Germ

The shooter nodded at Desperado. "Nice and easy," he said. "Put them on and—"

A blaze of sunlight exploded behind the shooter, and Johnny realized the front door had burst open. A silhouette quavered between the radiance and the shooter, who was turning, yelling, "What the—?"

The door swung shut again, cutting off the blinding light. A tall, muscular man—Buddy Holly glasses with dark polarized lenses, light jacket, gloves, mussed-up hair—was two strides from the shooter. His fist came around and crashed into the shooter's head. From Johnny's vantage point, the head appeared to crumple under the blow like a melon. The body collapsed in a heap. The new killer's fist dripped with blood. Something stringy, clumpy, dangled from his knuckles. Johnny realized that what he thought was a glove was hard and black, with spikes, some sort of newfangled brass knuckles or—yes, now that he thought about it—a gauntlet. A knight's gauntlet, only black.

Cheryl was screaming again, whooping like a car alarm. Didn't seem to bother the newcomer, though. He reached into his jacket and withdrew a pistol with a long barrel. A red light shot out of it. Laser sighting—Johnny had seen it in a dozen movies. The man extended the gun toward Desperado. A red bead of light appeared on the man's forehead, followed immediately by a black hole and the sudden appearance of spattered brains and skull fragments on the wall behind him.

Johnny had no time to turn away. His bladder emptied. He dropped his head, gulping in breaths that seemed to lack the oxygen his lungs required. He heard sirens approaching. Someone must have heard the shots. Over time—he didn't know how long—his breathing relaxed. When he looked up again, the killer was gone. And so was the body of the guy he'd seen get shot in the head.

twelve

Julia dashed through the automatic sliding doors of Erlanger Hospital's emergency entrance, half expecting to see Donnelley, Vero, and a group of hit men stretched out unconscious and bleeding on identical gurneys in the hall. Instead, unfamiliar faces, miserably attached to a variety of injured and ill bodies, turned toward her from rows of plastic chairs. Keypad locks prevented her from getting to the treatment rooms. She stepped up to the nurses' station.

"I'm looking for a man—Goody . . . Goodwin Donnelley. He would have come in within the past ten minutes or so. Injured, probably a gunshot wound, shotgun maybe . . . a car crash . . . I don't know!"

The nurse, a stern-looking blonde who apparently saw no use for cosmetics, stared at her impassively. "Are you family?" she asked.

"No . . . I . . ." She showed the woman her law enforcement credentials.

After examining the ID for several moments, the nurse spoke slowly, as though dealing with a deranged person. "Ma'am," she said, "no one with injuries like that has come in, but I can—"

"He said here!" Julia interrupted. "He said to meet him at Erlanger!"

That was what he meant, wasn't it? Over a year ago, she had spent a pleasant afternoon with Goody and his family in his backyard. After charbroiled burgers and dogs, the boys had run off with friends, and she, Goody, and Jodi had sat around the picnic table sipping Chianti and chatting. Somehow they'd gotten on the topic of TV medical dramas. Jodi had said that one in particular boasted the cutest doctors, to which Julia had replied that none of the current offerings could match Vince Edwards playing Dr. Ben Casey. She'd had the biggest crush on him, watching reruns as a kid. Despite Goody's and Jodi's lists of other candidates for TV's hunkiest docs, she hadn't budged. Ben Casey represented the perfect physician.

So when Goody had said that he needed to contact "Casey," she'd understood that to mean he needed a doctor. And when he'd said that Casey was at "Earl's place," certainly he'd meant Erlanger, Chattanooga's biggest hospital. At the time, she'd been positive that she had decoded his cryptogram. Could she have misunderstood?

Divulging his whereabouts with what seemed an easily deciphered code over an unsecured line told her his injuries were serious. He'd want the kind of immediate attention only emergency rooms offered. That such places were usually bright and busy was also an asset, though she doubted that killers who attempted assassinations in hotel restaurants and on crowded highways would think twice about blasting their way through an ER.

It dawned on her that he hadn't gone directly to the hospital; he had waited for her to find him. When she hadn't shown, he'd called to give her directions. He had wanted her with him enough to delay treatment and to risk exposure. He had wanted protection. Was he waiting outside for her, maybe passed out in a car? She started for the parking lot. A local cop in uniform passed her and keyed in the code that opened the doors into the treatment area. She followed him in, found a floor nurse, and asked about Goody.