Marker

eight

5 WEEKS LATER

JASMINE RAKOCZI WAS reasonably certain that there were at least two snipers positioned on the rooftop of the gutted building to her right. Directly ahead was an open space of no more than fifteen feet leading into a building taller than the sniper's position. Her plan was simple: dash across the divide, dive into the building, and then head for the roof. At that point, she could dispatch the snipers and then move deeper into the ravaged city to accomplish her mission.

Rubbing her hands together in anticipation of her bolt across the open space, she made herself as ready as possible. Her heart was racing and her breathing was rapid and shallow. Calling on her military basic training, she calmed herself, took a deep breath, and then made the move.

Unfortunately, things didn't go as she had planned. Halfway across the open space and just when she was fully exposed, she hesitated as something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. The result was predictable. She was shot, and having been shot, she certainly was not going to be promoted.

Voicing a few choice swear words she had learned in the marines, Jazz sat back, took her hands from the keyboard, and vigorously rubbed her face. As a stand-in for a Russian conscript in the battle of Stalingrad, she had been concentrating intently for several hours while playing the computer game Call of Duty. She'd been doing fantastic until this current debacle, which meant she'd have to start over. The goal was to complete progressively more difficult missions and be promoted up through the ranks to reach the level of tank commander. Now it wasn't going to happen. At least not tonight.

Letting her hands drop down into her lap, she looked over to the side of her computer screen to see what had messed her up. It was a small, blinking, pop-up window she'd set to appear when she got an e-mail. Imagining that she was going to be even angrier when she found some stupid porn solicitation or a Viagra advertisement, Jazz clicked on it. To her delight, it was a message from Mr. Bob!

A shiver of excitement coursed down Jazz's spine like a bolt of electricity. She'd not heard from Mr. Bob for over a month and was beginning to think Operation Winnow had been terminated. Over the last week, she'd become depressed enough to be tempted to use the emergency number Mr. Bob had given her, even though he had made it crystal clear that the number was only for emergencies from her end. As that was not technically the case, she'd resisted, but as the days had worn on and her discouragement mounted, she'd begun to warm to the idea. After all, she was getting to the point where she might have to move on from the Manhattan General Hospital, which was the hospital where Mr. Bob had specifically asked her to become employed.

The reason Jazz was thinking of moving was because her relationship with the night-shift charge nurse, Susan Chapman, had deteriorated to the point of ridiculousness, as did her relationship with the rest of the shift's nurses, for that matter. Jazz had come to believe the night shift was the place where nursing incompetents hid from the world. She had no idea how Susan had ever gotten to be in charge of anything, much less the surgical floor at the General. Not only was Susan a fat blob, but she knew crap and was always bossing Jazz around to do this or do that, and finding fault with everything Jazz did, which was easy, since the other nurses kept ragging on her about everything, especially when she'd duck into the back room to put her feet up for a few minutes and read a magazine.

Worst of all, Susan always assigned the worst cases to Jazz, as though she was thumbing her nose at her every night, letting the other nurses have the easy ones. Susan even had the nerve to complain to Jazz about Jazz nosing around in the charts of the cases not assigned to her and to question why Jazz frequently went to the obstetrics floor when she was supposed to be at lunch. Susan said the obstetrics charge nurse had called to complain.

Jazz had bit her tongue at the time and resisted the temptation to ream Susan out the way she deserved or, better yet, to follow her home and use the Glock to get rid of her once and for all. Instead, Jazz dreamed up an explanation involving her need for continuing education… blah, blah, blah. It was all bull, but it seemed to work, at least temporarily. The problem was that Jazz needed to go to obstetrics and neurosurgery most every night, since it was the only way she could keep up with what was happening in those specialties. Even though Jazz had not had any patients to sanction, she had kept up with reporting adverse outcomes, which were mostly in obstetrics, involving druggies giving birth to screwed-up babies. Un- fortunately, such reporting was not that challenging or fun, and the money was piddling compared to the pay for sanctioning patients.

Holding her breath, Jazz opened Mr. Bob's e-mail. "Yes!" she shouted while she punched the air over her head with both hands like a professional cyclist winning a leg on a grand tour event. The e-mail was simply the name, Stephen Lewis, meaning Jazz had another mission! Suddenly, going to work was not going to be the grim experience it had become. Putting up with Susan Chapman and the rest of the schmucks wasn't going to be any easier, but at least there was a reason.

