Dead and Gone by Jack Patterson (universal ebook reader .TXT) 📕

a special effort earlier. Something seemed off.

No answer.

What is going on?

Lying in bed, she stared at the ceiling and wondered how her life had taken such a drastic turn in less than a week. Last weekend she was cozied up with Carson in a hotel room watching a movie and talking about the future. This weekend, she was a widow, alone in a hospital room, wondering if she had much of a future.

Her phone buzzed, alerting her to a call from one of her friends.

“Hey, Jessica. How are you?”

“Hi, Cassidy. I’m somewhere between lousy and worse. I’d be better off if I weren’t in a hospital bed right now.”

“Oh, no. Which hospital? I’ll come get you.”

“You’ll have a long ride ahead of you—Phoenix General.”

The woman laughed. “I’m actually in Phoenix, too. Bill surprised me with a weekend getaway. We flew out here and rented an RV and I’m sitting in RV city right now.”

“Well, come on down. I’m in Room 425. I think it’s after visiting hours, so tell them you’re my sister or something so you can come up here.”

“Will do. See ya in a bit.”

Jessica put her phone down and glanced at the door as it swung open.

A new doctor staring at a chart in his hand strode toward her bed.

“Mrs. Murphy? I’m Doctor Banner.”

She scooted up in the bed. “Hi, Doc. How are things looking?”

He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “So far, so good. But I want to look a little closer at some things.”

Dr. Banner put the clipboard down and pulled out his stethoscope. He listened for Jessica’s heartbeat.

“Sounds good,” he said. “Deep breath for me.”

She took several deep breaths as he moved his stethoscope around her back.

He stepped back and scowled. “I’m not liking the sound of that.”

Jessica sat upright. “The sound of what?”

“I think there might be an issue with your lungs.”

“What kind of issue?”

“I can’t say for certain but we need to run some more tests.”

“Is that safe with me being pregnant?”

“Mrs. Tanner, this is no joke.”

Jessica froze. She’d heard that line before and it sounded eerily familiar.

“Excuse me?”

“I said this is no joke. Lung issues aren’t anything to play around with.”

“Where’s the consent form?”

Dr. Banner flipped through the chart. “It’s not here, apparently. Let me go get one and I’ll be right back with it so we can get started on your tests.”

The moment the door closed behind him, Jessica ripped the port out of her arm and detached several other nodes stuck to her body. The monitor started beeping and she yanked the plug out of the socket. She scrambled to get dressed and stuffed everything else into her bag.

She crept toward the door and opened it, peering down the hall in both directions. She noticed Dr. Banner at a central counter, talking to a nurse and passing papers back and forth.

She waited until his back was turned and dashed out the door and toward a stairwell.

Once she traveled down several flights, she stopped to catch her breath. She called Cassidy.

“Where are you?” Jessica asked.

“About ten minutes away. Why?”

“Don’t come in. I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”

“Is something the matter?”

“I’ll tell you all about it when you get here.”

“You’re scaring me, Jessica. Are you going to be okay?”

“I’ll be fine once I’m with you. But please hurry. I think someone here is trying to kill me.”

CHAPTER 42

OWEN BURNS AND ALEXA flashed their access credentials at the gate to the garage and pleaded with the guard to let them in.

“It’s after hours, you two,” the guard said. “Sorry. No exceptions.”

“Come on, man. I left my tickets to tonight’s Lady Antebellum concert in the hauler. You’ve gotta let us go back in and get them.”

The guard shook his head. “What part of ‘no exceptions’ do you not understand?”

Burns glared at him, but Alexa pushed him to the side as she infringed on the guard’s personal space.

“What time do you get off work?” she said as she glanced as his naked ring finger. “We might have a backstage pass for you, too.”

“I’m off in thirty minutes,” he said.

She patted his face. “Sounds like a date to me.”

He blushed. “Well, okay. Fine. But I need you two to be back here in fifteen minutes. I can’t have you scampering out so close to the shift change or else I might lose my job.”

“You got it, sugar,” Alexa said as she followed Burns through the gate.

They walked for several yards before she said, “Is that all you needed me for?”

“That was the warm-up. The real challenge is next.”

Burns looked over his shoulder at the guard, who waved at him. They headed toward their hauler and disappeared inside for a few moments.

“You ready to do this?” he asked.

“I’ve been doing this my whole life,” Alexa said.

They exited the hauler through a door out of the guard’s line of sight and crept around toward Todd Cashman’s rig. Only the drivers of the haulers stayed in the trucks at night. It was a lonely job—just what Burns was counting on to help him get inside.

Alexa rapped on the driver’s door at Cashman’s hauler.

After a few seconds, a scruffy face peered through the privacy curtains drawn around the interior windows of the truck.

“What do you want?” the man yelled through the glass.

Alexa raised her eyebrows and winked. Burns crouched around the front of the truck, out of sight.

The driver held up a finger and disappeared behind the curtain. When he returned, he was wearing a cap and a nicer shirt. The door flung open and he stumbled down the steps.

“Can I help you, Miss?”

Alexa wagged her finger at him and shook her head. “No need to call me, Miss. That would mean I’m polite and mind my manners.”

A toothy grin spread across the man’s face. “Well, what should I call you then?”

She edged closer and then threw her arms around his neck. “Why don’t you call me Hurricane?”

“Hurricane? Why that?”

“I’m about to blow you away.” She then kissed him, catching him off