Ten feet away was a pillar. Scrambling behind it, she looked back. It was a risk, but she had to know what the situation was like behind her and she had to know what her assailant looked like.
She’d left chaos in her wake, colorful watches and sunglasses littering the floor, several women kneeling on the floor, a couple of college-age students picking up watches with a smile, a couple of crying kids and...there he was! Medium height, dirty blond hair barely visible beneath a wide-brimmed hat, well built, well dressed, cold flat eyes. And—yes—he was holding something in his right hand that was dripping blood. Her blood. He put the knife away almost immediately.
She was dripping too. She put a hand to her side and it came away wet and red. It was a serious wound. It was fiercely painful and impeded movement. She had to do something quick. Another slash like that and she wouldn’t survive this.
Well, she’d lived with danger close all her life and was built for this. A fully formed plan had consolidated in her mind and it gave her strength. Ducking and weaving, using every inch of cover available, she headed straight for the bathrooms on the other side of the huge concourse.
Something on the floor caught her eye. She looked down and froze. Bright red drops. A blood trail, a huge arrow that would lead him straight to her once order was established. Whoever this man was, he would be more than capable of following a blood trail.
A couple passed by with a baby in a stroller, both parents burdened with huge amounts of kid paraphernalia, including a blue baby blanket. And—aha!¾a dirty baseball cap. She grabbed the cap and the blanket, pressing the blanket to her side under the coat. She ran to the bathroom, checking to see that she didn’t leave bloody footprints.
A small atrium before the doors of the women’s restroom gave her a moment’s shelter. She stopped, panting, and peeked around the corner, grimacing with pain. She swayed and propped herself up using a knuckle, since her palms were slick with blood.
The man was in profile, scanning straight ahead. The god of nerds was smiling on her because a huge knot of people, most of them young like her, moved across the concourse, perpendicular to the flow of people. Her attacker moved forward as though he’d been sprung out of a cage. The knot of people was exactly the kind of crowd she’d try to hide in and like a bloodhound scenting prey, he shot across the floor, head swiveling to catch a glimpse of her.
But she was behind him now, ducking into the ladies’ room, which was—thank God!—empty. In the handicapped stall, she locked the door and sat cross-legged on the toilet lid, pulling out her cell phone and her laptop. She took the battery out of her cell, so she couldn’t be tracked and opened her laptop. It was very special and could run for two hundred hours without recharging. A prototype, given to her by China’s top hacker while he’d been a Black Hat. It turned on immediately. Her fingers flew over the keyboard. The laptop was very fast and powerful and had a lot of programs it shouldn’t have. With the help of one she accessed the airport’s security system and initiated a bomb alert. A siren sounded immediately.
Then she hacked into the airport loudspeaker system, overrode the regular announcements and used an app she’d designed to disguise her voice. It turned her natural soprano into a male basso profundo that sounded like God Himself.
“Attention, attention, we have just received a bomb alert. We ask all passengers and personnel to please make for the exits in an orderly fashion. You may use the stairs and the escalators but not the elevators. Attention, attention—”
She put the announcement on a loop.
As if on cue, sounds of screams came from the concourse outside the toilets, the flooring shivering with the vibrations of thousands of feet running.
The laptop screen went out of focus for an instant and Felicity grabbed the stability bar for the handicapped, grateful that she’d chosen this stall. She held it, white-knuckled, until her head cleared. Almost afraid, she glanced down at her side and saw that the blanket she’d wrapped around herself was soaked with blood. Soon she was going to faint and then she’d really be prey. Her attacker wouldn’t find her outside and would come back inside and check the place thoroughly. If he found her unconscious on the floor of the bathroom stall, she was done for.
One last thing to do.
Like all large airports, the Portland airport had an ambulance service on duty 24/7 in case of an airplane crash. Though the letters danced on the screen, she found the emergency service and directed the ambulances to come around to the front of the street level.
Someone would have ordered them out anyway, eventually, but she needed an ambulance now.
Hitching her laptop backpack higher up on her shoulders, she planted a bloody hand against the pristine white walls of the stall, realizing that she was leaving DNA and fingerprints. She should go into the outer room, grab some towels, soak them with water and soap, and wipe it down.
But really, she’d need bleach. And she didn’t have the strength anyway. Pressing the last dry part of the baby blanket against her side, she put on the baseball cap, tucking her hair in to hide the color, and walked out into utter chaos.
Good. Chaos was good.
Her disguised voice kept booming over the loudspeakers, a deep top note over the screams and cries of the passengers. “Attention, attention—”
She put herself in the middle of a stream of people scrambling down the stairs and made it down almost without her feet touching the ground.
People were pushing and shouting to get out through the revolving door exits, creating bottlenecks so that the exits looked like one huge writhing organism made up of arms and legs instead of terrified travelers desperately trying to get out.
She felt a thump at her back and her adrenaline spiked, cutting off her breath. It wasn’t her attacker, though, it was a woman in a knot of people rushing for the exits. Felicity was caught in the middle and carried forward, her feet barely touching the floor. A strident alarm signal started up, like an air-raid siren. She hadn’t done that, it must have been an automated system. But it served to increase the frenzy of the passengers in the terminal. Only half had made it outside, the others were mostly clustered at the chokepoints of the exits.
