15. Paging Dr. Lecter
Chapter 15
Paging Dr. Lecter
MARCO
T he sight of her blood.
My need for revenge.
Regret about how I’d handled everything.
None of it mattered right then. I locked it down and focused on his words.
“I dunno, man,” Hill said. “I dunno. I swung down after shift to check out the poker tourney, then one of the guards walked me to the garage. When we got there, a car alarm was going off. It must’ve freaked the dude out because he took off, and the guard chased him. I thought he was trying to break into cars, but then I saw Callie unconscious on the ground, so I called 911. The paramedics barely said anything before they rushed her away. When I got here, they told me she was in a trauma bay, but that was all they could say.”
Fuck.
“Where was she hurt?” Cole pushed.
“Her side. 911 had me keep pressure on it.” Hill shrugged. “But I don’t know what caused it. Only that there was a lot of blood.”
“You see the bastard?” I asked.
“Not his face, but he was wearing dark pants and a hoodie. Maybe a sweatsuit? But it also could’ve been a tracksuit. Or jeans.” He almost dropped his head into his hands again before remembering the blood
Callie’s fucking blood.
“Sorry, that’s not much help,” he finished weakly.
“What about height? Weight? Body type?”
Another headshake. “It happened so fast. It was all… average, I guess.”
I pulled my cell from my pocket to see where the hell Pierce was, but it was unnecessary. The doctor came into the waiting room and scanned, stopping when he saw us.
“Be back,” Freddy muttered to Hill, though I had no plans to return.
Dr. Pierce remained silent as he swiped his card, and a locked door swung open. We followed him through and kept going past a handful of people in suits. They might as well have been standing under a neon sign marking them as law enforcement.
I’d been shot at. Punched. Threatened. I’d killed before. Without remorse. Without a second thought. Without a hint of nausea, even when I’d seen brain matter splattered on the wall or three men get covered in concrete to slowly, painfully be suffocated alive.
Never once had it fuck me up the way I was right then.
“Doc,” I choked out as acid burned up my throat.
And fucking tears burned in my eyes.
Pierce glanced over at me before stopping suddenly. He scanned his card to unlock the closest door and led us inside. There were scientific pictures and 3D models of tits around a machine that looked like a torture device.
A quick look at the other two confirmed I wasn’t the only one about to fucking lose it. Freddy dragged his fingers through his hair. Cole didn’t have his face glued to his phone. It was blank as he waited to see what the doc had to say.
Dr. Pierce closed the door behind us. “She’s alive. I couldn’t find out much, just that she’s in surgery right now. They’re keeping everything locked down.”
“But she’s alive?” I confirmed, needing the reassurance.
“Yes. The nurse said she was lucky.”
“Then what’s with the Law & Order reenactment out there?” Cole asked, something I also wanted to know.
It was a heavy presence in a city where muggings and attacks happened daily. It didn’t make sense unless it was about to turn into a murder investigation, and even then, it was a lot.
Pierce unhelpfully shrugged. “The only reason I was able to get anything is because I told the surgical nurse I might be able to get medical information about the victim. All they have is her first name.”
“Her full name is Calliope Meadows,” Freddy said. “There weren’t any health issues or allergies on her employment paperwork.”
“Nothing from my sources, either,” Cole said.
Dr. Pierce didn’t ask what those sources were. He pulled a note card and pen from his front pocket and wrote her name down. “That’s better than nothing.” He scanned us. “Any chance this is related to your activities ?”
Even though he was an emergency medicine specialist, he’d been Maximo’s doc for longer than I’d been working for him. Other than Freddy—who stayed out of that side of things—Pierce had seen the rest of us at some point for patch jobs. He knew not everything was above board, but neither was his life. In exchange for his help when needed, Maximo donated a shit-ton to the hospital and even more for the other off-the-books work Pierce did to help the world.
Our headshakes were immediate.
“Good because those aren’t the only officers here. They’ve got ones stationed near her OR, too.”
“Why?” Cole asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” He tilted his head. “Now that you don’t look like you’re about to make a scene and get hauled away in cuffs, let’s go to my office.”
We walked out to see the suits still standing around. They shut up as we passed, not giving us anything.
When we reached his office, Pierce stepped aside for us to enter.
“Maximo is sending over my computer,” Cole told him, barely looking up from his phone. “It’ll be here in ten.”
“I’ll swing around to grab it from the ED entrance. I’ll also see if Dr. Cruz is on for when Callie is admitted. She’s the best there is.” His gaze landed squarely on Cole. “Don’t try to access the files on my computer. It doesn’t matter how good you are, you’ll set off the safeguards, and the whole system will lock up and trace back to me.”
Cole didn’t look remotely tempted by that challenge, which might’ve been the most telling clue to where his head was at.
His attention swung to scan the three of us. “And don’t touch my cabinets or displays.”
I’d barely looked at the space around us, so I had no clue what he was talking about, but it didn’t matter. We mumbled our agreement—or a grunt of acknowledgment, in my case.
He paused in the doorway. “So whose woman is she?” At the awkward silence, his expression turned stern. “If you’re going to be cavemen, do it somewhere else. She’ll need your support, not to babysit you.” He sighed as he turned, mumbling an added, “This isn’t going to end badly at all.”
Once the door closed after him, I asked Cole, “Anything on footage?”
“Signal here is shit, and I don’t want to log into the Wi-Fi because my phone doesn’t have the level of security my laptop does.” He sat in one of the chairs around a table, loading a file as a progress bar barely crept forward.
