A couple of stable hands watched me. One dropped what he vas doing and walked toward the other end of the barn.
I took the keys, grabbed my gun out of the box in the door, and ran back upstairs.
Someone had attacked this girl, brutally, viciously. And the odds of this being a random act, all things considered, were long. She had been involved with Brody’s club, friends with Irina; she had been seen talking to me, and I was not to be trusted.
Brody had tried to give me the bum’s rush, had tried to tell me Lisbeth was gone even while we stood beside her car. I had to get her out of there. Certainly Brody hadn’t attacked Lisbeth himself, he wouldn’t be that careless, but there was no reason not to think he might have paid one of the barn hands to do it.
For all I knew, whoever had done this to her might have believed he had left her for dead. God knew she looked like she shouldn’t have survived.
When I got back to her room, Lisbeth was curled up, chin on her knees, leaning against the foot of the bed.
“Come on, Lisbeth.”
She didn’t respond, just stared at the floor.
“Come on!”
She shook her head slowly. “No,” she whispered. “Leave me alone.”
“That’s not happening, Lisbeth. You can get up and come with me, or I can drag you out of here by your hair. Get up.”
She said something so softly, I couldn’t make it out. She said it again, and again.
I should die? I should have died? I could die? I wasn’t sure.
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” I told her. “But it’s not happening on my watch.”
I grabbed her by the upper arm and started toward the door, dragging her.
“Goddammit, Lisbeth. Get up!” I shouted. A strong sense of urgency began to fill me, like a balloon growing larger and larger.
She started to cry again and pulled against me.
“Stop it!” I snapped.
I could hear voices outside. Two men speaking Spanish. I glanced out the window and caught a glimpse of two men down by my car.
As threatened, I wrapped a hand in Lisbeth’s thick wet hair, my fingernails biting into her scalp, and yanked her toward the door.
She cried out but stumbled along beside me. Tears streamed down her swollen face as I marched her down the stairs.
The men looked up at me.
“Hey! What you doin‘ with her?” one shouted at me. He was stocky, neatly dressed in pressed jeans and a Western shirt. He wore a cowboy hat and a Fu Manchu. The barn manager, I assumed.
“I’m taking her to a hospital,” I said.
“She don‘ wanna go with you.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “I’m not going to let her die. Are you?”
“I think you better let her go,” he said, bringing up some attitude, trying to block the passenger door of my car.
“I think you better get the hell out of my way.”
“I’m callin‘ Mr. Brody,” he said, pulling out his cell phone.
“Yeah? You call Mr. Brody. You do that. How about I call the sheriff’s office? And they can call the INS. How about that?”
The other guy got nervous at that.
“How about I tell the detectives you did this to her?” I said.
“I didn’t‘ do nothin’ to her!” he shouted.
“Yeah,? Who do you think the cops will believe? You or me?”
The nervous one had taken a couple of steps to my left, to Lisbeth’s left. He took a couple more, angling over but edging in toward the girl. The boss took a step in the other direction.
I reached behind my back, curved my hand around the butt of my gun.
“Back off!” I shouted at the one closest to Lisbeth, drawing my weapon and pointing it at his face. His eyes went wide.
From the corner of my eye, I saw the boss make his move toward me. Without letting go of Lisbeth, I swung my arm around and backhanded him across the face with the gun. He dropped to his knees, putting his hand to his cheekbone, where the gun’s sight had cut him.
The nervous one ran as I swung back toward him. Off to get reinforcements.
I yanked the car door open and shoved Lisbeth into the passenger seat, then ran around to the driver’s side, got in, dropped the gun, started the engine.
Dust flying, gravel spewing, the BMW fishtailed around the end of the barn. A horse being hand-walked toward me reared and bolted sideways, kicking out at the groom. The horse got away. The groom shouted obscenities at me as I roared past.
Rubber squealed and burned as I swung out of the driveway onto the road and put the pedal down. I was past the white Escalade coming from the other direction so fast, Jim Brody’s face didn’t register until a half mile later.
Chapter 41
I hate hospitals. I especially hate emergency rooms.
No one working there ever believes what is wrong with you is an emergency. They never believe your story of how you came to be there. They never believe you might actually be dying, unless you have an obvious gunshot wound, arterial bleeding, or exposed brain matter.
I’d had two out of three when I was rushed in by ambulance the day meth dealer Billy Golam’s 4X4 dragged me down the pavement. It was the only time in my life I had gone to an ER and hadn’t been stuck in a room and abandoned for hours on end, only to later be treated like an annoying hypochondriac.
Lisbeth had none of the Big Three. They stuck her in what seemed to be a utility closet with a bed wedged into it along with a lot of surplus equipment. She sat in a little ball, still wrapped in her bathrobe. I paced, chewing at a ragged thumbnail.
“Why don’t you lie down, Lisbeth?” I suggested. “Try to rest a little. When the detective gets here, he’ll want to ask you a lot of questions. You’ll need to answer them.”
I had managed to get her to tell me at least part of the story as we waited. Someone-she didn’t know who- had put a bag over her head, choked her, hauled her out into the wilderness, and held her head under swamp water until she nearly drowned.
I was willing to bet that didn’t happen to people back in Buttcrack, Michigan. The kid was as traumatized as anyone I’d ever seen.
A girl in scrubs stepped into the room, looked at me like I was a bad piece of cheese, went to Lisbeth, and took her pulse without so much as saying hello.
“Excuse me. Who are you?” I asked.
She gave me a dirty look.
“A nurse? A doctor?” I said. “A twelve-year-old playing dress-up?”
“I’m Dr. Westral,” she snapped.
“Of course. I should have known that through mental telepathy. I’m off my game. Are you a real doctor,” I asked, “or are you still saving your Lucky Charms box tops until you’re old enough to cross the street to the mailbox all by yourself?”
“I’m a first-year resident,” she said, as if that elevated her above the great unwashed like myself.
“So the answer is B: not a real doctor.”
