recently. Then she sighed. She understood why. She smiled at Emma. “Your daddy’s so buff and strong he’ll be better in no time, so don’t you worry.”
“My dad’s real tough, and he’s going to have my back all my life; he told me so.”
ICU nurse Janine Holder hadn’t cried in the hospital for a long time because it never helped, but she felt tears come to her eyes. This beautiful young girl was hovering protectively over her father, and what he’d said to her, so simple, so heartfelt—Janine swallowed and smiled. “If you’re ready, Judge Hunt, I’ll call everyone in and get it done. Mrs. Hunt, you and Emma need to come with me.”
Two days was long enough in the surgical ICU, Ramsey thought. Too much beeping and clanging and buzzing all day and night. At least he hadn’t heard any flatline whines, hadn’t heard anyone dying. He’d have some peace and quiet now, even if there would be half a dozen guards. If he wasn’t yet ready to be released into the wild, at least he would have a more comfortable cage.
Ramsey heard Molly say outside his cubicle, “Emma, we’ll go get some sandwiches in the cafeteria, then go to your daddy’s new room and wait for him there. Did you know Uncle Dillon and Aunt Sherlock are outside? We can say hello.”
Ramsey wasn’t stupid—he pumped in some morphine for the move. No matter how careful everyone was, he imagined there would be jostling, and it wouldn’t be fun.
Officer Mancusso came to stand in the doorway. “You’re not to worry, Judge Hunt. Hughes and I will be accompanying you. Nothing will happen to you, sir.”
Ramsey could only marvel at the odd mix of pride and promise in the young officer’s voice. He realized he didn’t know his first name, and asked him.
“It’s Jay, Judge Hunt,” Mancusso said.
It looked like an honor guard, Sherlock thought, when they finally got the bed wheeling down the hall toward the east elevators. Officer Eddie Hughes was on one side of the bed and Officer Jay Mancusso on the other side. Eve and fifteen-year-veteran Deputy Marshal Allen Milton walked at the head of the bed, and a muscular orderly with a big Fu Manchu mustache steered and kept an eye on the IVs dangling from the headboard and the chest tube pinned to the sheets. Ramsey had tried to smile at them as they wheeled him by.
Sherlock saw Ramsey’s face was white with pain. At least Molly and Emma weren’t here to see him. But Ramsey would live, and they would catch his shooter. She wondered how she’d be holding up if Dillon had been the one shot and nearly killed. She gave him a fast kiss.
Savich, Sherlock, and Harry got in the back of the line behind Ramsey’s bed. Eve stood beside him, her hand resting lightly on his arm. She leaned over for a moment to say something to him and her ponytail swung down to lie against her face. Sherlock smiled. After the interview with Milo Siles, Dillon had told her, “I learn something new every single day. Do you know there appears to be power in the ponytail?” And he’d grinned like a bandit.
When they reached the elevator, they looked up and down the now-empty hospital corridor. They watched the doors open, and five people squeezed into the elevator around the bed. The doors closed behind them.
An SFPD officer waited with them for the other elevator, which seemed to be tied up on the seventh floor, while yet another deputy marshal used the stairs. They stood quietly, watching the arrow of Ramsey’s elevator leave the fourth floor and hover at the fifth floor.
They heard a loud clanging noise and the sound of muffled gunfire.
Savich ran to the stairs door, yelling over his shoulder, “Sherlock, Harry! Find out where the shooter got access to the elevator! Get him!”
When he burst out of the stairwell door onto the fifth floor, he was greeted with the yells of hospital staff and the screams and shouts of patients standing at the doors of their rooms, staring at smoke seeping out between the closed elevator doors. Half a dozen hospital personnel were trying to pull the elevator doors open, but no luck. Savich ran to the fire extinguisher case and pulled out the ax. He shouldered through and slipped the edge between the doors and pulled down across the safety beam. The doors sprang open.
Thick black smoke billowed out. When it was cleared enough to see inside, Savich saw blood spattered everywhere.
A shout came out of the chaos. “The shooter’s on the roof of the elevator! Officers down!” Officer Eddie Hughes stumbled out, panting and coughing, holding his bloody arm and trying to keep Deputy Marshal Allen Milton upright, blinded by the blood streaming down his face. Both men still had their guns in their hands.
SFPD officer Jay Mancusso staggered out, his Glock at his side, his eyes tearing from the smoke, coughing. He wheezed out, “He threw a smoke bomb down through the top of the elevator and opened fire. Barbieri, she’s with Judge Hunt. I don’t know—” And he bent over in a fit of coughing. At least he hadn’t been shot that Savich could see.
The orderly was trying to pull himself up, blood soaking his white pants.
All of it had happened in seconds.
Savich was coughing, fighting to see through the gray haze of smoke still clouding the elevator. A frantic voice came through the chaos, “Judge Hunt! How is Judge Hunt?”
Savich managed to push his way in, and his heart stopped. Eve was lying stretched out on top of Ramsey, and she wasn’t moving. He was afraid to touch her. “Eve? Answer me!”
Slowly, Eve raised herself off of Ramsey. She was in pain, obvious to Savich, but he didn’t see any blood. She turned to look at the myriad faces staring down at her, then settled again on Savich’s face. He helped her slide off the bed. She stumbled, and he helped her right herself. “Sorry, the bullets knocked me silly. I’m okay.” She pulled away from him and looked down at Ramsey’s white face. “Ramsey—talk to me.”
He opened his eyes. “Hi, Eve.”
“Are you all right?”
A doctor and a nurse squeezed into the elevator beside them and eased them aside to tend to Ramsey. “Yes, I’ll live.” He coughed and moaned. “All the smoke and gunfire. How is everyone else? How are you, Eve?”
“I’ll live, too. He shot me three times in my back, missed my head, thank goodness, or I’d be a goner. The impact knocked the breath out of me, that’s all.” She gave a wild grin, even though she felt like she’d been whacked by a two-by-four too many times. “Thank the good Lord for Kevlar.”
A doctor tapped Eve on the shoulder. Ramsey gave her hand a squeeze, and reluctantly, Eve released his. They wheeled him out of the elevator. He said to all of them, “I’ll be all right, don’t worry about me.” Three doctors, including Dr. Kardak, panting from running from surgery to get here, hovered over him as they wheeled his bed down the hall, two SFPD officers and one deputy marshal flanking them.
They heard Ramsey say, “You’d be wheeling me down to the morgue in the basement if not for Eve. I’m going to kick her butt for taking such a chance.”
Eve waved into the elevator car. “It looks like a war zone in here.” She pointed up, nearly groaning at the pain in her back. “Would you look at the ceiling? Our guys shot the crap out of it. They fired nonstop, but I don’t know if we hit him.”
She closed her eyes. It had looked like the end, but no one was dead. She sent a prayer of thanks upward. “Please tell me you got this idiot.”
Savich said, “Sherlock and Harry are on it; they’ll be here soon.”
Harry Christoff gently picked up an elderly man by his elbows and set him aside. He shoved two police officers out of his way and stood in front of Eve, panting from running down three flights of stairs. He took in her tearing eyes, her blond straggling ponytail, her smoke-blackened face. “Good grief, woman, look at you. You’re all right, aren’t you?” He saw that she was hunched over and touched her arm.
Eve smiled at him. “I’m okay, thanks to the miracle of Kevlar. We all survived.”
Sherlock burst out of the stairwell, panting.
Savich said immediately, “Ramsey’s okay. Everyone’s alive. Is he still inside the building?”
