Mike whirled a finger above her head in a circle and called to the tac team, “Back in the chopper, back in the chopper. Charlie, fire her up. We need to get back into the city pronto.”
She turned to the troopers. “Give Miss Hill a ride home, get her phone number and tell her we may want to speak to her again.” Mike said, “I’m being a dreamer here, but tell her if she thinks of anything else about the woman who hired her to give me a call. Oh, yes, the cabbie helped us, so cut him loose and thank him.” Mike pulled a fifty out of her wallet and gave it to the trooper. “He’s a good guy. I hope it’s enough.”
When she took her seat next to Nicholas in the chopper she said, “Zachery wants us to stop off and talk to Paulie, see if he can tell us anything about what happened before she knocked him out. Charlie, can you get us to Lenox Hill Hospital, ASAP?”
“Will do, Mike.”
The chopper whirled into the air and, nose down, flew south toward the city.
“Zachery and Bo talked to Louisa, but she didn’t have anything for them. They held a press conference—Bo said it’s insanity, what with the evacuation, the bomb threat, and the Koh-i-Noor missing. That tidbit was announced by the director of the Met himself. It’s now all over TV and the Internet, going viral as we speak. I hate this level of visibility. Right now the only thing we have to go on is the call she made to your cell phone.”
Nicholas was tapping his fingers on his leg. “The last thing I’m going to do now is get excited about tracing the call she made to me in the exhibit room.”
“She probably knows how long it takes to get a trace on a wireless signal, so why would she care? Little does she know I have super-agent Gray Wharton on our side, and he has a still-friends ex-girlfriend who’s an NSA analyst. She’ll rush it right through, and we’ll be able to track the phone.”
“Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t, but she knows we’ll trace the call. She wouldn’t keep the bloody phone.” His voice fell off, and he looked out the chopper window at the lights of New York coming into view.
“We’ll see.”
Ten minutes later, Charlie set down on the rooftop helipad of Lenox Hill Hospital. They were met by a nurse in blue scrubs who took them directly to the third floor. They entered the single room to see Paulie flat on his back, arguing with a pixie-haired nurse.
When he saw them, he looked ready to sing hallelujah. “Mike, you’re here at last! Rescue me. Tell her I’m fine. I’ve been hit on the head before; my brother used to thump me all the time when we were kids. I need to get out of here, we’ve got work to do. Zachery told me about Victoria. I want to help. There will be tons of evidence to gather.”
The nurse didn’t spare them a glance. “I’ve told you three times, Agent Jernigan, we have to wait for the doctor. And no matter what you say, he’s already told me you can’t be released until the morning. Trust me, you won’t get out of here sooner. You have a pretty bad concussion from that whack on your head, and we’re waiting for blood work to determine what chemical you were exposed to.”
Paulie frowned at her. “Bunch of vampires. You must have taken ten quarts from me.”
Mike stifled a laugh behind a cough.
The nurse patted Paulie’s shoulder. “That’s right, dear. We are vampires and we live to draw blood. So lie back and relax. I’ve given you a little something to help with the headache, and you’re going to feel so good in a minute you’ll think I’m a fairy princess, not a vampire.”
She patted Paulie’s shoulder again and said to Mike, “I have to go do rounds. Would you sit on him if he tries to get out of bed?”
“Absolutely. Difficult patients are my specialty.”