Scarcity (Jack Randall #3) by Randall Wood Read Free Book Online

after several twists and turns came to another set of double doors. Here the security guard hesitated.
    “Do all of you really need to go in?”
    The lead man pushed past him without a word and they all entered the darkened ward. He was met by several staff members who stopped and stared. The names of the patients and their doctors where written on small dry erase boards outside every glassed-in room. He began scanning the names as he walked along, comparing the picture in his head with the faces behind the glass.
    J. Hernandez
    M. Dayo
    This was it. He looked inside to see a rather ordinary man of about fifty sleeping comfortably in the bed. The monitors hanging from the ceiling providing proof that he still lived. He spotted the man’s wife sleeping in a chair off to one side. Pulling a picture from his pocket, he held it up as he slid the glass back. The men followed him in and the wife awoke with a start to see the room full. One of the men motioned for her to remain silent. She did.
    The man on the bed seemed to sense their presence and slowly opened his eyes. They were all the proof the lead man needed. It was always the eyes. Surgery could change some things, but the eyes were always the thing that gave them away. The man didn’t blink or speak, he simply looked from man to man as if he had been expecting all of this, and they were late.
    The lead man reached out and grasp the man’s chin, turning his head to the side. The scars behind his ears were plainly seen. He smiled.
    “Hello, Oscar. I’ve been waiting to meet you for some time.”
    Oscar Hernandez said nothing, but the look on his face was one of intense hatred. It was all he was capable of and he ignored the technician who moved forward and began taking his fingerprints. He instead focused on the man who had addressed him by his true name.
    Lenny returned the look without a word.
    •      •      •
    Tessa ran the hairbrush through her hair while also talking on the phone and picking out what shoes to wear. Her Facebook page was open in front of her and she stopped brushing long enough to scroll through the new pictures on her friend’s page.
    “He’s so cute! You sure he’s not with that bitch Megan anymore?”
    This produced a long explanation of the steamy and very public break up witnessed the night before. All caught by someone’s smart phone and uploaded soon after. The pictures were making their way around the web at lightning speed.
    “Has he updated yet?”
    “No, his page still says he’s hitched. He may not have gotten on yet today. He works for his dad, you know.”
    “He has to work? That sucks. I would just die if my dad made me work. Where’s he at?”
    “You don’t know? At the grocery store on Vogle Avenue. He like, stocks shelves or something.”
    “Yuck, his dad makes him work there ?”
    “Well duh, his dad owns the place, and about a thousand others just like it.”
    “Oh, I get it.”
    “So come pick me up and we’ll get some groceries.”
    “No way.”
    “Why not? You better get there before that slut Jennie does. You know she’ll just flop on her back in front of him if she decides she wants him first.”
    “I know . . . she thinks she’s Paris Hilton or something.”
    “So come get me and let’s go!”
    “It’s the opposite way, why don’t you come get me?”
    “My dad took my keys. I scratched my BMW.”
    “Again?”
    Tessa grabbed the keys to her Mustang and bolted from the room. She still had her iPod nubs in one ear with the phone to the other. The hairbrush stayed in her hand long enough for her to check the results in the hallway mirror before she stuck it in a back pocket and ran down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out to the garage. Her travels did nothing to stop the conversation.
    “Okay, that’s like twice in two months you’ve wrecked your car. You’ve only had your license what, five months?”
    “It was the damn mailbox. I didn’t see it in the dark, and the