© Carey MacLean, 2012

Chapter 26

Murphy’s Law had struck again.

“What the hell is going on Connor?”  Xavier demanded.

“Get away from Mika and get the fuck back here Xavier,” his friend told him in a tone that bordered no argument and total panic.

“Is it the cameras?  Has he found any of them?”

“No,” he told him, “but he knows that you’re together right now.”

“What?  Fine.  I’m out,” Ryans flipped his phone shut and pocketed it.

“What is it?”

“He knows we’re here together,” he told Mika.

“It’s a public place.  What’s he going to do, forbid you from doing your job?”  She asked with so much disdain and contempt towards their enemy.

“He can make our lives a living hell,” Xavier pointed out.  “I have to go.  He’ll be on his way so I’ll head back and find the Chief and act like I had come to deal with him directly.  You never saw me, okay?  If anything happened to you because of today, I couldn’t live with myself.”

Mika was the first to walk out of the tiny conference room.  The minute she did so, the PA system beckoned her to the Emergency Ward.

Let the mayhem of this day commence, she groaned.

Fifteen minutes later, she heard her name and the chills ran down her spine.

“Mika!  Where are you?”  She heard a second time.

It was Peter.

In a curtained cubicle, examining a patient, she could tell that Makey was in a rage.  She could hear curtain after curtain being pulled until there was no doubt that hers was next.

When he pulled the material to the side, nearly ripping it off of its gliding hangers, he was fuming so much, she could have sworn steam was bellowing out of his ears.  Mika’s patient jumped up with a start and she patted the front of the elderly gentleman’s shoulder to assure him that everything would be fine.

“Mika,” Peter looked at her infuriated.

“What do you want?”  She asked in a defiant tone.  “Can’t you see I’m working?”

“Where is he?”

“Where is who?”

“Don’t play coy with me, Love,” he pushed on.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.  Now, if you don’t mind-” she began but the bastard never let her finish.

“Where’s your ex?”  He asked through gritted teeth.

“How the hell am I supposed to know?”  She huffed.

“He’s here, in the building and you expect me believe that you two haven’t had a rendez-vous of some sort?”

“Now you listen here Peter Makey,” she stepped towards him and forced him back and out of the cubicle.  “I’ll be right back Sir,” her patient nodded.  “I’m a Doctor.  I work in a hospital.  It’s a very public place.  If a cop has a job to do, him being my ex-fiancé or not has no bearing as to why he’s here.  Take a look around.  Do I look like I have time to deal with a quick romp in this chaos?  Now get out of my ER before I have you thrown out.  I’ll see you at home Peter!  Good day!”

She turned around, walked back to the cubicle with her patient, turned to look at him and then shut the curtain.

“The nerve of the man!”  She added loud enough to be certain that Peter would hear.  “My apologies Sir.”

“It’s quite alright dear.  That was the best show I’ve had since my Hilda passed,” he chuckled, making her blush.  “Much like yourself, she was quite quick with the tongue.”

On his way out, he saw the detective walk out of some room with Mika’s boss.  They shook hands and Xavier headed straight for him.

“Mr. Makey,” the cop greeted him.

“Detective Ryans.  Just a man I had been thinking about this morning,” Peter decided that he could be his charming self.

After her public scolding, he doubted that his source had paid much attention.  The woman hadn’t lied – not that he could tell.

“What can I do for you Makey?”

“You look tired.  Rough couple of days?”  He didn’t want to poke at the sleeping bear but it was too much not to do just that.

“You should know,” the cop eyed him from top to bottom with utter disgust.  “She might have left me high and dry but I know that you’ve got some kind of hold on her.”

“Maybe she’s finally seen the light,” he told the detective.  “And by the way, I’d appreciate that laptop back Officer.”

All Detective Ryans could muster was a scoff before he shouldered his way past Peter.

“You’ll get it back, don’t you worry your pretty boy head.”

Peter couldn’t help the overwhelming sense of satisfaction that reeled through every nerve of his body.  The feel of success was sickly sweet.

Gone about her day as per usual, Mika was glad when the time to head home had arrived.  She had texted Xavier a few times over the course of the morning and found out that he had put quite a bit of a good show, leading Peter to believe that she had left him without a cause or listing a reason.  She smiled at how easily it had been to fool the man.

And he thinks I lie poorly, she giggled as she exited the hospital.

She arrived at Peter’s, to an empty house.  Shaking the sense of eeriness off, she headed for the fridge in search of finding something to cook.  After all, she had been told to cook the man dinner and dinner was exactly what she’d cook.  It also fed her with the excuse to rummage about the entire kitchen in search of anything that might be of evidentiary value.

Dinner was slowly simmering away in a deep pan – stir fry was on the menu.

She sat down at the breakfast bar while she leafed through a medical journal she had picked up during her lunch, earlier that day.  Turning pages, not paying attention to what each article entailed, she couldn’t hide the satisfactory grin that had been gracing her lips for the last half hour.

After her prep, she had filled the garbage and decided to take out the trash.  It was like Fortuna, the Greek Goddess of fortune and luck was smiling down on her.