The knot of people propelling her forward dissipated like a clump of dirt hitting water as they made it out through the revolving doors, and she dropped to her hands and knees, head down between her arms, observing running feet rushing by. Sneakers, pumps, tiny kids’ shoes, polished men’s shoes, high heels...they all streamed by while she held herself up on trembling arms. A few drops of blood stained the concrete pavement. She’d bled right through the blanket.
The screams, the alarm, the voice booming attention, attention—they all melded into a background blur then faded. She blacked out for a second but came to immediately when a sneakered foot crushed her hand. The pain woke her before she could slump to the ground. Grateful that it had been a sneaker and not a stiletto, she rose on one knee, then the other, then rose up on her feet, trembling and weak.
Someone else bumped into her from behind. You don’t stand still in a stream of panicking people. Stumbling forward, she tried to scan for her attacker but there was darkness at the edge of her vision.
Stumbling and bleeding, she made her way through without attracting attention. People were fighting to get away, their eyes straight ahead. No one noticed a young woman, even if she was bleeding and half-dead on her feet. Panic was excellent camouflage.
The alarm was still whooping and now a thousand people were outside the airport, blinking in the snow, children crying, men shouting. Some had been injured in the stampede and Felicity could see a woman cradling her arm, but it didn’t look broken. She hated the thought of causing injuries but she’d had no choice.
Her attacker was at the other end of the sidewalk, head turning, pushing people out of his way. He was heading toward her, systematically checking faces. Felicity ducke
d behind a big planter. Moving as fast as she could despite the searing pain in her side she turned and made her way to the far end where ambulances were driving up, sirens wailing. Soldiers with machine guns were trying to establish order, funneling people out toward the parking lots.
Felicity staggered when she got to the first ambulance, stopping a medic with a bloodstained hand.
“Ma’am?” he said, frowning, looking at her hand then down her side. She pulled back her coat, lifted the blanket from the wound and looked at him. She didn’t have to playact anything.
“I need help.” She wanted to spin a story about how she’d fallen and cut herself but she didn’t have the strength. She could barely stand and only those stark words came out in a whisper.
“Right,” the medic said, signaling the driver. A gloved hand probed the wound. She gasped in pain, then bit her lips. No crying out, no calling attention to herself. She’d lost track of her attacker but he was out there somewhere.
“Let’s get you into the van and start a saline and plasma drip right away,” the medic said.
It got hazy after that. The sounds of a gurney being unfolded, gentle but strong hands helping her onto it, the gurney being loaded into the back of the ambulance, the probing as the medic found a vein and started an IV line of something...
She drifted in and out of consciousness, the siren wailing, the IV bag swaying, the medic holding her wrist, a finger on the pulse. The radio on the dashboard would crackle and someone at a central dispatch imparted orders but none of the words made any kind of sense. She lost all sense of time and even of where she was. Her consciousness was reduced to a pinprick of awareness, no past and no future, just an endless now with pain and noise.
The ambulance went up a ramp, fast, and braked to a halt.
The medic and driver were smooth and efficient. She was out of the ambulance and into the ER as fast as possible, the medic giving the nurses a rundown of her condition so quickly she couldn’t follow. Maybe it was better that way.
“...the airport?” one of the nurses asked and the medic shook his head.
“Lots of confusion, we should be ready for minor injuries. Lucky that bomb didn’t go off.”
“Yet. Though they are saying that maybe it was a false alarm,” the nurse said. The nurse was standing at the top of the gurney so Felicity couldn’t see her face. The nurse came around, probed at the wound, and Felicity blacked out again, just for a second. It was as if her life was being conducted under strobe lights, at every pulse of light she was in a different position, something else going on. The nurse injected something into the IV bag. A painkiller.
The lancing pain—almost electric in its intensity—started to abate, became some dim far-off thing, not really connected to her body. Her head, too, took a trip toward the ceiling.
She was still in the emergency room when passengers from the airport starting to stream in. Cuts, lacerations, one woman was limping. Nothing really serious but the influx of panicked passengers created a swirl of chaos. Felicity watched it somewhat dreamily from her gurney, sorry she’d created the chaos, happy she’d escaped her attacker.
Now that she was safely in the hospital she should tell the doctor she’d been attacked. He didn’t have to know she’d pulled the alarm, she’d just glide over the fortuitous fact that right after being knifed, the airport announced a bomb alert.
She had solid heavy-duty medical insurance. She could probably have two liver transplants and a nose job while here. When they asked, she had everything in her backpack.
If she needed surgery, no problem, though she hated the thought of being unconscious with her attacker out there somewhere. But she was in a hospital, with guards and nurses and doctors all around her. Her attacker wouldn’t...
Felicity froze, her heart suddenly beating painfully hard behind her breastbone. There he was! Oh God, at the entrance, scanning the organized chaos of the emergency room, looking for her. She was partially covered by a green curtain, a privacy screen, and he’d have to go down a long line to see if she was on one of the gurneys. Surely he wouldn’t...
