Page 50 - Hunter - The Vigil

“Are you deaf? I said no fucking hospitals!” Gabreski snarled. “We don’t need that kind of attention
right now. You said you knew somebody who could take care of this. Now shut up and get us there!”
Vince twisted in the seat and glanced into the back of the van. The bullet wound in his arm
burned like fi re; just a graze, he was pretty sure, but his sleeve was soaked with blood. “Jack!”
he called. “How’s she doing?”
Dean was bent over Andrea, trying to keep her still. With his red hair and freckled face, Jack
looked more like an altar boy than a police detective. “I don’t know, Vince. She’s pretty bad,”
he said. “She’s not moving her right arm at all, and her skin is turning gray.”
Vince gritted his teeth. “She’s going into shock. Keep her feet elevated, like I told you to!”
“Elevated with what?” Dean moaned. “It’s not like we’ve got any pillows back here.”
“Use that asshole we dragged out of the warehouse if you have to,” Gabreski shot back. “He’s
not good for much else right now.”
The man in the expensive business suit lay on his side just behind the driver’s seat, still bound
at the wrists and unconscious from the pistol-whipping the Russians had given him. To tell the truth,
Vince couldn’t recall how the man had wound up in the back of the van; he remembered staggering up
to the pit and screaming Darnell’s name, again and again. He remembered the cold wind that rose from
the hole, stinking of blood and shit and stagnant water, and the bright red of the broken bricks
jutting from the jagged edges of the pit. Then someone grabbed his arm — maybe Jack, maybe Raimundo
— and he heard Andrea screaming. Everything else was pretty much a blur after that.
Except for the sight of that…thing...that had grabbed Darnell. Vince couldn’t seem to get
that out of his head.
Raimundo jammed on the brakes, throwing everyone forward. Vince cracked his elbow against the
dashboard and was about to yell at the gang leader again before he realized they’d pulled up in
front of a weather-beaten tenement house. Raimundo was already out of the van, circling around to
open the cargo door. With a grunt of effort, Vince shouldered his way out of the passenger seat
and made his way to the back of the vehicle, where Andrea lay.
She was calmer now, or perhaps simply exhausted. Jack was kneeling at her feet, resting her
heels on the tops of his thighs.
“Hurts,” she hissed through clenched teeth. Her right arm was stretched taut, the fi ngers of
her gun hand clenched into a painful, almost arthritic claw. Vince could see the semicircle of
shredded fabric between her shoulder and collarbone where the thing had bit down. “Hurts like a
bitch and I can’t move my arm. I can’t move it!”
“I know, Andrea, I know,” Vince said. He leaned close, looking her right in the eye; it seemed
to focus her. “We’re taking you somewhere to have that bite looked at, but you’ve got to hold it
together and not attract any attention on the street. Do you understand?”
For a second, Andrea just stared at him. She had a sharp, hatchetlike face, and close-cropped
black hair that was prematurely peppered with gray. A year before, Vince had seen her take a
shotgun blast point-blank while serving a search warrant; her vest had stopped the buckshot, and
she’d bounced right back up as though nothing had happened. Seeing her in this state unnerved
Gabreski, but that was the last thing she needed to know at the moment.
Finally, she took a deep, shuddering breath and nodded. “Okay, okay. Help me up.” Between the
two of them, Vince and Jack got Andrea to her feet.
Raimundo had the door open. “Quick!” he whispered, beckoning impatiently.
They helped Andrea out onto the street. Under the sickly halogen glow of the streetlights, she
looked even more haggard than before. Vince wondered if he looked much better.
“What about him?” Jack asked, jerking his thumb at the unconscious suit.
Vince took a quick glance up and down the street. For the moment, the coast was clear. “I’ll
get him. You guys go on. I’ll be right behind you.”
He climbed back into the van, pulling a clasp knife from his pocket. With one swift cut, the cable
tie fell away, and Gabreski grabbed the man’s arm. The suit didn’t weigh much, and Vince wasn’t worried
about being gentle. He hauled the man out and dragged him into the tenement, right on Jack’s heels.
They had to climb three fl ights of dimly lit stairs until Raimundo stopped and knocked at an apartment
door. It opened a crack and the gang leader whispered something in Spanish. A woman’s voice answered, and
the conversation grew heated. The exchange echoed up and down the stairwell, leaving Vince feeling more
vulnerable with each passing moment. He was nearly at the point of kicking in the door when he heard the
rattle of a chain being drawn and Raimundo started hustling everyone inside.
Vince brought up the rear and found himself in a small, neatly kept apartment. They entered
through a narrow kitchen that smelled of old linoleum and spices, and found themselves in a small
living room. A young Hispanic woman stood in the middle of the room, clutching the neck of her
frayed bathrobe shut and staring daggers at the people invading her home.
“This is my sister, Lupe,” Raimundo said. “She’s a nurse at the hospital.”
“And I’ve got a shift in four hours,” she snapped. “I’ve been up for the last two days, Raimundo!
Have you lost your mind? I told you never to bring your business into this apartment!”