Massive Attack (A Guy Niava Thriller Book 1) Dana Arama (ebooks children's books free TXT) 📖

if the thin fabric could guard them from the cold. A break for the brave, which would end soon enough.

All hospitals used the same logic to create building layouts, which is why one could almost always count on the morgue to be located in the basement. With the confidence of someone who belongs, I turned towards the elevators and hit the button for -2. I assumed that -1 was where the X-ray machines were situated, and -3 was where the emergency vehicles were parked. Even if I was wrong, there wouldn’t be any guards there and I could walk around between the floors and easily find the right place.

Karen was already waiting for me at the entrance to the morgue and, without saying anything, I followed her to a side room, where my disguise awaited me. “You look good in a white gown,” she said, and pinned a badge on the white robe that said I was a senior urologist. Karen hung a stethoscope around my neck and put a pen in my pocket. The last addition was a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, which had a miniscule camera the size of a tiny screw embedded in the frames. It would pass information directly to whomever needed to receive it.

“Which floor is she on?”

“Fifth. Room 514.” Karen took a step back, looking dissatisfied. She stifled a yawn and mumbled, “Something is missing.”

“I think what is missing is your sleep.”

“Of that I have no doubt. I have been here over twenty-four hours.”

“Maybe paperwork about the patient?”

Her face lit up, and she walked over to the metal desk. She took a file from the drawer and took a thumb drive from her pocket and put it in the computer on the desk. She tapped a few keys and then printed out Ashley Holding’s paperwork.

The file was a stack of sheets, which included pictures of Ashley’s injuries. Karen was smiling now. She had a nice smile, and she was clearly exhausted. It was time for me to go up. I patted her cheek lightly. “Soon you will be able to go to sleep.” I took the file, I saluted her gently, and made my way towards the elevators.

***

I passed by the police officer guarding the room with no issues, opened the door and asked, “How are you Ashley?”

She stared out the window at the rain that lashed against the glass, and did not answer me. Ashley Holding looked much better than the last time I saw her unconscious on the floor, but less good than the first time I saw her, when she had hidden Jonathan. Then, she’d been wearing makeup and a sheer robe, which had been expected by her clients. Now she looked small and frail and was almost as white as the sheet she lay on.

I closed the door behind me and walked over so I stood between her and the window. As soon as she recognized me, a smile crept up on her face, but disappeared almost immediately.

I pulled up a chair to sit next to her. She deserved personal attention, but I also wanted the camera to record everything clearly.

“I understood you wanted to talk to me,” I said, gently and looked into her eyes. “Do you want to tell me what happened? Do you remember what happened to you?”

“Is Jonathan okay?” she asked.

“Do you have any information about Jonathan?”

“I am not sure…I think whoever collected me was interested in what Jonathan was doing.”

“Start from the beginning, so that we paint a full picture.”

“Someone came to pick me up.” Ashley barely managed to get the words out and avoided eye contact as she spoke. Usually it would bother me, but in this case, I thought she seemed ashamed. “It has happened before,” she whispered, adding, “That a client from the casino requests something special and I suit the description, and then they came to pick me up and take me to him. This time they said he was an English nobleman and that his fantasy was a Texan girl. Something about our accent arouses him…” A small smile flitted across her mouth, but it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.

“Can you describe the person that came to pick you up?”

“He had a heavy Russian accent and looked like an accountant. Not scary at all.” She wracked her brain some more and then added, “Except for his eyes. They seemed empty. As if he was on drugs or something, but they were still very sharp…”

I had encountered those types before. Ex-KGB agents who’d moved to the private sector. The kind that could sit in a coffee house, order coffee and cake, go out for a break, assassinate someone, and come back before his coffee was cold. “What happened to the Russian who picked you up? Did he ask you anything?”

“In the middle of the journey he locked the car doors and started questioning me about the day before… Asked me to focus on the young boy I was seen leaving the casino with.” She reached for the cup which stood on the table next to her, but it was empty. She silently returned the cup to the table, as if she felt she needed to be punished and should stay thirsty. I got up and filled the cup with water. Ashley continued, “I realized then that they were onto us. That the casino knew that I had helped him escape and that I was in trouble.”

“What did you do?” I asked, wrapping her fingers around the cup.

“I made up a story…” She drank greedily. A little water ran down her chin. I handed her a paper towel to wipe her chin. She continued, “I learned from the first time I did drugs that a good story can cast doubt over everything. I laughed and asked him if he was talking about the cross-dressing man I’d had met in the bathroom. I said that his dream was to wear women’s clothes. I told him that I had just finished