A Deadly Twist by Jeffrey Siger (free novel reading sites .txt) 📕

With arrangements made, her next call was to Toni.

No answer.

She kept trying.

* * *

By the time the ferry docked in Naxos, Toni had a plan. The worst it could do was get her arrested, but since her boyfriend was a cop, she figured he’d be able to make things right…once he was right.

Stop thinking like that, she thought, and whispered to herself, “He’s fine, just like the doctors said.”

She knew she had to calm down if she wanted to pull this off, so she decided to walk to the hospital rather than take a taxi. The hike would bring her around. She pulled on her small backpack, disembarked, and headed for town. Her immediate problem was that she had no idea where to find the hospital. She stopped at a car rental agency by the entrance to the pier and picked up a map.

The hospital was about a kilometer away, depending on the route she took. She picked one crossing the harbor front that turned left at the main road into the port. The road ran by storefronts filled with goods aimed at enticing passersby, but Toni noticed none of it in her haste to reach the hospital.

The neat, one-story, white stucco and blue-trimmed medical center sat on the left, just beyond a rotary. She headed straight for the door marked ACCIDENTS AND EMERGENCY and joined three others sitting along a wall in the reception area, while a half dozen more waited in line for the receptionist.

The receptionist paid her no mind, and Toni sat as if patiently waiting for someone to arrive. The opportunity Toni’d been hoping for came in the form of an animated and rapidly accelerating conversation between the receptionist and an elderly local woman complaining loudly over how long she’d been waiting to see a doctor.

Toni stood and matter-of-factly strolled past the two combatants as if looking for a toilet. In the midst of her battle with the woman, the receptionist barely glanced at Toni. With a quick peek back to be certain the receptionist’s eyes were not on her, Toni went left and darted through a door reading PATIENTS AND HOSPITAL PERSONNEL ONLY. It led into the emergency treatment room, which, as with most public hospitals these days, was staffed by overworked, underpaid professionals possessing neither the time nor inclination to care about who passed through their unit.

She aimed for a door at the far end, walking as if she knew precisely where she was headed. Once through the door, she circled back toward the reception area but entered the corridor beyond where she could be seen by the receptionist. Toni had no idea where Yianni could be in the building, and though Greek hospitals might not be finicky about who walked through their halls, if she started opening doors to patient rooms, she’d likely be escorted out in short order.

She heard a door open around a corner ahead of her. A serious-looking man in a white coat turned the corner headed straight for her. She gave him her most innocent smile. He said nothing until he’d passed her.

“If you’re looking for a patient, Miss, their rooms are down this corridor in the halls to the left and right.”

She turned to thank him but he’d already disappeared into the treatment room.

Thanking Lady Luck instead, Toni hurried down the corridor toward the rooms. At the intersection of the corridor with the hallways, she paused to listen for voices.

She peeked around the corner to her left. A nurse sat on a chair with her back to Toni, facing a monitor and chatting on her mobile. The nurses’ hallway and the hallway to Toni’s right each had four doors, a pair on each wall.

Toni’s only chance at getting to Yianni without being seen by the nurse was if he was in one of the rooms to Toni’s right.

Lady Luck, I need you again.

She crept along the wall leading to those rooms, paused at the first door, and listened. She heard a young woman singing a Greek lullaby.

She moved on to the next door but heard nothing. She’d reached for the door handle for a quick peek when she heard people in the room directly across saying goodbye. She yanked at the handle and jumped inside, just as a couple walked out of the other room loudly repeating their goodbyes. No way Yianni would be in there.

If Yianni wasn’t in this room, or in the fourth room in this hallway, Lady Luck had let her down. Toni turned and looked at an empty bed. She shut her eyes and willed herself to believe Yianni was behind that fourth door.

She drew in a deep breath and reached for the door handle. That’s when she heard an alarm.

How could they have found me?

She heard voices shouting and people running down the hall in her direction.

Oh well, I almost made it.

She opened the door, prepared to tell the truth, in time to see the nurse from the monitor race into the fourth room followed by the helpful man in white.

Yianni must be in there.

She ran to the fourth room’s doorway and saw the two frantically working on a man hooked up to wires and tubes. An old man.

This was her chance. She raced across the corridor to the other four rooms and opened the first door. No Yianni. She opened the second. No Yianni. She opened the third. Her heart jumped at the sight. IVs, tubes, and monitors all connected to a sleeping, bandaged Yianni. She closed the door behind her, crept around the bed to a chair up by his head, sat, and smiled. “I’m here,” she whispered.

She mouthed a thank you to Lady Luck, then thought of the old man whose crisis had generated the distraction. She hadn’t seriously prayed in years, and long ago had lost all interest in organized religion, but if ever there were a time for appealing to an everlasting being on behalf