Freddy pulled the chair next to him out and closer before sitting.
I tried to do the same before immediately standing. My restless energy made me tenser with each ticking beat, so I walked the room.
Guess I know what collection he meant.
A couple of dozen frames in various sizes were hung on the wall and positioned between the medical books that lined Pierce’s shelves. Each held at least one dead bug pinned to parchment, with their names and technical terms labeled.
It was creepy as fuck.
Like some Silence of the Lambs shit.
Scowling, I turned my back and messaged Maximo.
Me: C is in surgery. Pierce couldn’t get more than that. Waiting.
My phone beeped almost instantly.
Boss: Cops have the garage locked down. They don’t want me to close early and start a panic, but they are posted around the building. And they took over the security room and kicked everyone else out, including Miles.
Shit. There was no way Miles or Maximo were taking being in the dark well.
Hopefully, Cole’s laptop arrived soon, and he could get answers from his end of things. Until then, we couldn’t do much but wait.
Since I wasn’t good at patience, waiting changed to planning what I would do when we found the fucker.
When , not if.
I would draw it out. I hadn’t landed on a method yet because pain and death weren’t enough. They deserved agonizing. They needed to bleed like Callie had. I would make them beg for death and keep going until they had nothing left.
Then I would touch her with those same hands stained with blood.
If she let me.
If she survived.
Freddy
“Son of a bitch.”
At Cole’s harsh outburst, my head shot up, and my gaze landed on the laptop he had opened in front of us.
It was heavy as fuck, loaded with storage space and shit I didn’t understand.
It was also his pride and joy, but he looked three seconds away from throwing it through a wall.
“Why is your brightness so low?” I asked.
“It’s not. The lights are out.”
That can’t be a coincidence.
“Hold up.” He clicked around, and the video image lightened, but it took the quality down. Stabbing a finger toward the oversaturated screen, he growled, “Brent didn’t wait until she was in her car.”
Marco stopped his pacing and came over. Palm to the table, he leaned down to look.
Once the laptop was delivered by Dr. Pierce—who didn’t have another update—Cole started downloading footage. He’d checked her timecard to narrow down the window, and I’d texted Dante to find out what section of the garage she was found in. It was still a big file. However he was running the system, it took longer there than it would with his whole setup in his office, but he’d looked ready to swing when Marco had suggested he leave.
Cole dragged the cursor back and played it so we could see the security guard take Callie near her car before immediately walking away, his focus on his phone.
Leaving her there.
Alone.
For the countless time—starting before all this shit even went down—I second-guessed every decision we’d made about Callie. If we hadn’t been blinded by her ties to Eternal Sun, would she have even been at work?
Or would she have been at Ash’s wedding with one of us?
Doubt wasn’t something I was used to. Neither was regret. But I had both when it came to her.
“Why is she just standing there?” Marco asked as he leaned closer, which pushed Cole into my side.
“No idea,” he said.
I studied the image of her as it buffered. “Her bag.”
“What?” Cole dragged his focus from the screen to me, our faces close. For once, he didn’t immediately pull away.
“She brings a backpack with her.”
“With her laptop,” Marco added. “She watches some show before shift.”
Cole isn’t the only one stalking her.
“She didn’t have it when she got off the elevator.” I pointed at the screen. “If this was a mugging, they wouldn’t get much. Maybe that’s what set them off.”
Desperate people did desperate shit, especially in Vegas, where addictions and vices were on every corner.
I just didn’t get why she didn’t have her bag.
From what I’d seen—and there’d been a lot because even when I was supposed to be ignoring her, I’d watched her—Callie usually did the same things every shift.
Why did she switch it up?
The footage started again, jumpy and unhelpful. One second, she was on her way back to the elevator. The next, she was gone. It almost looked like she’d tripped, but it was hard to make out. A car alarm suddenly blared to life, but the flashing headlights only made the image on the screen strobe in and out. Hill and Dante came into view before someone in dark clothes ran away. Cole clicked through frame by frame, but there was nothing. Not at that angle, at least.
Marco slammed his fist onto the table so hard, it was a wonder it didn’t crack in half like something out of a cartoon. “Fuck.”
Cole clicked around the files as he spoke mostly to himself. “I’m going to piece together everything we have from the time she left the restaurant. I don’t want to get dragged into shit at Moonlight, so I’ll go to Sunrise to work through the recordings with my monitors and a better connection than two tin cans on a string.”
“It can wait,” Marco said, backtracking on his earlier suggestion.
Cole gave him a what-the-fuck stare and started to stand, but I put my hand out to stop him.
I hadn’t meant for it to land on his thigh, but I also didn’t remove it immediately. More shocking, Cole didn’t shift away. With as riled up as he was, I doubted he noticed or cared.
“The fucker is gone with a helluva head start,” I pointed out. “Leaving now won’t change that. And if the footage has anything, the cops have likely already found it.”
“All the more reason not to wait. We need to find him before they do. He doesn’t deserve three hots and a cot.”
I knew what he was trying to do.
Something .
Waste of time or not, doing anything was better than sitting around, feeling helpless while we waited for an update. But leaving wouldn’t help.
And being alone wasn’t a good place for Cole.
I repeated Marco’s words. “It can wait.”
Cole gave a grudging chin lift before starting to download another file. When I went to move my hold from his leg, he dropped his hand to cover mine.
Pressing it back down before letting go to type.
I kept it in place as he clicked at the computer, Marco spoke to Miles about questioning and then firing the useless guard, and I messaged Maximo and Manny for updates.