The Last Minute by Jeff Abbott Read Free Book Online

did he stepped into another patient room, this one
     holding two beds, both empty. He left the lights off. An IV pole stood on duty by each bed, a drawn curtain dangling between
     them. He had no real place to hide. He pulled the curtain part-way between the beds, and ducked behind its cover, the IV pole
     clanking into the wall behind him. Next to him was one of the adjustable wheeled tables for patients to use while lying in
     bed.
    He closed his hands around the cool steel of the pole. He heard the door open. Maybe a nurse coming to see why he wastrespassing in this room. He couldn’t see through the curtain.
    He heard two footsteps and then silence.
    The nurse wouldn’t just stand there, right? he asked himself. He was suddenly consumed by fear and certainty that this man
     was here to kill him.
    Jack pushed the patient table into the curtain.
    The two bullets sang out, cut through the fabric, pounded into the wood. The impact was louder than the firing.
    Jack moaned, in fear, without thinking that he was baiting a trap.
    As the man stepped around the curtain, Jack swung the pole, like a baseball bat, and he caught the man’s face between the
     bushy eyebrows and the tattered mouth.
    ‘Uggghhhh,’ the guy grunted.
    Jack rocked his feet, swung again in the same vicious arc, hit again and again and then there was an oddly wet noise that
     sounded … final. The guy collapsed onto the floor. Shuddered, shook, gasped. He looked at Jack with blind surprise. Then his
     head fell back and a sagging shift downwards trembled through his body.
    The man’s nose was a splintered mess. Jack had not known he had the strength; it was as if all the energy he’d stored in the
     past few weeks roared out of him when he needed it. The man was very still. Jack knelt by him, dropping the pole with a clank
     to the tiled floor. He tested for a pulse, found nothing but a warm and sudden silence in the man’s throat.
    Bone shard, Jack thought. First blow broke the nose, second sent a bullet of bone into the brain.
    He clapped his hands over his face in shock. He had killed a man. Killed him.
    Because he was going to kill you
.
    Jack picked up the gun and he stood. He footed the body under the adjustable bed. He picked up the gun and put it into the
     pocket of his robe.
    He stepped back out into the hallway. In the next room the old woman still slept. He went through her bureau and he found
     ten euros and a mobile phone. He took it, feeling guilty about the theft, and he laughed because he didn’t feel guilty about
     killing the man. He hurried out into the hallway and back down the stairwell. In a few minutes he was in his room, sitting
     on the edge of the bed.
    Who could he call?
    Ricki. He could call her. They were still friends. He still kind of liked her even though she’d only really been his girlfriend
     for five whole minutes after he arrived in Holland, after he’d stepped into the secret life he’d made for himself. And clearly
     she cared about him, to have gone to so much trouble to find him. He cajoled her into coming and picking him up and bringing
     him clothes to the hospital. The police had taken the clothes in which he had been shot as evidence, and they were stained
     with blood anyway. Ricki agreed and said she’d be there within an hour. He told her to meet him at a coffee shop nearby that
     he knew well.
    When he got off the phone he lifted a pair of jeans from a room down the hall where a man lay zonked out on painkillers and
     grabbed a rugby jersey from the man’s closet. He left, sneaking past the nurses, riding the elevator down, stepping out into
     the cool quiet of the night. There was an old café down on the corner.
    He walked out into the street.
They found out you’re still alive. They’re coming after you. You’ve got one weapon to fight back. If Nic was lying about that
     notebook, you’re a dead man
.

6
Midtown Manhattan, near Bryant Park
    We walked into The Last Minute, my bar near Bryant