Chapter 16 #2
Leaving the room without any more information than what they’d entered with, Colt swallowed down his frustration. Actually, they had learned something. For some reason his SAC had withheld information from the other agents. Why? Colt was determined to find out.
“Excuse me.” A tall, gray-haired man in a white lab coat with a name tag identifying him as Dr. Benjamin Sweeney stopped them. “I understand you’re visiting Agent Spares.”
“We were,” Colt said showing the man his badge. Maren did the same.
The doctor glanced around, then drew them off to the side, away from the nurses’ station and into an alcove. Lowering his voice, he said, “There’s something strange about the agent’s wound. I’ve been debating whether I should say anything or not. But I think you should know.”
Dread and anticipation had Colt frowning. “Tell us. We’re here to help.”
The doctor looked about again to make sure no one was within earshot. “His wound isn’t fresh. It’s at least a few days old. He wasn’t treated after it initially happened, and that’s why he had so much blood loss. And the wound had time to become infected.”
Beside Colt, Maren let out a small gasp of surprise.
Stunned himself, Colt contemplated the ramifications of this news.
Three days ago, he’d shot a masked man who tried to kill Maren.
Was Agent Henry Spares that man? Was Henry the man known as Shadow?
Or only working for him? Was that why he’d conveniently forgotten about telling them to come in the front door of the safe house when he seemed to clearly remember other details very well? Something was off with the guy.
“Doctor, please keep this to yourself for now,” Maren said in a take-charge voice. To Colt she said, “We need to go back and talk to Agent Spares. He could be in league with Shadow.”
“My thought exactly.” Colt appreciated that he and Maren were of the same mind. He really liked this woman.
They hurried back down the hall toward room 659.
A female nurse, covered from head to toe in green scrubs and a matching scrub hat and mask, slipped out of Spares’s room.
“Hey, stop,” Colt called. That bad feeling he’d had earlier amplified.
The nurse picked up her pace and disappeared out of sight.
Seconds later, a loud, shrill beeping emanated from Agent Spares’s room.
Maren bolted into the room ahead of Colt.
On the hospital bed, Henry’s body was convulsing, his eyes rolling back in his head.
“Get help! I’m going after the nurse,” Maren yelled. And sprinted out of the room, with Haven at her side.
He didn’t have to make the call as hospital personnel pushed past him and Rusk, rushing to the bed. For ten minutes the medical staff worked on Henry, but in the end the man expired.
Dr. Sweeney called time of death.
“What happened?” Colt said to the doctor. “Did that nurse give him something?”
“I won’t know until we can fully examine the body,” Dr. Sweeney told him. “But this wasn’t a natural occurrence. I would stake my professional reputation on it.”
Dread and anger surged through Colt.
Agent Henry Spares, who Colt might have shot a few days ago, had been murdered.
* * *
Maren and Haven took the stairs all the way to the exit that came out on the side of the hospital.
With Haven sniffing the air, Maren searched for the nurse.
But since she’d only gotten a glimpse of the person dressed in scrubs, she couldn’t be sure who of the hospital personnel or civilians walking around was the culprit.
A squeal of tires snapped her attention to a silver sedan racing out of the parking lot. Her stomach dropped. They had been followed. And whoever was in that car had just been in Agent Spares’s room. What had they done to the man?
She headed back up to the sixth floor to find Colt talking with the hospital security.
“Agents Spares?” she asked as she approached.
The anger creating brackets around Colt’s mouth alerted her to the answer before he said, “Dead.”
Grief for a life cut short stabbed at her. “I lost the nurse. She left in a silver sedan.”
Something flashed in Colt’s eyes. “I saw a woman get out of a silver sedan when we came in. Maybe we can identify her.” He gestured to the security guards. “They’re going to let us see the hospital security footage.”
They followed the two officers to a control room where a bank of monitors was set up.
An officer sat in front of the computer screens and pointed to a twenty-seven-inch monitor to his right.
He scrolled backward, showing Maren and Colt entering Agent Spares’s room and leaving.
Then, seconds later, the nurse entered the room and was in there for less than thirty seconds before slipping out just as Maren and Colt headed back to the room.
“Do you have cameras in the stairwells?” Maren asked.
“This one,” the officer said, gesturing to another screen. “We can see the person rushing down and exiting the building.” He pointed to another camera. “We can track the nurse to the parking lot. Then she ducked down between two large vehicles. No one else appears until you step out of the exit.”
“A silver sedan left the parking lot maybe a minute later,” Maren said. “Can you get a license on it?”
The officer scrolled forward showing the sedan leaving the spot and going out the exit. The license plate was missing.
Fisting her hands, Maren looked at Colt. “We need to talk to your SAC.”
He nodded, though the expression in his eyes was grim.
Colt had his gaze on the parking lot monitor. “Wait a second. Can you zero in on that blue van parked near the exit under the shade of that tree?”
The officer enlarged the photo to show a blue panel van. They could see that there was somebody sitting in the driver seat, but the visor was down, and the person’s face hidden.
“Is that—” Maren couldn’t believe it. The same panel van that had run her off the road. “But didn’t it burn?”
“Agent Spares was the one who told us that.” Colt’s voice reverberated with anger. “Looks like he was definitely dirty.”
“We need to get down to that van and see who’s driving.”
Even as the words left her mouth, the van pulled out of the parking spot and exited the parking lot, disappearing out of view. It too was without a license plate.
“This is not good,” Colt said. “One of our own was dirty. Maybe more agents are involved. I don’t know how high up this will go. Could Leo be on the take?”
The horror on Colt’s face combined with the thought of the DEA SAC in league with drug dealers stole Maren’s breath. “It could be how Shadow has managed to evade the DEA for so long. I’ll call Emmett and let him know what’s happening,” Maren said as she left the security office.
Colt was right behind her. “Can you hold off on that until I talk to SAC Herman?” Colt asked.
“Leo’s been my boss the whole time I’ve been with the DEA.
I can’t believe he’s in on this.” He winced.
“I don’t want to believe it. I have to give him the benefit of the doubt. Give him a chance to defend himself.”
She stared at him, wondering if his judgment could be trusted.
Even as the thought formed, she dismissed it.
She trusted Colt. And she owed him this opportunity.
Still, her loyalty was to the task force.
“Let’s head back to Denver. You can talk to your SAC, but I do have to tell Emmett.
I’m sorry, but my allegiance is with the Colorado K-9 Unit. ”
Colt heaved a sigh and nodded. “I understand. And I would be the same way if the circumstances were reversed.”
She was glad he understood, but she couldn’t help feeling like whatever answers they discovered were going to hurt.