Pursuit by Karen Robards Page B

might be conscious and feeling chatty. He’d chosen to take the stairs rather than the elevator because the press was already on the trail of the story and had gathered in a seething, amorphous, ever-growing pack in the hospital lobby. The difficulty lay in the fact that some of them might recognize him, and then his presence at the hospital would become part of the story, leading to all kinds of speculation. No doubt at some point the harassed-looking security guards would force them outside, but he didn’t have the time to wait for that. It was easier to take the stairs and avoid the problem.
    If Ms. Ford had anything to say, he wanted to hear it first. There was nothing else he could do for Annette Cooper now except try to keep her all-American-mom image intact.
    He pushed the stairwell door shut behind him with an elbow and was striding down the hall toward Ms. Ford’s room when a blood-curdling shriek froze him in his tracks.
    It was a woman’s terrified scream, so shocking in this hushed, over-cooled, sterile environment that it made the hairs on the back of his neck spring to attention. A cold, hard fear seized him even as a terrible premonition jolted his world, even as his gaze shot down the long hallway that right-angled out of his sight just beyond the nurses’ station.
    For as far as he could see, the hall was dim and nearly empty and utterly incompatible with the explosion of sound that filled it as the woman screamed again and again, raw, jagged screams of pure fear that covered the pounding of his heart—and of his footsteps as he catapulted into a dead run.
    Jesus Christ , it wasn’t possible. . . .
    Mark didn’t finish the thought as he raced down the hall toward room 337, the room where Ms. Ford had been taken, where he knew with every bit of gut instinct he possessed that she was screaming like a crazy woman now.
    Why?
    It was useless to speculate. He didn’t want to speculate. He wanted the suspicion that oozed like venom through his brain to be wrong.
    Passing a frightened-looking nurse who had apparently paused to ring the security button before going to her patient’s aid and shoving aside an orderly, Mark burst into Ms. Ford’s room with his Glock at the ready and his heart pumping like a six-cylinder engine.
    “Freeze!”
    As the door bounced open he was through it, assuming firing stance, the echoes of her shrieks ringing in his ears as his eyes scanned the blue-tinged darkness for her—and whoever might be threatening her.
    Only she wasn’t screaming now. No one was. Except for the thundering of his pulse in his ears and the blip-blip-blip of some damned machine, the room was quiet as a cemetery at midnight.
    No one was there.
    No one that he could see, anyway.
    “Jessica!” he called.
    It was a two-person room, complete with two beds and two TVs and a number of chairs and what appeared to be enough medical instruments to keep half the hospital alive. The partially drawn curtain separating the halves of the room fluttered slightly, but despite that small movement, the room did indeed appear empty: Certainly both beds were unoccupied. They were out of place, though, with the nearer one much closer to the door than it should have been and the far one catty-corner against the window wall.
    Careful.
    His left hand hit the light switch as he advanced into the room on high alert, continuing to scan his surroundings although there wasn’t a soul in sight. The sudden brightness made him blink. Including the bathroom, the door of which was ajar, there were only a few places that he couldn’t immediately see, which meant there were only a few places for an intruder to hide.
    “Jessica?”
    Someone had been there, he could sense it, feel the energy of a recent presence. Despite the current silence, there was also no doubt in his mind that he had followed the screams to their source.
    So where the hell was she?
    “Jessica?”
    Coming warily around the foot of the far bed, the one that was