The color drains from his face. “And you think I’m next?”
I nod slowly. “After your last shift. Which I’m guessing is pretty soon.”
“Oh, it’s soon.” He gulps. “My last shift is tomorrow.”
14
HARRISON
Back to work.
I’ve taken the last few days off. And my God, so much has happened since I last clocked in to a shift at St. Charles.
I’ve been here several times, of course. Just two nights ago, I sneaked in the back way wearing barely anything. Before that, I was smuggling in Maddox and Alissa, both of whom were on the brink of death.
Now they’re doing all right, and if I took another day off, it would have started to look suspicious.
Rouge is on the board of this hospital, after all. I’m sure she’s kept an eye on me since I grifted my way into Aces the night I met Bianca.
I’m not going to be doing a lot of work today. I’ve delegated a lot of my regular duties to my interns and nurses, because the real reason I came in was to find out if we’ve been receiving black-market organs from Rouge.
The timing is undeniable. Carol and Lou got organs almost instantaneously after that poor girl’s head was found in the nature reserve by O’Hare.
But we’re still missing our smoking gun. We need to collect as much evidence as possible to get Rouge convicted of what she’s doing. The cooler of human hearts was a start, but Rouge could simply deny having any knowledge of it. She’d throw one of her Kings or someone else under the bus, and because of her power and influence among the city elites, she’d get away with it.
No. We need to build a rock-solid case against her. That’s the only way to ensure she’ll see justice for what she’s done.
I sit down in my office, out of the way from the day-to-day hustle and bustle of the hospital. I pull up a list of our most recent organ recipients. There have been a few since Carol and Lou, but they’re still near the top of the list when I sort it by date. I try to track down where their organs came from, but that leads me to an error page.
The data must be in here somewhere. It’s just encrypted, and I don’t have access to it.
I pick up the phone and call the hospital’s IT department.
“Yes, Dr. O’Rourke?”
It’s Kit. She’s one of the newer IT hires—only a year out of college—and normally gets saddled with the department’s bitch work while her superiors get the more complex jobs. She’s the one I call when I need to recover a patient’s file that accidentally fell through cyberspace.
I was hoping she’d be the one to pick up. She’s the youngest, the hungriest for approval.
“Hi, Kit. Can you swing up to my office? I have an unusual request.”
“What is it?” Papers shuffle over the line.
“I’d rather discuss it in person. I’ll buy you a coffee for your trouble.”
She chuckles. “I’m more of a tea person, Doc.”
I smile. I knew she’d see eye-to-eye with me. “Even better. I’ll owe you a tea.”
If she pulls this off, I’ll buy her a first-class ticket to the UK to get her all the tea she wants.
Ten minutes later, she knocks on my door.
“Come in,” I call out.
She opens the door. Kit is cute in that hot-librarian way. A messy bun of curly red hair on top of her head, horn-rimmed glasses, and bursts of freckles on her cheeks. She’s wearing a fitted blue cardigan over a slightly wrinkled blouse, khaki pants, and sensible dark shoes.
She crosses over to my desk. “What can I help you with today, Doc?”