Beside herself with excitement, Jazz quickly accessed her offshore bank account. For a pleasurable moment, she just stared at the balance. It was thirty-eight thousand nine hundred and sixty-four dollars and some odd cents. The best part was that by tomorrow, it would be five thousand higher.

For Jazz, the idea of having money in the bank meant power. Even if she didn't do anything particular with it, she knew she could. Money gave her options. She had never had money in the bank, any money that came into her hands went right out for whatever she wanted at the moment, in a vain attempt to obscure the reality of her life. In middle school and high school, that meant drugs.

As a child, Jazz had grown up in near-poverty conditions in a tiny, one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx. Her father, Geza Rakoczi, the only son of a Hungarian freedom fighter who'd immigrated to the USA in 1957, had sired her at age fifteen. Her mother, Mariana, was the same age and from a large Puerto Rican family. For religious reasons, the youths were forced by their respective families to drop out of school and marry. Jasmine was born in 1972.

Life for Jasmine was a struggle from the very beginning. Both parents shunned the Church, which they blamed for their plight.

Both became alcoholics as well as drug abusers, and fought almost continually when they were sober enough. Her father worked intermittently at various manual occupations, disappeared on occasion for weeks at a time, and spent time in jail for various felonies and misdemeanors, including domestic violence. Her mother worked at a series of odd jobs but was constantly fired for absenteeism or poor performance secondary to drunkenness. Ultimately, she became remarkably obese, which limited what she could do.

Jasmine's life outside the home was no better than within. The neighborhood and the schools were caught in a web of gang-related violence and drugs that reached down into the grammar school. Even kindergarten teachers spent more time dealing with behavior problems than teaching.

Forced into a precarious and dangerous world where the only consistency was constant change, Jasmine learned to cope by trial and error. Every time she came home from school she had no idea what to expect. A sibling boy born when she was eight and whom she thought would be her soul mate died of SIDS at age four months. It was the last time she cried.

As Jazz gazed at her nearly forty-thousand-dollar offshore account balance, she remembered the only other time she had thought she had a lot of money. It was the year after baby Janos died, and it had snowed enough to actually accumulate. With an old coal shovel Jazz had found in the basement of their tenement, she'd walked around the neighborhood and shoveled walks. By five o'clock, she had amassed a fortune: thirteen dollars.

Feeling proud, she'd returned home with the roll of singles clutched in her hand. In retrospect, she should have known better, but at the time, she couldn't help but flaunt her newly acquired wealth as evidence of her worth. The result was predictable, as Jazz now knew. Geza had snatched the money away, saying it was about time she contributed to the family larder. Actually, he used the money to buy cigarettes.

A slight smile played across Jazz's face as she remembered her revenge. The only thing her father loved at the time was a yappy mutt the size of a rat, with long hair, which someone had given him where he was temporarily employed at the time. While Geza was drinking beer and watching the fights on TV, she'd taken the dog into the bathroom where the window was always open to help with the smell from the broken toilet. She could remember as if it were yesterday the expression on the dog's face as she held it out the window by the scruff of its neck while it tried furiously to regain the sill. When she let go, it let out a little yelp before plunging four stories down to the concrete below.

Later, Geza had rudely awakened her to demand if she knew anything about the dog's demise. Jazz had denied it vehemently, but she still got knocked around, as did Mariana, who more truthfully denied knowing how the dog fell from the bathroom window. But Jazz had felt the beating was worth it, even though at the time she was terrified. Of course, she was always terrified when her father hit her, which was entirely too often until Jazz got big enough to hit back.

Jazz closed her offshore account window and checked the time. It was too early to go to work, but there was not enough time to go to the gym. As far as starting another session with Call of Duty, she was too antsy to sit still. Instead, she decided to head down to the local Korean twenty-four-hour sundry store to get a few basics. She was out of milk, and she knew she'd want some the following morning when she got back from the hospital.

Pulling on her coat, her hand instinctively went into her right pocket to fondle the Glock. She pulled it out with ease, despite its lengthy suppressor, and aimed at herself in the small mirror she had on the wall next to the door. The hole in the end of the barrel looked like a pupil of a one-eyed maniac. Jazz chuckled as she lowered the gun and compulsively checked the clip. It was full, as it always was. She rammed it home with a reassuring click. Then she got her canvas bag that she used for shopping and slung it over her shoulder.

