Storm Prey

woman doctor. We’re looking for information . . .”
    “I’ll give you some information,” Barakat said. “She’s the wife of a state police officer. If we touch her, they’ll never give up. Never give up.”
    There was another long moment of silence, and then Lyle Mack said, “We don’t have any choice at this point. Do you have her address?”
    “No, but I didn’t look for Davenport—that might be her married name,” Barakat said.
    More silence, then, “You’re not joking with me.”
    Barakat: “Of course I’m not joking, you idiot. Why would I joke? This whole insane program—”
    “Davenport is one of the investigators on the case,” Lyle Mack said. “He was here. I just talked to him.”
    Barakat’s jaw flapped, but no sound came out, until he managed, “Did you know? The Seed and Davenport?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “The Seed took Weather Karkinnen hostage, trying to assassinate Davenport. He had your man shot by a sniper. They killed... the police killed... five or six Seed members.”
    “That was him?”
    “Yes. That was him. Go to the Internet, it’s all there.”
    “Ah, man. Listen: You gotta get a clean cell phone. Buy one at a Wal-Mart, with cash. Call me at this number... We need that address.”
    “You don’t need that address. They come here in a convoy. She has bodyguards. They must be bringing her from home. You’re going to assassinate a half-dozen police officers now? You’re going to invade her house and shoot it out with men who have machine guns?”
    Another space, then, “No. I guess not.”
    “I have some advice for you, my fat friend. If something were to happen to your brother, then it would all be done. Would it not?”
    “He’s my brother,” Lyle Mack said.
    Barakat sensed equivocation. “If your brother kidnapped somebody, then he is going to prison for a long time. A living death, anyway. Be better, not to be kept in a rat cage for the rest of your life.”
    “I’m gonna get him to Mexico,” Lyle Mack said. Again, Barakat thought he sensed a tentativeness.
    “If you just—”
    “I’m not going to talk about it. Take down this number . . .” Barakat took down the number for Mack’s clean phone. Mack added, “Get yourself a clean phone. Use a fake name and address. They won’t ask for an ID. And if we can’t get at Weather what’s-her-name at home, then we’ll have to do it at the hospital. Watch her.”
    And he was gone.
     
     
    Two FLOORS DOWN, Weather was working on a cancer patient, a quick job transferring skin from buttocks to arm to cover a wound created by the removal of a lesion from a blood vessel. She was humming along with Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite #2, thinking of nothing much more than getting a nice suture line, when Maret pushed backward through the OR door, holding a mask to his face.
    “What’s up?” Weather asked.
    “We’ve heard from Spacy, and he said that we should probably push through the operation tomorrow. He needs to get Sara isolated so he can work on her heart. They’re evaluating her for a possible op within a few days after we finish. A week, maybe.”
    “Okay.” She’d been expecting something like this. Juggling the requirements of both children had become increasingly difficult. “I can be here anytime.”
    “There’s no point in starting this evening—too many people scattered around. But we are tentatively on for seven o’clock tomorrow.”
    “I’ll be here.”
    He left, and one of the nurses asked if she’d heard any more about the killer who’d kicked the pharmacist to death.
    “Nothing more. My husband is out chasing him today. I should get an earful when I get home.”
    “How can that happen in a hospital?” the nurse asked. She was a young blond woman, three years out of school.
    “All kinds of weird and awful things happen in hospitals,” Weather said. “Now listen to the nice music, and let me finish this arm.”
     
     
    BARAKAT WANDERED onto the surgical floor, nodded at a nurse at the monitoring station. “I’ve been trying to watch the separation work as much as I can. Is it on for tomorrow?”
    The nurse had recognized him as a doc, both from passing him in the hallways and from the ID clipped to his jacket. She’d had other inquiries, and never even thought about the question: “Yup. Seven o’clock. Get there early for a good seat.”
    “The whole thing is so cool, huh?”
    They chatted for a couple of minutes; Barakat was tall, dark, handsome,