Sudden Prey

on that, though . . .”
    A cop car was pulling out of the driveway at the medical center when LaChaise and Martin arrived. They coasted to the curb and sat for two minutes, letting the cop get well clear, then Martin said, “You’re the hurt one. Pull your hat down.”
    “I’m good,” LaChaise said. He was breathing through his mouth again, gulping air. “My fuckin’ heart feels like it’s gonna explode.”
    Martin took the car into the emergency entrance drive: “You won’t notice when we get inside.”
    “This is a fuckin’ war, man,” LaChaise said. “This is like fuckin’ ’Nam.”
    “Especially the snow,” Martin said.
     
     
     
    MARTIN STOPPED OUTSIDE the first of the two doors and left the car running. If they made it back, it’d be quicker. If they didn’t, who cared what happened to the car?
    LaChaise got out of the driver’s side, and limped toward the door to the lobby. Martin ran around the front of the car and caught him, slipped an arm around him, and they hobbled to the entrance. The door was open, all right, and just like Martin said, a security guard was looking at them from a phone-booth-sized security room just inside the entrance.
    “Little help,” Martin grunted at the guard. “He’s hurt.”
    The guard didn’t even hesitate, but went out a small door on the side of the room into a hall and walked up to them and said, “What’s the . . .”
    And saw the guns.
    “Turn around,” Martin said quietly, pointing the AR- 15 at the guard’s chest. “We don’t want to hurt you.”
    “Aw, shit.”
    “Yeah, shit,” LaChaise said. “Turn around.”
    The guard wavered and then said, “Naw. Fuck you.”
    “Fuck me?” Too quickly to see, Martin struck the guard in the face with the butt of the eight-pound rifle, a horizontal stroke that caught the man in the forehead with the force of a small sledge. The guard jerked back into the wall and slid to the floor.
    “Go,” Martin said, but LaChaise was already moving, heading down the hall to the lobby.
    Visiting hours didn’t start until midmorning, so only seven people turned to look at them when they walked into the lobby: a woman and two children; two young men who sat together; a teenaged girl who curled on a chair, reading a romance novel; and the woman behind the reception desk, who said, “Great God Almighty.”
    They did it like a bank job: LaChaise faced the people waiting in the lobby chairs, and made his little speech: “Don’t anybody move . . .”
    Martin focused on the woman behind the counter: “We want the room numbers for Capslock and Franklin in surgical care. If you don’t give them to us quick, we’ll kill you.”
    “Yes, sir.” She called up the names on the computers and read off the room numbers. LaChaise could see them over her shoulder.
    “Where are those numbers? When we get off the elevators.”
    “You turn to your right going down the hall . . .” She drew a line on the desk with her index finger. Martin nodded.
    “All right, come out of there, and sit with these other people,” Martin said. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”
    They’d been inside for a little more than a minute.
    LaChaise pushed the elevator call button as the woman walked from behind the desk. Martin motioned her toward a chair, and as she went past him, struck her with the gun butt as he had the security guard. The butt hit the woman in the nose, which shattered, and she went down with a chopped-off shriek. The teenaged girl yelped at the same instant, but choked it off, a hand over her mouth. The two young men watched them with flat eyes that said they’d seen guns before.
    “Anybody calls the cops, we come down here and waste them,” LaChaise snarled. “And you know we will.”
    The elevator car arrived and LaChaise and Martin backed inside. As the door closed, they heard people running.
     
     
     
    THE TWO MEN ran for the door while the woman tried to gather up her kids and start moving. She was screaming, “Help us, help us . . .”
    The teenaged girl stepped to a wall-mounted fire alarm and pulled the handle down.
    Inside the elevator, the alarm went off like a bomb. LaChaise freaked: “Holy shit . . .” and kicked the doors.
    “Hang on, we’ll be there in one second,” Martin said. But it took longer than that, eight or ten seconds, with the alarm screaming the whole time.
     
     
     
    DEL WAS BRUSHING his teeth in a restroom when the alarm went off. He spat once, caught his pistol in