Outside, it was fairly mild. March was like that in New York. One day, it could feel like spring, but the next could be like the depths of winter. Jazz walked with her hands thrust into her pockets, clutching the Glock on one side and her Blackberry on the other. Holding on to her possessions gave her a sense of comfort.

Since it was just after eight-thirty in the evening, there was a fair number of pedestrians on the sidewalk as well as vehicular traffic on the side street as Jazz headed down toward Columbus Avenue. Passing her beloved Hummer, she stopped for a moment to admire its shimmering surface. She'd used the balmy weather that afternoon as an excuse to wash it. Continuing on, she marveled, as she often did, how lucky she had been to run into Mr. Bob.

Columbus Avenue was even busier, with tons of people and lots of buses, taxis, and cars vying for space. The sounds of the diesel engines, the beeping horns, and the screeching tires could have been overwhelming if Jazz had stopped to listen, but she was accustomed to the general din. The canopy of sky seen between the buildings was a dull gray from the reflected city lights. Only a few of the brightest stars were visible.

The store was open to the street with shelving filled with fruits, vegetables, cut flowers, and a wide assortment of other products. Like the avenue itself, the interior was crowded with a line of customers waiting at the only cash register. Jazz walked around and made her selections, which included bread, eggs, a few PowerBars, and bottled water in addition to the milk. Once she had what she wanted, and with a touch of exhilarating tenseness, she wandered out onto the sidewalk and pretended to examine the fruit. When she thought it was the most opportune time, with the owner engrossed at the register and his wife in the back getting something, Jazz merely turned and started for home. When she was far enough away to know that she wasn't going to be accosted and forced to come up with some lame excuse for walking away, she laughed to herself what fools the proprietors were. With multiple entrances into the store, it was so easy to leave without paying. She wondered why anyone bothered. As for herself, she couldn't remember the last time she had.

Back in her apartment, Jazz put away her groceries in the refrigerator and checked the time. It was still too early to go to work. It was at that moment that she caught sight of her computer screen. There, against her screen's wallpaper, was that same pesky blinking window announcing that she had e-mail.

Fearing that the Stephen Lewiss mission may have been canceled, even though such a situation had never happened in the past, Jazz quickly sat down and clicked on the window. Her concern ratcheted up a notch when she saw that it was a second message from Mr. Bob. With some trepidation, she opened the e-mail. To her astonishment and delight, it was a second name: Rowena Sobczyk.

"Yes!" Jazz blurted while shutting her eyes tightly, grimacing, and balling her hands into tight fists with excitement. After getting no names for more than a month, receiving two in the same night was unbelievable. It had never happened before. She was almost faint from holding her breath when she reopened her eyes and looked again at the screen. She wanted to make sure she wasn't fantasizing, and she wasn't. The name was still there, boldly standing out against the white background. Vaguely, she wondered what kind of name Sobczyk was, since the juxtaposition of consonants vaguely reminded her of her own.

Jazz stood up and began peeling off her street clothes as she headed over to her closet. It was still too early to go to the hospital, but she didn't care. She was going anyway. She was too keyed up to sit around and do nothing. She thought she could at least reconnoiter at the hospital and come up with a general plan of attack. She got out her scrubs and pulled them on. Next came the white coat. While she dressed, she thought about her offshore account. By that time the following evening, the balance would be close to fifty thousand dollars!

Once in the Hummer, Jazz actively calmed herself. It had been okay to celebrate for a time, but now it was time to get serious. She understood that dispatching two patients would be more than twice as difficult as dispatching one. She briefly thought that perhaps she should do them on successive nights but abandoned the idea. If that was the way Mr. Bob wanted it, he would have e-mailed on successive days. It was obvious to Jazz that she was supposed to sanction them together.

En route to the hospital, Jazz didn't even challenge the taxicabs. She was intent on keeping herself composed and focused. She parked the Hummer in its usual location on the second floor and walked into the hospital. After stashing her coat in its customary place, she descended to the first floor and sauntered into the emergency room. She was glad to see that the usual chaos reigned. As had been the case on all her previous missions, she obtained the two potassium chloride ampoules with no problem whatsoever. With one in each side of her white coat, she went back to the elevators and rode up to the sixth floor.

