. She’s just out of OR. The doc says stable. Nothing major hit. She’ll be okay.”

“I need to see her.”

“You can stick your head in the door. But she’s still drugged up.”

We walked to the room, where a nurse protested without energy. Burke gave her a look and she relented. I stepped into the room. I was struck by the silence. There were no beeps and machines whirring. I couldn’t even hear Danielle breathe. She was tight under crisp sheets, her arms on top, punctured by IV drips. Her hair was matted back like she’d been swimming or had used too much gel, and her skin lacked the color of life. I bent down to check she was breathing and heard the steady one-two, in-out, that I had grown to love waking up to. It was solid, not raspy or gurgling, and it gave me confidence. It was the only thing about the room that did. A monitor on the other side of the bed showed her pulse on a graph, and her BPM. Peaks and troughs. I kissed her on the forehead, and she felt cool and clammy on my lips. Then I slipped back out of the room. Burke was waiting.

“We got a partial witness, a neighbor. He didn’t see the event, but he heard the shots. He hunts, so he knew the sound. He saw a guy, dark and solid, get into a car he described as green and sporty, but not that sporty.”

“A Jaguar?”

“Maybe. He did say as the car peeled away toward the community exit, it braked hard and he noticed only one brake light worked.”

The other one being busted by yours truly, but I kept that to myself.

“How did they get into a gated community?”

“We’re looking into that. It seems the security guy at the front gate might have stepped away for moment.”

“Stepped away? I’ll step him away.”

“Cool yourself, Miami. We don’t need you flying off the handle.”

“What do you need, Burke? Two dead kids, a woman threatened at knife point and now a deputy shot. And you’re oh for four. Zippo, zilch.”

“Right now it’s not about what I need—it’s about what Danielle needs.”

I took a deep breath. What I really wanted was to put my fist through a wall.

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