The Clinic by Cate Culpepper

Author:Cate Culpepper
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: ! Yes
ISBN: 9781933110424
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2006-05-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

In Amazon lore, taking captives was sometimes a matter of survival. Their modern counterparts had to keep prisoners too, occasionally. While more harmonious than the City, Tristaine wasn’t immune to the random criminal impulse.

But when Amazons take prisoners, Jess thought, we not only treat them well—they certainly get better coffee—we also manage to guard them properly, most of the time. In her opinion, the Clinic’s lack of visible armed security at night bordered on the absurd.

She paused at an intersection of corridors and slid her hand back, waiting until she felt Brenna’s cold fi ngers brush across her wrist. She then peered carefully around the corner. At the far end of the hall, a lone orderly sat at a battered steel desk, clicking slowly away at a keyboard. A rifl e rested against the wall behind his folding chair. Four feet to his right stood the doors that led outside to the Clinic’s parking bay. Beyond the doors, Jode’s battered van idled in the shadows.

Jess crouched, wincing, and then braced three fi ngers on the fl oor until the dizziness lifted. She heard nothing more menacing in the dark hall than the droning hum of the cooling system in the vents above them.

Brenna and Jode crouched behind her. Brenna snugged the collar of her lab coat around her neck. The coat wasn’t actually hers, not that hers ever fi t, anyway. Jode had found it in the lounge and brought it to her in the hope that anyone who saw them would not immediately remember her fall from Caster’s grace.

• 105 •

CATE CULPEPPER

Jess swiveled and rested her back against the cool plaster.

Jode shifted to ease his hips, and his tennis shoe squealed across the tile. Jess lifted an eyebrow at him, but the rattling of the cooler above them would cover the lapse and their muted voices.

“Twenty-fi ve convicted criminals in this facility,” Jess murmured, “and only three armed staff at night, covering three widely distant exits?”

“Well, twenty-four of those criminals don’t have two gullible Clinic staff willing to unlock their cells,” Brenna pointed out. Her teeth were chattering.

“Hey, remember, Cam and Kyla almost caught an entire Prison fl at-footed when they tried to bust you out.” Jode grunted softly. He was not built for sustained crouching. “City lockups haven’t had to cope with anything as mean as Amazons for decades. What now, warrior queen?”

Jess considered. “It’s a long walk from here to that desk.

We don’t need to seem harmless long, but long enough to close the distance.”

“Then I suggest we make a harmless run, from here to that desk,” Brenna whispered.

“Nothing that swashbuckling, sorry.” Jess smirked at Brenna. “You’d best enjoy this, lass. You’ll never get to do it again.”

O

Swing shift was not so damn hectic that its staff had no time to enter chart notes. Even if the pricks over in Military Research thought they were too holy to do such scut work, there were still half a dozen Civilian orderlies who could type this crap in the afternoons.

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