He’d picked a good spot and could see both entrances, the front desk, and the little gift shop off to the side selling mugs and magazines and flowers and get-well cards. His eyes snapped up to scan the area every ten seconds or so. After Bert had finished his phone call, David had jerked loose the cords for the telephone and nurse call button and had tied Bert’s wrists to the railings of his hospital bed. The urge to push down the syringe plunger and inject an air bubble into Bert’s bloodstream was almost too instinctual to resist. Not because of any hostility he might have felt toward the man—although there was that, too—but simply because his training screamed at him not to leave a live enemy in his wake who might cause more mischief. Bert was a loose end, and people in David’s line of work had a low tolerance for loose ends. But the thought of what Amy would say was all it took to stop him from pushing the plunger down. She’d worked with the man for years, and it might be a shock to her system to learn so starkly the sort of things David considered a routine part of his job.
