Page 9 of Serve ’N’ Protect

“There’s no time.” Instantly, he regretted the sharp edge in his tone. “Besides, an orderly won’t bring a chair until the doctor signs me out.” Which could be another hour, at least, and he’d already been there for close to two. “I need to get out of here, and I need to do it now. Think you can find a wheelchair and sneak it in here?”

“Oh, sure.” She looked at him as if he didn’t have a brain in his head. “I’ll just tuck it under my jacket so no one will see it.”

“Cassidy,” he said, gazing down into ocean-blue eyes that were bluer than he remembered. “Please?”

For a long moment, she continued watching him as if he’d lost his marbles, then her expression softened. “Okay. John said I should trust you, so I will.” She maneuvered him to the chair she’d been sitting in, helping him to lower onto it.

As she leaned on her cane and limped from the room, he was struck by the steel core in this woman. She reminded him of some of the vets who’d returned home from the Middle East with severe injuries. Some had pushed through the pain and managed to make new lives for themselves. Others hadn’t. He wasn’t sure yet which category she fell into.

A few more minutes ticked by before she came back, rolling a wheelchair in front of her. She gave him a snarky smile that seemed totally in line with her personality. “Your chariot awaits.”

“Cute,” he grumbled.

This time, she smiled sweetly. Tartly sweet. “I am, aren’t I?”

Kind of, he had to admit. She had nice even white teeth. With her help, he slid onto the wheelchair. “Let’s roll.”

Before pushing him out the door, she furtively glanced both ways down the corridor, looking about as natural as a spy in a room full of polygraph examiners. “How ’bout it, Mata Hari? Think the coast will be clear anytime today?” Every second they lingered in a public place meant more unwanted exposure.

“Cute,” she mimicked, pursing her raspberry-red lips and coming around behind the wheelchair. She pushed him into the corridor and through the ER doors, hesitating before taking him through the main entrance. “The press is still out there. If you haven’t heard, they’re waiting for Tammy Teague to flash them her broken pinkie toe. Rumor has it there’s a diamond-studded gold ring on it.”

“We need to find another exit.” He pointed down the corridor past the elevator bank.

Warm breath tickled his ear as she leaned down and whispered, “You sure you don’t want to stick around and see Tammy’s pinkie toe?”

He didn’t have to see her face to know she’d be sporting an impish, sarcastic grin. “I’ll pass.”

Still leaning in, she added, “Are you ever going to tell me why you don’t want to be seen?”

“No.” Not if he could help it. To emphasize the point, he twisted his neck, nearly bumping his nose into hers and causing her to jerk back. “Keep going. I see another exit door up ahead.”

She started pushing. “What’s with all the cloak-and-dagger antics?”

“I’d tell you, but—”

“Then you’d have to kill me. Blah, blah, blah.” She continued rolling him past the elevator bank where half a dozen people waited. “You really have been watching too many cop shows. Let me guess. You wanted to be a police officer when you were a boy.”

Markus held back a snort. The woman was nothing if not entertaining. Too bad this wasn’t a movie. If it were, he could call cut and walk off set. With his entire upper body throbbing harder than Ricky Ricardo on a set of Bongo drums, walking anywhere at the moment was going to be a bitch.

At the end of the long corridor was a single exit door with a small window. A sign on the lower half of the door said: No Return Access. With his height, he could easily see out the window into another parking lot. Most likely the hospital’s gated employee parking lot, which meant Cassidy wouldn’t be able to drive into it.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Drive around back and meet me as close as possible to this door. I’ll wait for you to get here before I step outside.”

“Oo-kay. Don’t run away, now, ya hear?” she said in a sarcastic voice.

Markus pivoted the chair to watch her start making her way back in the direction they’d come. Considering how out of it he’d been he couldn’t be sure, but he thought her limp was more pronounced than when he’d first noticed it.

Five minutes later, he was ready to crawl back to John’s house when he spotted Cassidy’s green VW bug outside the metal arm blocking the parking lot. Ghost’s enormous body took up the entire rear compartment, looking like a full-size marshmallow crammed inside a green M&M.

This is gonna hurt.

Bracing himself, he pushed to a standing position, gritting through the pain then waiting a few seconds to make sure he didn’t face-plant. When he was satisfied the floor wouldn’t rise up to meet him, he peered through the window. With his limited view, executing a proper threat assessment wasn’t possible, but he couldn’t hide in this hospital forever.

Given that they were in the sticks, not Metro D.C., the lot only had about fifty cars in it instead of hundreds, plus a smattering of bare deciduous trees and row after row of green hedges parallel to where he stood and tall enough for someone to hide behind. Not good. Behind the lot was a public access road abutting a housing development. One car, a dark red sedan, was parked against the curb on the road.

He’d been so out of it during the ride to the hospital he hadn’t been remotely capable of conducting adequate countersurveillance. In fact, he’d barely been able to keep his eyes open. It didn’t seem likely that anyone had tracked him to Podunk, Maryland so quickly. But after two tours in the Middle East and witnessing just how many crackpots actually thought they could scale the White House fence without getting body slammed to the ground, anything was possible.