Behind the trash bin, she had seen something shiny – a glass vial.  Much like the ones she had used with her own victims, this one still contained liquid.  Using her phone, she took a quick snapshot of its location.

Taking note of where she had seen the re-sealable sandwich bags, she flipped the plastic inside out and picked the glass container carefully and like that, she enclosed it in the bag.  They might just have enough to pin everything on Peter Makey.

She rushed to her bedroom and hid everything in her purse.

Peter Makey had been a very busy man throughout the day.  He woke up with his woman in his home, he slayed a few dragons at the office and when he was notified that the detective had gone to KGH to meet with Mika, he had shown up to see for himself.

As if poking at the rather unsettled-looking officer of the law wasn’t enough, he decided to take the rest of the day off and follow the man around.  Who knew how much fun and gratifying it would end up being.

To be honest, Xavier Ryans didn’t seem to have very many places to go or important things to do for that matter.  Peter sat in his car and watched when Ryans parked at a park and headed out for a run.

Letting out our frustrations, are we?

It wasn’t until the man came back and instead of heading back to his house, he took a detour – one Makey wasn’t too pleased with.

He could sense that he was being watched.  Taking that run had felt good.  He didn’t give a damn that Connor had told him to get the hell out of there.  He hadn’t and he knew it was a huge risk to take.  It seemed to have worked.  For all intents and purposes, Makey seemed to have believed every word that had been said.

He had texted with Mika a few times as he stretched out his cramping calves and thighs.

In his car, he decided to take a detour and check out the house that their trackers had placed Mika at.  Knowing that there was a huge likelihood that Peter himself was the one watching him, he changed his mind.  Instead, he headed towards Mika’s old house, pulled over and turned the ignition off when he reached it.  He sat there for the next fifteen minutes, thinking things over, ignoring every call and text that Connor had sent him.  The guy would understand the need for mental clarity and acquiring it upon his return.  For now, he had proof.  He was being followed.  What made him laugh was that he could tell that the hunter still sucked at staking out his prey despite the increase in distance.

Damn fool.  You’d be better off hiding in the bushes.

He kept a safer distance this time around, sensing that perhaps the good detective was baiting him.  Peter watched as the man’s car finally drove off.  They were at least half an hour out from the man’s house but the man surprised him yet again with an unexpected turn.  Mr. Ryans wasn’t taking the most direct route – instead, he took a back country road, one he must have been familiar with what with the speed he was using.

Imagine his delight when the man’s car began to fishtail on the old gravel road.

You have got to be fucking kidding me!

He tried to fight the directional pull the road was trying to exert on his three good tires.  It didn’t matter how many hours of defensive driving he had logged.  The rim to his busted tire caught a rut in the road and sent his speeding car careening into the tree-lined ditch, his breaks useless on the soft shoulders.

It was too late.

Impact was imminent.

It was going to hurt there was no doubt in his mind.

As the dust settled and the engine stalled, Xavier shook off the jarring from the crash.  His head was pounding and he could feel something warm and sticky sliding down the side of his face.  A wave of dizziness hit him but he tried and forced the driver-side door open.

He attempted to stand but his legs had been turned to jelly.  He collapsed to the ground onto his stomach.  He pressed his forehead into the cool grass, breathing and willing the spots on his peripheral to wane with no success.  The last thing he took in was the sight of a familiar car driving by without slowing and then everything faded to black.

Pissed off at his best friend and partner, Connor had been debating to call their boss with the news that he hadn’t heard back from Xavier all day.  It was nearing ten o’clock at night and there was still no sign of the man.

Seeing as they were already running a tracing program, he looked up Xavier’s number and found his location to be somewhere he never had expected.  He knew that they’d be getting flack for what Xavier had done but he called Captain Saunders anyway.

He had been right.  Saunders had been furious at the fact that his lead man hadn’t been seen or heard from since mid-morning.  He gave Connor a stern talking to for not calling him sooner and assured him that he had men heading out to the location right away.  Instructed to stay put and keep surveillance on Mika, Connor hung up the phone with a sense of dread filling him.  It wasn’t like Xavier to not touch base and that left him certain that something had happened to the man.

She sat up with a start when she heard a loud crash.  Peter stood in her bedroom’s doorway.

So much for thinking locked doors would keep him out, she snorted.

“Work just called you in,” he told her.

One look at her bedside clock told her that it was one-fifty in the morning.  Something had to have gone on if she had to report back before her next shift.  She didn’t work Emerge unless it was a necessity but she wasn’t about to tell Peter that.

Without wasting any more time, she got up, grabbed her scrubs, headed for her bathroom and locked the door behind her to change.  Within seconds, she was flying out the door, her purse over her shoulder, her hands rallying up the bee’s nest of hair into a messy bun.

“I’ll be back when I’m back,” she hollered over her shoulder and after slipping on her shoes, she was out the door and in her car.

Despite the lack of sleep, she was thrilled to be out of that house.  She was granted reprieve and an opportunity to get that vial sooner for testing.  It wasn’t until she had set foot in the emergency ward that for the second time that day, someone was waiting for her arrival – Captain Saunders.

                                          *************************************

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