Both rooms were empty. Lee came to Todd, and they looked in the little room he’d just entered. Stacks of gowns in plastic bags, socks with grippers on the bottom, and hair nets lay on shelves next to a row of four lockers. Three of the lockers had keys in the locks with strings hanging on them, but the fourth locker had no key. The men rushed over to the only other door in the room, then read the sign there.
Zone 3: Control Room. There were various caution signs on the wall, but the Voorhies boys were too amped up to read them. They knew MRIs could be dangerous, but they’d gotten back here quickly, and they figured they’d either kill Hightower before the procedure started, or else they’d put a knife to the neck of the technician and get them to turn the machine off so they could stab Hightower where he lay, vulnerable inside the big cylinder.
Todd started to reach for the door, but then he saw that he needed a key card to get in.
“Fuck,” he whispered. Quickly he began looking around the desk, opening drawers.
He found a white key card in one of the drawers, but it didn’t work on the lock. While he went back to continue looking, his brother stepped to the door out of the room, then pulled his Smith and Wesson pistol from under his coat. Cracking the door open, he looked out, saw a nurse alone at a computer monitor on a rolling stand. She wore several ID badges and cards on a lanyard around her neck.
She didn’t see him, but he hid the pistol behind his back and called to her. “Ma’am…the technician told me to change, but I can’t get my locker open.” He laughed a little. “I think it’s stuck.”
The woman had a slightly confused look on her face, but she helpfully came to the door; he held it open for her, and she moved a few steps in before noticing Todd, still behind the desk.
She said, “You can’t be back there, sir.” It seemed to occur to her, at just this time, that there was no reason two patients would be back here at the same time, so she began to turn back to the man behind her, but before she did so, Lee Voorhies slammed the butt of his pistol into the back of her head.
She crumpled to the ground, and then he tore the lanyard off her neck.
Forty-Two
Todd rushed around the corner, flipped a lock on the door out to the hallway of the MRI suite, then converged with his brother at the Zone 3 door.
One after another, Lee hurriedly tried the key cards; none worked, so then he began scanning the badges, hoping one of them had been coded to let the woman into the MRI control room.
The third badge did the trick. A red light to the left of the door turned green right above the keypad and sensor, and Todd pulled the door open.
The room had an operator’s control desk, with a large window in front of it, and above it was an illuminated sign that he didn’t bother to read.
To the right of the control desk, directly in front of the two brothers at the Zone 3 door, was another door that was marked Danger—Zone 4: Scan Room.
Both men ducked down so they couldn’t be seen through the window, but before they did, they’d looked inside and saw their target being moved, legs first, into the machine by the technician, who operated a lever on the side of the scanner that controlled the patient table motor.
Behind her was a computer, and soft fluorescent lights glowed from the ceiling above her.
Todd leaned over to Lee. “When she opens the door to come back in here, you hold your gun on her, and I’ll go in and slit his throat.”
Lee nodded. “I like it.”
—
Zack wasn’t claustrophobic, but he didn’t love being shoved into a little metal tube.
Over his career he’d probably had close to a dozen MRIs, either at the VA, at some far-flung military base, or, more recently, at private facilities like this when he worked for the CIA.
The good news about today, and the MRI he’d received a month and half earlier at Ramstein, was he’d gone in feetfirst, and his head and much of his torso didn’t have to go into the tube for the procedure. It was his leg that was being imaged, after all, so at least he’d not have his head in there for the half hour to forty-five minutes it would take for the scan.
Zack had made some small talk with the attractive technician, and then she’d given him headphones to wear, because MRI machines are notoriously loud when they’re scanning. She asked him what type of music he liked, he’d told her whatever her favorite was, washisnew favorite, and she rolled her eyes playfully before telling him how much she loved Taylor Swift.
Zack had heard the name; he had a feeling he should have said Chris Stapleton or somebody more to his taste, but he just smiled while she turned on some sugary pop music.
She headed out the door back to the control room; he couldn’t see her because he was on his back, facing up, staring at a fluorescent light and the outside rim of the scanner, with a red emergency button on it.
He knew he’d be hearing the technician’s voice over the music in a few seconds, letting him know the procedure was about to begin. He indulgently listened to Taylor Swift but wasn’t paying close attention; he was mostly thinking about Stacy, or Andie, and how much he was going to miss stopping by her bakery for coffee in the mornings.
It had been a minute; Taylor was singing something about being young and reckless, Zack couldn’t really relate so much to the young part, but the tune was catchy nonetheless. Then, while focusing on the fluorescent lighting above him, he saw something suddenly flash by, right over his face, missing it by not more than a foot.
The item flew towards the machine, an impossibly loud bang followed, and Zack quickly threw off his headphones.
Sitting up, he looked down and saw a fixed-blade knife stuck to the inside wall of the MRI machine, right above his knee. A wooden hilt had shattered and bits of it lay across Zack’s legs.
