Another factor. She wasn’t going to stay conscious for very much longer.
And yet another factor. She was going to need to convalesce. She longed with an intensity that shook her to the core to be with someone who was a friend, who didn’t wish her harm. To be with someone and let her guard down without fear. The wound made her feel violated in her essence. To heal she would need a safe place and there was only one possible safe place.
She couldn’t go to the hotel she’d checked into, since she’d checked in under her own name. She couldn’t stay out in the open. She needed sanctuary and a friend. Her only friend here was a virtual friend—a woman she’d never met but whose online vibes fairly radiated friendliness and affection. So Lauren was it, had to be it.
Lauren was in a relationship with a security expert, a former Navy SEAL. Fantastic, because Felicity was about to bring trouble to Lauren’s doorstep.
She had no choice.
But first she had to get to Lauren. She knew where Lauren lived. Of course she did, she’d gotten fake ID for Lauren with that address on the ID. Before leaving, she’d done a quick check of Google maps. Only a mile and a half away. On foot it might as well be on the moon. By car, even driving slowly, maybe twenty minutes. Thirty tops, in the snow.
Could she hold out for twenty to thirty minutes? God only knew. And only one way to find out.
Her father had defected to the West within a five-minute time frame. He’d had five minutes to make it work while his Soviet minder—muscles on muscle with a gun, her father had described him—went to the bathroom. In that time, her father and mother had changed the course of their lives and hers, by being brave enough to take a leap.
Well, she had Darin blood flowing in her veins. And though she wasn’t going to leap to another country she could show the courage her papa had shown and get the hell out of Dodge. Fast.
First, wheels.
She’d named herself after Felicity Smoak, Arrow’s super bright friend. So. What would Felicity Smoak do? Steal a car, of course. Borrow a car. The thing was, she wasn’t near the hospital parking lot. She had no idea where it was. Maybe at the back of the building and so that too might as well have been on the moon. And there was the added disadvantage that she had no idea how to break into a car and get it started.
As she slowly made her way to the entrance, carefully watching all the faces around her, she tried to scout outside. The only vehicles were ambulances, nothing else.
They were coming in all the time, medical personnel bearing people in twos and threes. None of them as wounded as she was, thank God.
Felicity was painfully aware that there were security cameras everywhere and even a person less gifted than she was could access the cameras. Actually, these days even a chimpanzee could access security cameras. Even if she managed to shake off her attacker, he could leisurely go over the security cameras of every place she could have gone to, including this hospital, if he felt he might have overlooked something.
Not much she could do about it now. Right now, sheer survival took precedence over wiping her tracks.
Most cameras covered the middle areas of public spaces so she hugged the walls. No sense making it easy on her attacker. She kept her head low, which wasn’t hard considering how weak she felt, shuffling like an old lady, barely able to lift her feet. The bill of the baseball cap would hide most of her face.
The huge entrance sliding doors were flanked by smaller doors, for personnel. She took the left-hand one and emerged into the snow. It was dark enough for the bright lights under the portico to be necessary. Felicity shivered. Her body was too weak to compensate for the sudden drop in temperature. It felt like being at the North Pole.
Calling a taxi was out of the question. She could wipe the records of the taxi service but she couldn’t wipe the memory of a driver.
God, where was the Tardis when she needed it?
A thousand hours of playing Grand Theft Auto was her only hope. A feeble one because she’d never boosted a car in real life and she was a lousy driver in sunshine, let alone in snow. But that was her only hope and a narrow one at that, because the chances of her surviving this were small and growing smaller with each passing minute.
The only vehicles under the portico were ambulances. So it was going to be Grand Theft Ambulance
Oh God. She had no idea how to drive one. Had never even been in one until an hour ago. Anxiety lapped around her like a rising tide of black water.
Remember Dad, she thought. That five-minute window of opportunity with the KGB watching his every move. He’d gotten away just after being awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Accepting congratulations, shaking hands with his right hand, his left holding her mother, he’d slipped into a corridor and into the waiting arms of two CIA agents.
He’d been fast and smart, her father. She was going to have to be fast and smart too.
Leaning against the outside wall, just beyond the glare of lights, she waited. The wail of ambulance sirens was starting to subside. Ten minutes ago there’d been an ambulance arriving every minute. Now there were fewer of them.
Hurry, she told herself, before they stop coming altogether.
Two ambulances pulled away, going back to the airport and another pulled into the driveway. The driver rushed out to help unload the patient in back and there it was. Her shot.
Moving fast was impossible so Felicity simply set herself in forward motion, not stopping until she was at the driver’s side door. She closed her eyes in relief when she saw keys still in the ignition. Silly of the driver, of course, but who would be crazy enough to steal an ambulance parked right outside the hospital?
She didn’t have the energy to check if anyone was watching. If they were and they stopped her, that was that. Right now she focused all her energy on doing this. The engine ignited immediately and the controls were understandable. She just had to hope she could drive it in the snow without tipping over or sliding on ice.
Okay.
