The impact of hitting that second door popped it wide open and catapulted Afton into the adjoining hospital room. She fell against an empty bed and slid awkwardly to the floor. She had two seconds to gather her wits and then he was on her again, this time hooking an arm around her neck. Afton gasped for air as he squeezed her hard, putting tremendous pressure on her airway. Blind panic began to set in. Her arms and legs flailed furiously, hitting an IV stand in the process. The metal pole crashed down on top of them, striking her assailant in the head. As his grip suddenly slackened, Afton scrambled on hands and knees toward a silver medical cart. She grabbed frantically for the boxy metal cart and wrenched it toward her. The medical cart swayed for a few moments, and then slowly tipped up onto two wheels. The drawers flew open, shooting its hodgepodge of contents toward them.
Afton grabbed the first thing she saw—a syringe for drawing blood. She clutched it in her hand and used her thumb to flick off the orange plastic tip, unsheathing the two-inch needle. Growling in anger, Afton spun around as fast as she could and cocked her arm. Like a picador attacking a bull, she lunged forward and rammed the syringe deep into the man’s neck.
The man let loose a bloodcurdling scream and flew backward. He stumbled and landed hard on his butt. One hand flailed and batted frantically at the syringe, which was stuck deeply in the side of his neck.
That was the break Afton needed. She ran for the door, yanked it open, and plunged down the dim hallway toward the nurses’ station. She spun around the tall Formica desk, sending a stack of file folders tumbling to the floor, banging her hip on the corner. She spotted a phone and grabbed it. A nurse, a small, dark-haired woman in a pink smock, who had just emerged from a storage room, gaped at her in surprise. “You’re not supposed to be back here,” she scolded.
“Call hospital security!” Afton cried. Then she punched in 9-1-1. And then she called Max.
*
TEN minutes later, Thacker himself showed up, looking both visibly shaken and quivering with outrage. He was accompanied by a scrum of eight uniformed officers, who immediately searched the area and huddled with hospital security. They looked everywhere, up and down the back stairway, ripping open janitor’s closets and storage rooms, but found no one.
Max showed up some twenty minutes later, ashen-faced and practically frothing at the mouth. “He was here?” he cried out when he caught sight of Afton. “You think it was the kidnapper guy?”
“We don’t know it was him,” Thacker said. He sounded calm and controlled, though he’d been furious when he’d first arrived.
“I think it was him,” Afton said. “I mean . . . for Christ’s sake, he was right there in Ashley’s room.”
“Does she know?” Max asked.
“No,” Afton said. “Amazingly, she slept through the entire thing. Even when the nurses moved her bed to a different room so crime scene could get in there, she never woke up once.”
“Sleeping pill,” Max said.
“Where do I get one of those?” Afton asked.
*
FINALLY, thankfully, when all the talking was done, when all the gentle reprimands had been doled out, Afton went home. Max had insisted on following her in his car and offered to park a cruiser at the curb to keep watch for the night.
Afton had declined his offer. She just wanted this day to be over and done with. Now she was at home, snuggled in her own bed under a pile of warm blankets. Poppy and Tess were asleep in their rooms; Bonaparte snored loudly from where he was curled up at the end of her bed. The TV was on, but it was just flickering images, something to occupy her wonked-out brain.
Afton was mentally reviewing her day, which had seemed to unfold like some kind of weird time warp. Chastisement followed by the trip to Novamed, followed by a nail-biter helo ride, followed by the discovery of the dead infant, and then the attack at the hospital.
Had it been one of the kidnappers that she’d tangled with tonight? Had the boy come back for Ashley Copeland? To do what? See her again? Kill her?
Afton had read the transcript of Ashley’s interview with the FBI. And the girl really hadn’t told them anything of value about her attacker.
Hell, she had been face-to-face with a crazy person who was probably the very same guy and she didn’t have much of a takeaway. Barely a description, really more an impression.
They would have to talk to Ashley tomorrow. Push the girl a little harder, try to ascertain if the girl knew more than she’d let on.
Afton fumbled with her pillow, struggling to get comfortable. She was having trouble trying to erase the image of the poor baby who’d been stuffed inside the log. Was that baby lying on a cold metal laboratory table right now? She knew the answer was yes. Max had even told Don Jasper that he planned to attend the preliminary autopsy tomorrow morning. The notion didn’t thrill Afton, but she supposed it was part of the case. And if she wanted to stay on this case, then an autopsy was part of the package deal.