Yes, he would. Thorough bastard. Oh God, she was trapped! She didn’t have the strength to get up from the gurney and rush to a hiding place. What could she do? Her mind was usually quick but now it was sluggish, thoughts slow and unclear. She might as well be dead if she had to think like that.
Dead! God yes! Her attacker was moving forward from the exit, looking sharply at faces, no one stopping him. Maybe at a calmer moment someone would ask what he wanted but right now he had total freedom to move as he pleased. He strode decisively across the room. In a second or two he would be at the foot of her gurney and it would be over.
Dead. She had to get dead quick, before he killed her.
Felicity pulled the IV out of her arm, and blood started seeping out of the needle. Good. She pulled the needle out of the tube and bright red blood spattered the pristine white sheet. She pushed away from the wall, making her gurney isolated, abandoned, and pulled the sheet right over her face.
Dead. Dead. Dead. Deader’n shit as a Texan hacker used to say. But she was gasping in panicked breaths and there was no way she could hold her breath. She was absolutely sure the sheet was rising and falling with her heartbeat.
Okay, think. She’d refused to let go of her backpack—her entire life was in her computer—and it was going to save her life right now. She pulled the backpack over her chest and put her pillow over that. What anyone would see was an obese dead person, thick belly unmoving, bloodied sheet pulled up over its face in the universal sign of respect for the dead.
Felicity held herself as motionless as possible, sure that her heart knocking up against her computer case must be audible. It felt like thunder in her ears.
Some of the shouting and confusion in the entrance had died down and she could make out the sound of deliberate footsteps. Not a patient, they were all waiting for medical attention or receiving it. No patient who was ambulatory would be allowed back here, anyway.
It was Knife Man, Felicity was absolutely certain. The steps were slow and even, though they stopped every once in a while to check the wounded. His steps approached where she lay, terrified, mind a great white glare of panic. However she tried to game out what she’d do if he pulled the sheet off and attacked her again, she couldn’t. She was freezing cold, a clear sign of shock and blood loss, and she felt weak. She was a sitting duck.
Lying duck, actually.
Someone gripped the end of her gurney, brushing her foot. By sheer willpower she didn’t jump. The hand stayed there, on the footrail, forever. Or at least it felt like forever. Terror gripped her chest and she had to work hard not to wheeze in panic, making her breaths shallow and silent.
Cold sweat broke out all over her body and a liquid rush against her side told her that she was bleeding again. Oh God, if he saw fresh blood he’d know someone was alive under the sheet shroud.
And still he didn’t move. She’d have given anything to be able to see him, watch his face. Were his eyes latched on to her sheeted form, waiting for her to show signs of life? Was he still scanning his surroundings, looking for a clue as to her whereabouts? What was he doing?
Finally, the slight pressure on the end of her gurney lifted and the deliberate pace of the footsteps resumed, walking away toward the entrance, the sound of the footsteps soon lost in the confusion.
It was so hard to think straight, to plan. Her ally her whole life had been her brain. She was used to being able to think faster and more clearly than most. This feebleness, this fog in her head terrified her because if she couldn’t think her way out of this, she was lost. There was no way to outgun or outrun the man. She had to out think him.
She tried to time herself by her beating heart. She usually had a standing pulse of sixty beats per minute. A beat a second, a reliable touchstone. Instead of o
ne Mississipi two Mississippis she’d always had her heart to go by. But now her heart was pounding wildly, erratically, no longer a touchstone.
Two competing imperatives—wait for the man to leave, but move soon because she was losing blood and energy by the second.
It had to be done. She eased the sheet slowly and carefully to the side. You’d have to be looking straight at her to see the movement. Finally she exposed an eye, tried to look as carefully as she could without moving her head. No one was looking in her direction.
It was now or never.
Slowly, very slowly, she pulled the sheet off, sliding her feet to the floor. Thank God for the painkillers—it felt as if the pain was in another room. The moment the painkillers wore off, she was going to be in big trouble.
She could barely stand, her legs frighteningly weak. She stood unsteadily, holding on to the gurney, cold sweat popping out on her face and back. Slipping her laptop backpack on took nearly all of her strength.
Another couple of ambulances had come in bearing airport passengers with minor injuries, but the passengers were very vocal. They wanted care now. For the first time in her life, Felicity was happy to hear loudmouths sounding off. They took up all the oxygen and attention in the room. Great. She carefully made her way around the emergency room, surreptitiously holding on to the walls. Nobody paid her the slightest bit of attention.
She eyed the glass doors. The outside portico was well lit but beyond that, snowy darkness. Her attacker could be anywhere, lying in wait just outside the circle of light. But it was a risk either way. If she stayed here he could come back and she couldn’t be sure the same trick would work. Soon the influx of agitated passengers would slow to a trickle and they’d pay more attention to her. She’d be formally admitted. It occurred to her only now that however badly she was wounded, she couldn’t find treatment here. She didn’t have alternative ID. Her attacker had to know her name and checking for a Felicity Ward admitted to the hospital would be child’s play.