Chapter Seven

Gentrel Hospital had turned out to be a dead end. There were over fifty people being treated simultaneously and a hundred or so more in the waiting room. He’d seen a man with his leg torn off at the knee waiting for treatment and a woman with a knife literally in her back, but no Jack. The lady at the hotel had told him that she had seen Jack being taken away in an ambulance, so Riddick decided to take her at her word and check all the hospitals in the area. Jack had to be at one of them.

[Falstone Private Hospital]

Casteel watched through a glass window as the emergency Doctors’ worked to stabilise Jack. A nurse had thoughtfully handed her some coffee and she sipped it, analysing the entrances and exits to this wing of the hospital. Fifteen various ways a person could enter the hospital and the OR in which Jack was being treated. Fourteen entrances too many. She was going to have to move Jack to another more secure facility. She wasn’t going to loose her winning card so early in the game.

Casteel turned away, and nodded to the security officer that she had requested be posted outside of the room.

"I’ve got a few things to do," she said, walking over to her, "so while I’m gone you will be personally responsible for what ever happens to that kid. Do you understand?" she said. Getting the verification she needed from the guard, Casteel continued, "nobody but hospital staff are to enter that room. Ask for their ID every time. If the girl is to be moved beep me. Here’s the number," she handed her a plain card with only numbers on it, "I want round-the-clock security once she leaves that room and a plain clothed detail to escort her to where ever it is she is taken. Are we clear?"

"Yes Maam."

Casteel scrutinised the guard, using her body language to re-enforce her authority. The slightest misunderstanding could result in the loss of life. Finally sure the guard knew the gravity of pissing her off, Casteel spun on her heel and left. She had business to attend to.

Riddick sat across the street from Falstone Private Hospital, thinking. Earlier he had considered it to be a long shot that Jack might have been taken to a private center, but his search of the public hospitals in the area had been fruitless. If he believed in luck, he would have given up a long time ago. But he was the master of his own universe and luck didn’t come into it. He was going to find Jack and Falstone was his next stop.

But first he had to get in.

It was clear that he would not be permitted to enter, dressed as he was in a leather singlet and pants. *No. I’m gonna have to try something a little different,* he thought, remembering a tailor he had passed earlier. *Richard B Riddick is going to have to become respectable.*

Riddick wandered through Falstone, feeling as though he was in camouflage. He had walked straight past the security at the front gate and again at the main entrance. Now he was wandering in the general direction of the emergency ward. He had been mildly dubious that his ploy would actually work, but apparently it didn’t seem to matter that he was bald, six foot four, built like an ox and wearing goggles inside. No, the only thing these people saw when they looked at Richard B Riddick, escaped convict and murderer, was his 500-credit suit. If he’d known earlier that all it took was a suit to become invisible, he would have invested in one after his escape.

He found the emergency ward easily. A quick survey revealed that there was no pressing emergency to occupy the nursing staff - they were engaged in a game of Drat in the waiting area. Riddick approached them, a plan forming in his mind.

"Ladies, may I speak with you for a minute," he asked casually. The women looked up at him, taking in his physique or his suit, Riddick wasn’t sure. He had their attention, and it was favourable, so he continued.

"I’m Richard Barcley, a Detective from the Fifth precinct," he held out a badge that he had lifted earlier from the short cop at the Northvilla. "I’m investigating the shooting that occurred downtown at a flea pit hotel earlier today. Did you hear about that?"

The women nodded, one nurse, her nametag identifying her as Cassidy said, "the Northvilla shooting? It’s been on the radio all afternoon."

Riddick nodded, "yes, that’s the one. Fortunately, no-one was seriously injured from the gun fire, but we did get a report that there was an attack on a young girl in the same alley that the gun fire came from, prior to the incident." He noticed the change in their behaviour the moment he mentioned ‘young girl’. He knew he was in the right place.

"I’ve been doing the rounds of the hospitals, but so far no luck in finding her. It’s my belief that she knows what happened in that alley and why someone was spraying civilians with bullets. Have you had any admissions today of young women who appears to have been attacked?" The women shifted about, obviously uncomfortable. They darted glances at one another, unsure about whether or not they should tell the ‘officer’ what they knew.

Cassidy answered for the nurses, "I’m sorry, but we don’t often get emergency cases and there haven’t been any today."

Riddick smiled at them as politely as he could, "well thank you, anyway ladies. It was a pleasure talking to you," he said and he began to retrace his steps back through the hospital. The nurses had said more in their body language than they had in words. And they told him exactly what he wanted to know. Jack was in this hospital.

Casteel was making arrangements from her hotel room for Jack’s transfer to a safer location when her beeper decided to announce an emergency.

COP ASKING ABOUT GIRL.

Casteel frowned as she began to change her clothing. She had always regarded civilian law enforcement with disdain. They were under trained and haphazard, and mixed with their conceited attitudes, were the bane of Casteel’s existence.

As Casteel went to leave her room, she felt a telltale chill move down her spine. Something wasn’t right. The cops would actually have had to have performed real detective work to discover that the girl had been in the alley during the gun fire. That alone was cause for suspicion. It wasn’t likely that the cops would look too deeply into the incident because there were few casualties, and the area was only a step up from seedy. Why investigate?

Casteel stepped back into her room, and retrieved an attache case from the closet. Inside was a small selection of her personal arsenal. She picked out her weapon of choice for what she deemed ‘iffy’ situations, and strapped it onto her wrist. Rolling her sleeve down over it, she looked closely at her wrist. No visible signs of the weapon, "well they don’t call it a concealed weapon for nothing," she said, trying to lighten her mood.

She moved her wrist around, standing in front of the mirror, still looking for signs of the device. Then she whipped her wrist upwards triggering a spring that propelled an eight-inch razor sharp blade to shoot out from the device. She’d delivered death on a number of occasions thanks to this little customised blade. She reloaded it and checked for protrusions. Smiling at her reflection, she straightened her new nurses’ uniform and headed back to the hospital and this mysterious police officer.