Blood Men: A Thriller

“Oh?”


“Too noisy. You won’t make it out of here.”

“Don’t be so sure about that.”

“And you’d be leaving without a name. You could look around, maybe try to find some drugs or tools to torture me, but the quickest and easiest option,” he says, then rattles the handcuff against the frame, “is to take me with you.”

“I can’t.”

“You can if you want to get your daughter back.”

Take him with us. Things will go a lot quicker.

“Keys?” I ask, pointing the gun at the guard.

“I, ah . . . don’t have them.”

“Yeah you do,” Dad says. “They have to in case they need to rush me back into surgery.”

The guard stands up slowly and digs into his pocket.

“There was a time when there’d be more people guarding me,” Dad says. “Back when I was younger, when I was somebody to be feared. Now, nobody knows who I am.”

“That’s funny,” I say, “because everybody knows who I am.”

The security guard leans in and unlocks the cuff, then pulls away fast, expecting my dad to try dragging a scalpel across his throat. Nothing happens. My dad lies in the same position and massages his wrist.

“I’m going to need a wheelchair,” he says.

“You can’t walk?”

“I got stabbed today, son, so no, I can’t walk. At least not that well.”

I point the shotgun at the guard again and give him a fresh set of instructions, and a few seconds later he’s lying on the floor naked with one hand wrapped through the base of the bed frame and cuffed to his ankle. I take his phone and keys and step back to the other side of the curtain. The other five men still appear to be asleep. A nurse walks past the open doorway to the corridor but doesn’t look in. She’s probably so used to never seeing a security guard sitting outside the room that she doesn’t notice him missing. I give her a few seconds’ head start, then follow her out. She goes one way and I go the other, heading toward a row of wheelchairs I spotted earlier.

I get back to my father and half of me expects him to be gone and the other half expects him to have killed the guard, but nothing has changed—he’s still lying on the bed. I slip the IV needle out of his wrist and help him into the security guard’s clothes, which are a bit big but better than the hospital gown. He winces and breathes heavily, and does more of the same when I get him into the wheelchair. He holds his hands over the area where half a day ago surgeons were busy at work, and he keeps them snug against the wound as if trying to hold parts of himself inside.

“Stay quiet,” I say to the guard. “Let us get out of here without having to shoot any nurses.”

“Okay.”

I have to put the gun in my father’s lap so I can push the wheelchair. We reach the corridor. Dad’s hands don’t ever extend beyond the wound. We reach the elevators. I hide the shotgun behind my body when the doors open on the ground floor, then put it back in my father’s lap when nobody shows up. I wheel him out of the hospital and out into the parking lot and past the same group of teenagers leaning against the van, who show interest in the shotgun by all becoming immensely quiet. I help Dad into the car and can’t figure out how to fold the wheelchair into the boot, so leave it behind. I figure this entire thing should have been more difficult. I figure getting in to see my dad should have been hard enough, let alone getting him out. I figure a few years ago it would have been. A few years ago there were enough people left to care enough about paying one or two cops overtime or shifting some resources to have them sit beside him. If they can’t pay them enough to protect my daughter, they sure won’t pay them enough to guard an old man.

“Where to?” I ask.

“First I need some food.”

“Dad . . .”

“I haven’t had a real meal in twenty years, son.”

“We don’t have time.”

“We’ll make the time. I’m sure there’ll be a McDonald’s on the way.”

“On the way to where?”

“On the way to the next name on the list,” he says, and I pull away from the curb and follow my father’s directions.





chapter fifty


Turns out the Serial Killer choice of food isn’t a Happy Meal, but a Big Mac. Dad complains how it falls apart in his hands but still eats it as I drive, probably faster than any Big Mac has ever been eaten.

“I don’t think your doctor would approve,” I say.

“Probably not,” he answers, following it with a Coke, “but he probably wouldn’t have approved of me being stabbed either.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“Not much to tell,” he says, then takes another bite.

I keep driving. Dad works away at the fries. When he’s done, he balls up the wrappers and tosses everything out the window.

“Dad . . .”

“What?” he says. “People don’t throw things out the window these days?”