She pressed the accelerator and moved forward under the portico, to the off-ramp, switching on the windshield wipers after a desperate search. There was a loud male cry—Hey!—but she simply pressed harder on the accelerator. The conditions were awful but the ambulance was very stable.
She could do this. She could, she could. Maybe.
Lauren’s address was on her computer’s display, a teardrop over her house and Felicity a moving dot. Her hands were slick on the wheel. The movements were making her bleed more. She was going to leave blood in the ambulance. Don’t think about that.
The police weren’t going to run a DNA analysis for what would be considered a joyride in an ambulance, were they? She hoped fervently that the attacker didn’t have resources behind him that could order a DNA test.
To her knowledge she didn’t have her DNA on file but these days, who knew?
Her fingerprints were definitely on file but she was wearing gloves.
Her father had been paranoid with regard to governments and she grew up with conspiracy theories ringing in her head. Her attacker belonging to some shadowy government agency was an idea she had to actively push out of her head because navigating the streets in bad weather while bleeding was using up her entire hard disk.
In normal miles and normal driving time, Lauren’s house wasn’t that far. Losing blood by the minute, exhausted and terrified, driving in snow, it felt like scaling Mount Everest backward in heels.
Every time she glanced at the GPS dot that was her, it looked as if it was stationary. But slowly, slowly, one turn after the other, she moved forward, ever closer to the Lauren teardrop. Finally, after what felt like weeks, she carefully pulled over four blocks from Lauren’s address, on a side street. Driving right up to Lauren’s house would be a huge arrow aimed straight at Lauren’s heart. She’d have parked farther away if she had been certain she could
walk more than four blocks, but four blocks was pushing it.
Felicity killed the engine but stayed in the warm cab, damp hands clenched on the steering wheel. Outside it was cold and dark and slippery and inside it was warm and dry. But she was still bleeding heavily and if she stayed any longer, she wouldn’t have the strength to get out.
Opening the door proved to be almost beyond her and for a moment she wondered how close to death she was if opening the door of a vehicle was so very hard. But it was a stiff wind beating against the door that made it hard to open. She finally put her weight against it, nearly falling out when the door finally swung open. By some stroke of luck, or the help of the goddess of nerds, the wind was at her back, blowing in the direction of Lauren.
Go with the flow took on a new meaning.
Felicity carefully exited the ambulance but fell to her knees immediately, staying there for a full minute, head down. She lifted onto her haunches, like a sprinter—only she wasn’t ready to sprint. A hand to the ground, crunching snow beneath the palm of her hand, and she slowly stood up, shakily.
The snow was four inches deep and muted all noise. It was quite beautiful, actually, on this quiet little street, dark and silent, snow only visible in the cones of light thrown by the street lamps. She rested a hand on the side of the ambulance and watched the scenery dreamily, until she suddenly focused and realized she’d been about to faint.
She had to get to Lauren’s right now, or she’d fall to the ground and stay there.
It occurred to her with a sudden fierce pang of doubt—what if Lauren wasn’t home? What happened if she’d gone shopping or to the movies or—God forbid—gone on a little vacation with her lover, this Jacko guy?
Well then, she was dead. And Lauren would find her frozen body on her doorstep.
No use thinking about that now because Felicity had zero options. None whatsoever. Her only option right now was to put one foot in front of the other, eyes slitted against the snow, and hope that she could walk four blocks and climb a couple of steps. And of course hope that Lauren was home.
Because if she wasn’t, Felicity was dead.
It was a nightmare trip. Four blocks was nothing, even for a geek couch potato. And yet it was the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life. There were handholds along the way, otherwise she wouldn’t have made it. A fence, lampposts, the fender of cars parked along the street. She would lurch forward, clutch something, then use the handhold to propel herself forward again.
If she collapsed without having made it to Lauren’s there was no way Lauren would know that the body found not far from her house was her, Felicity. Lauren would keep trying to contact her and email her and would be sad when her friend never answered, without realizing her friend had died feet away from her.
Lauren couldn’t even check up on her because Felicity had never told her where she lived. She’d die anonymously, unclaimed.
It was that, more than anything else, that propelled her forward, one trembling foot in front of the other. An anonymous death, her entire life lost, the same kind of death her parents had had. They’d died as if the entire first half of their lives hadn’t existed and she didn’t want that. Her death would be even worse—lying unclaimed in a morgue, no one knowing what had happened to her.
God, no.
Time stopped, became an endless now of trudging forward, swiping snow from her face, holding herself upright by sheer willpower. At one point, to her horror, her heart stopped pounding. Became slow, sluggish. Her heart wouldn’t hold out much longer.
But by the time her heartbeat changed, Lauren’s house came into focus. Felicity had Googled Street View and knew what it looked like. Small, tidy, pretty. Blue trim around the door and windows. She held it in her mind as a goal and then finally, finally there it was.
Safety. Or the closest thing to safety she had right now.
And Lauren was home! Light shone through the windows, a soft welcoming glow. A beacon, that would lead her to safety.
