Marvin slipped to the door and peeked out. The hallway was clear and he pushed his little cart out, into the hallway, and toward room 506, his eyes taking in the location of every person, and where each site of egress was. He slipped in and whooshed out another relieved breath. This was harder than sneaking from dorm room to dorm room when he was in college and wildly popular with the coeds. He pulled back the sheet. The woman on the hospital bed was Dani and she was alive, wearing a purple patient gown, her steel gray hair a tangled mess. He attached the MTT to the wall and waited for the green light.
When it appeared, he lifted Dani’s arm and spotted the super-glued incision Sandra had made. He squeezed the skin, and felt the clicking sensation that meant the MTT had been fully activated. It was now mated with the Invader, and between the two, Mable could override the IV’s programing for opioids, collect vitals, track the patient, record everything said in the room, and transmit all the data to TriDevi’s office.
The MTT and Invader devices were Marvin’s pride and joy.
The lights on the IV cart went dark. His little devices were working. Dani hadn’t been drugged long enough to have to go through withdrawal. She should wake fairly soon. With one hand, Marvin kinked the line carrying opioids, and with the other, he squeezed the IV bag, forcing fluids through the remaining line into her. Not enough to cause problems, but enough to start flushing her system of the drug.
Ten minutes later, Dani woke, blinked, and tried to focus on his face. She frowned furiously and when she tried to talk, her words slurred. He spotted a foam cup of water and held the straw to her lips. It took a few tries but finally her lips closed around it and she drank. When she turned her head to indicate she was done, she said, “There’s no way I got drunk enough to go home with you. But I’m hungover as crap.”
He blew out a relieved breath. “We didn’t spend the night together. Though that would be a night you would never forget.”
“I’d roll my eyes, but I’m afraid I’ll puke.”
Quickly, he reminded her of the case, and she nodded her head very slightly, as if trying to wake up without vomiting.
“Okay. Okay,” she said after another few minutes. “I’m awake. I’m still full of drugs, but I’m awake. And I remember. I think.”
Behind him the door opened. Marvin whirled, his fists coming up. But it was just Sandra.
“You try to crawl in bed with my best friend, and you know what’ll happen, right?” Sandra said.
“You’ll tell Mable and she’ll rip off Mr. Wonderful. I remember.”
“Good to see you awake, Dani.” She leaned over and hugged Dani hard. “I can’t lose my best friend.” She stood and took Dani’s hand. “You’re cold. You need a blanket.”
“I need to puke.” Dani frowned, and lifted her eyes. She looked at Sandra with an odd expression. “Wait. I’m your best friend?”
Sandra frowned. “Of course you are. I love you. Anyway, I found our client. You were right. Room 410.”
“I love you too,” Dani whispered.
Marvin, uncomfortable to his bones, needed to lighten the mood. “I love y’all too. Sooo . . . a threesome?”
The two gals looked at each other with matching annoyance.Good. That was better than all the girly shit.
“Okay. Leave me,” Dani said. “I’ll pretend to be asleep. The machine will record and transmit everything said in the room, and by morning we’ll have enough to shut this place down.”
“We’re outta here.” Marvin cracked open the door, saw the coast was clear, and he and Sandra sedately left the room, Marvin pushing his small cart.
Mable
Using the distraction of a brand-new dining room window slipping out of the installer’s hands and crashing to the ground, getting back into Dorm Delta was a piece of cake. They gathered in Marvin’s room, drank real coffee, good tea, and had Zeddie deliver a bottle of wine—for a hefty fee. Hours passed as Mable monitored the activity in the school building and in the Building Z rooms, and kept the IT security department scrambling. She had them convinced that some of the escaped magic had corrupted the system. That was brilliant, even if she had to say so herself. Amassing evidence had never been so easy.
She continued to decrease the four patients’ meds, and sent the recordings of all the spoken activity in Dani’s room to the TriDevi intern who was running the shop while their officemanager was out for surgery. It was always something. The kid looked like he was twelve but he had graduated near the top of his class from Furman U. He was angling for a job, but once Anita came back to work, he wouldn’t be needed.
Now that she had a way in, Mable was having fun playing games against the IT techs. She had been able to keep the IT department and all the monitoring systems shut down, by triggering a single line of code, over and over again. And TriDevi’s small team was also able to check long-ignored emails, texts, and messages, without being caught, and even talk on Zoom to Thomas in the office. For the next fourteen hours, they slept and worked in shifts, monitoring the activity in Dani’s room. At six a.m., however, there was a problem.
Sandra
Mable said, “Wake up. Wake up, wake up,wake up!”
Sandra rolled over and nearly fell off the sofa.
Marvin came out from the small bedroom, asking, “What’s happening?”
“Someone in Dani’s room said they’re prepping Dani for surgery. I’ve notified our client’s family and our contact with the local police, but they have to wait for a subpoena. They won’t get here fast enough. So, I called Benjamin Bennett and got him out of bed, but still, we’re looking at an hour at least.”
“Bennett? The state supreme court judge?” Marvin asked, coming fully awake. “You know him?”
