Storm Prey

him loose and the old man moaned something against the tape and held on, his fingernails raking the big guy’s calf.
    “Let go of me, you old fuck.” The guy shook him off his leg and kicked him again, hard, in the chest.
    The leader said, “Quit screwing around. Tape him up again and let’s get this stuff out of here.”
     
     
    THE OLD MAN, his hands taped again, was still groaning as they loaded the bags. That done, they went to the door, glanced down the hallway. All clear. The bags went under the blanket on the cart, and the three big men pushed the cart past the security-camera intersection, back through the rabbit warren to the utility closet, replaced the orderly uniforms with their winter coats, picked up the bags.
    The leader said, “Gotta move, now. Gotta move. Don’t know how much time we got.”
    Another of the men said, “Shooter—dropped your glove.”
    “Ah, man, don’t need that.” He picked it up, and the tall man led them out, his heart thumping against his rib cage. Almost out. When they could see the security door, he stopped, and they went on and out. The tall man watched until the door re-latched, turned, and headed back into the complex.
     
     
    THERE WERE NO cameras looking at the security door, or between the door and their van. The hard men hustled through the cold, threw the nylon bags in the back, and one of them climbed in with them, behind tinted windows, while the leader took the wheel and the big man climbed in the passenger seat.
    “Goddamn, we did it,” said the passenger. He felt under his seat, found a paper bag with a bottle of bourbon in it. He was unscrewing the top as they rolled down the ramp; an Audi A5 convertible, moving too fast, swept across the front of the van and caught the passenger, mouth open, who squinted against the light. For just a moment, he was face-to-face with a blond woman, who then swung past them into the garage.
    “Goddamnit!”
    The leader braked and looked back, but the A5 had already turned up the next level on the ramp. He thought they might turn around and find the woman ... but then what? Kill her?
    “She see you guys?” asked the man in the back, who’d seen only the flash of the woman’s face.
    The guy with the bottle said, “She was looking right at me. Goddamnit.”
    “Nothing to do,” the leader said. “Nothing to do. Get out of sight. Shit, it was only one second ...”
    And they went on.
     
     
    WEATHER HAD SEEN the man with the bottle, but paid no attention. Too much going through her head. She went on to the physicians’ parking, got a spot close to the door, parked, and hurried inside.
     
     
    THE TALL MAN got back to the utility closet, pulled off the raincoat and pants, which he’d used to conceal his physician’s scrubs: if they’d been seen in the hallway, the three big men with a doc, somebody would have remembered. He gathered up the scrubs abandoned by the big men, stuffed them in a gym bag, along with the raincoat and pants, took a moment to catch his breath, to neaten up.
    Listened, heard nothing. Turned off the closet light, peeked into the empty hallway, then strode off, a circuitous route, avoiding cameras, to an elevator. Pushed the button, waited impatiently.
    When the door opened, he found a short, attractive blond woman inside, who nodded at him. He nodded back, poked “1,” and they started down, standing a polite distance apart, with just the trifle of awkwardness of a single man and a single woman, unacquainted, in an elevator.
    The woman said, after a few seconds, “Still hard to come to work in the dark.”
    “Can’t wait for summer,” the tall man said. They got to “2,” and she stepped off and said, “Summer always comes,” and she was gone.
     
     
    WEATHER THOUGHT, as she walked away from the elevator, No point looking at the kids. They’d be asleep in the temporary ICU they’d set up down the hall from the operating room. She went instead to the locker room and traded her street clothes for surgical scrubs. Another woman came in, and Weather nodded to her and the other woman asked, “Couldn’t sleep?”
    “Got a few hours,” Weather said. “Are we the only two here?”
    The woman, a radiologist named Regan, laughed: “No. John’s got the doll on the table and he’s talking about making some changes to the table, for God’s sakes. Rick’s here, he’s messing with his saws. Gabriel was down in the ICU, he just got here, he’s complaining about the cold. A