Once the image of getting to Lauren, seeing her, finding refuge penetrated her mind, it gave her an extra spurt of energy, pulling in the very last of her reserves. She stumbled up the porch steps, clinging to the railing with both hands. She was so focused she couldn’t see much, just what was in front of her. Steps, a small porch, the door. The focus was getting narrower and narrower and she recognized that as a sign that she was about to pass out.
She shuffled across the porch, unable to lift her feet, and pounded weakly on the door. She pounded again and saw a video intercom and shuffled sideways.
Please, Lauren, she thought, her heart now painfully slow. She pounded again and looked toward the monitor. She was wet from the snow but she could also feel cold sweat beading her face. She shook with the effort to stay upright.
The loudspeaker crackled and she focused desperately on the monitor. “Lauren?” she asked. Then—you dummy. She won’t recognize you. She used the handle Lauren had given herself in their private chat room. “Runner?” Her voice came out a weak wheeze. Oh God, please answer! Please open this door before I collapse.
“Felicity!” The door opened and there she was, Lauren. Prettier than in the photos Felicity had used for her ID. A little plumper, happy. Lauren held out her hand and Felicity took it, stumbled over the threshold, fell.
Or, didn’t fall.
Something very strong and big was there.
Felicity had been so concentrated on Lauren that she hadn’t noticed that she was with two men. One dark, one dirty blond. Both big, but the blond was very tall besides being as big as a house. He was the one who’d stopped her fall, who gently laid her on the floor.
He was looking at her intently, opening her coat, frowning when he saw the blood. He lifted her shirt and looked up at Lauren.
“Knife wound and it’s bleeding heavily. We need to get her to a hospital. She’s lost a lot of blood.” He was probing the wound and though the painkillers still masked some of the pain, she gasped.
Something about what he said—
“No!” She tried to shout but it came out a hoarse croak. Felicity clung to the man’s thick wrist. He had big, powerful hands attached to big, powerful arms. He felt so warm and strong and alive. Touching him was like getting a little infusion of energy.
What he wanted was so dangerous. She clung to his wrist, leaving blood streaks on his skin. She looked at him, at Lauren, then back at him. Lauren was looking at him too, so he was the decider. She tried to tighten her fingers around his wrist and wondered whether he could even feel her.
“No hospital!” she gasped, the tiny spurt of energy coming straight from her terror at the idea of going back to the hospital and being found by her attacker. “Please. He’s after me! He was waiting for me at the airport. He’ll find me in a hospital. I just escaped from one and he—” She coughed, felt fresh blood flow from the wound. “He was there,” she finished weakly.
Lauren knelt down next to her,and took her hand. Lauren’s hand felt warm and vital too. Felicity stared up at her, at this friend she’d never seen before. That she was a friend was unmistakable. She looked so concerned, so distraught. Her eyes were filled with kindness and sorrow. “Honey—” She stopped, took a deep breath. “Honey, we need to get you to a doctor.”
Felicity knew that but also knew that medical care would leave a trace her attacker could easily follow. The doctor would save her life, only to have her attacker take it later.
Felicity let go of the man and reached for Lauren’s warm hand with both of hers. Her hands were slick with sweat and blood but Lauren didn’t seem to notice. She curled her fingers around Felicity’s hands. Felicity gave Lauren’s hand a little shake, looking up into her friend’s pretty face and pleaded with everything in her. “Please,” she whispered hoarsely. “Please. He’ll kill me if he finds me.”
The big man who had bee
n examining her wound with careful hands looked at Lauren. Though his hands were huge they were very gentle. “I can take care of her.”
His voice was low and so deep it seemed to reverberate in Felicity’s belly. He switched his gaze to Felicity, light brown eyes warm in a fierce face. He was enormous, rough-looking, but for all his size he didn’t scare her.
“At least I can stop the bleeding. There’s a clinic I know where we can do X-rays, reinfuse her. Completely off the grid.”
Off the grid. Oh yes. Felicity nodded weakly. “Please,” she whispered, looking up at him. It was all she could say now. Please, please, please. She shivered, closed her eyes, drifted for a second, then forced herself to open her eyes. She wasn’t safe yet.
“Yes. That place. Take me there.” Her voice was so weak that Lauren frowned and moved her head closer. The man didn’t seem to have any difficulty hearing her. She focused on his face, on those light brown eyes, her one lifeline. “Keep me off the grid.”
He nodded. “You’re safe. Don’t worry. You’re safe with us. I promise.” That deep voice sounded so reassuring.
Right words, wrong music.
“Sounds nice,” she gasped. “Not true, but...nice.”
Lauren’s head snapped back in surprise, but the man’s expression didn’t change. His deep voice was very gentle as he called to the other man in the room, the dark-skinned one, for his medic kit. That man was bare-chested, with a recent surgical scar. A little nursing station had been set up in the living room. Was the man kneeling next to her a doctor? He didn’t look like any doctor she’d ever seen but he opened the bag that had been brought to him and pulled out some gauze.
Felicity looked up into Lauren’s pretty, worried face and felt it—that connection she’d felt over the computer. That this woman was her friend and that she could trust her.