The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Confrontation

Dee frowned as she watched two frantic orderlies wheel a sheet-draped man past her and Duffy, arms folded beneath her breasts. The sheet was soaked in blood as a female doctor and a pair of nurses worked hard to stabilize the man as they sprinted towards a nearby elevator door, a cluster of intravenous bags clutched tightly in desperate hands.

"The first slug didn't even slow him down," the constable who had shot the survivor rasped, his voice gravelly as he too watched the man get wheeled past. Purpling bruises in the shape of fingerprints were clearly visible around his throat, as was a massive bruise covering the right side of his face and head where he had been struck inside the survivor's room, a blow that had rendered him temporarily unconscious.

Dee glanced at the constable, standing beside Duffy as the grizzled veteran jotted down a couple of notes on a wrinkled piece of paper from a tattered-looking notebook. Even after being attended to, the guy still looked like he had just got the shit kicked out of him. She snorted at the story he continued to tell a half-amused Duffy before returning to watch the elevator doors close behind the gurney and its cluster of devotees.

Of course it took three bullets to stop that monster. Just look at the size of him! The guy was built like a Brahma bull. Although, with that size, came momentum and inertia. He shouldn't have been able to move as fast as the constable was saying he had. Nor strong enough to throw that other officer down the hallway like that either.

Her frown brought her lip into chewing range and, thoughtfully, she took the offering and began to gnaw. It could be that the constable was still suffering from the blow that the big man had delivered in his attempt to escape, his shaken brains not correctly interpreting the information that was coming into it. Then again, all things considered ...

"C'mon, Duffy," she said with a frown. "That guy's gonna be in surgery for the next six hours at least, to dig your friend's bullets out of him. We might as well make our way back to the precinct to look the secondary forensic reports over, now that they're finished."

"We're not going to interview the other two survivors?" Duffy asked after thanking the constable with a nod, slipping his notebook back into an inner pocket of his battered-looking jacket.

"Nope. One's completely catatonic. The MRI and CAT scans showed massive internal damage in his brain. He's fried. And the other one is still in a coma from being slammed through a couple brick walls. She's not going anywhere."

Dee turned and began to walk towards the door, an air of purpose around her. With a final look at the knot of constables still being attended to by a knot of nurses, Duffy followed, a thoughtful expression on his face.

But if the rumpled Brit had anything to say, he kept it to himself until they reached Dee's car, parked in one of the hospital's many vast parking lots. It was only after Dee had got in on the driver's side and was leaning across to unlock the passenger side door that he abruptly spoke.

"Well, that's somewhat unusual," he noted, speaking in almost a whisper.

Frowning at the strange words, Dee glanced up through the passenger window up at Duffy, a question on her lips. But it was stillborn as she spotted the expression of dumbfounded amazement on the craggy, jowly face. Catching the direction his eyes were staring wide-eyed in, Dee twisted in her prone position to stare out the driver side window.

Almost immediately she bit back a hissed curse as she spotted a handful of dark trench coat-dressed men, striding swiftly through the parking lot a dozen or so metres away from where her car was parked. They were grim looking fellows, their eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, looking so uniformly alike she could've sworn they were clones of each other. And, for some reason, they reminded her of the big man lying on the operating table in the Foothills OR.