In comparison to the ER, the surgical floor seemed peaceful, but Jazz could tell it was busy. A glance at the chart rack let her know that every room on the floor was occupied, and a glance in the empty utility room meant that all the nurses and nurse's aides were out in patients' rooms. On quiet nights, by that time, the evening-shift nurses were already gathered in the back room, kibitzing and getting ready for report to pass the baton into the hands of the night people. The only person in sight was the ward clerk, Jane Attridge, who was busy getting a stack of laboratory reports into the right charts. Jazz looked into the drug room to make sure Susan Chapman wasn't around yet. She always came in early.

Jazz sat down at a monitor and typed in "Stephen Lewis." She was pleased to learn that his room was 424 in the Goldblatt Wing. Although she'd never been there, she felt it was auspicious. Being the fancy VIP part of the hospital she knew that there would be less nursing activity than on regular floors, which undoubtedly would make things easier for her. The only thing she had to check was whether the guy had a private-duty nurse, which she doubted, because the patient was only thirty-three and all he was in for was a rotator cuff repair.

With Stephen taken care of, Jazz typed in Rowena Sobczyk's name. As soon as she did so, a smile spread across her face. Rowena was right there in room 617, just down the corridor. She thought it would be ironic if she were assigned the case, which was a distinct possibility, and if she were, it would make the sanction that much easier. One way or the other, she felt confident that doing both people was going to be like a turkey shoot.

"You're in awfully early," a voice quipped.

Jazz's eyes popped up, and a shot of adrenalin coursed through her veins. She found herself looking into Susan Chapman's chubby face, with its rounded features demarcated by a slight seborrheic rash in the creases. Susan's expression was more challenging than friendly as she looked over Jazz's shoulder at the monitor screen. Jazz hated the way she wore her hair pulled back in an old-fashioned, tight bun. Jazz couldn't help but think she looked like some kind of nursing anachronism, especially with her old-fashioned lace-up leather-soled shoes with inch-thick heels.

"What, may I ask, are you doing?" Susan demanded.

"Just trying to familiarize myself with our cases," Jazz managed. Swallowing her anger at this woman, she forced herself to smile. "It seems like we have a full house."

Susan stared at Jazz for what seemed like minutes before speaking. "We almost always have a full house. What's with this Rowena Sobczyk; do you know her?"

"Never saw her in my life," Jazz responded. Her smile lingered but now looked more real since she had recovered from her initial alarm at being discovered accessing Rowena's record. "I was trying to take a peek at all the new patients to get a jump on the night."

"I think looking at the new patients is my job," Susan said.

"Fine and dandy," Jazz said. She blanked out the screen and stood up.

"We've been over this before," Susan snapped. "We have a rule in this hospital that protects patient confidentiality. I'm going to have to report you if I find you doing this in the future. Do I make myself clear? Looking at records is on a need-to-know basis."

"I'm going to need to know if I'm assigned."

Susan breathed out audibly as if exasperated. She stared at Jazz with her hands on her hips like an irate grammar-school teacher.

"It's funny," Jazz said, breaking the silence. "I would have thought you and the rest of the brass would encourage individual initiative. But seeing that you don't, I'll just take myself down to the coffee shop instead." She arched her eyebrows questioningly and waited for a beat for Susan to respond. When she didn't, Jazz flashed one more fake smile and headed down toward the elevators. As she walked, she could feel Susan's eyes boring into her back. She shook her head imperceptively. She was learning to detest the woman.

Descending to the first floor in case Susan was watching the floor indicator, Jazz followed the twisting corridors past the closed day clinics and walked into the Goldblatt lobby. She could have gotten off on the fourth or pediatric floor and headed into the Goldblatt Wing from there, but she was worried that Susan was getting too suspicious about her meanderings.

Even on the first floor, the Goldblatt Wing was different in all regards from the rest of the hospital. The walls were paneled in mahogany, and the corridors were carpeted. Oil paintings hung beneath their picture lamps. The visitors who were disembarking from the elevators and leaving were dressed nattily, and the women sparkled with diamonds. Outside were limousines and valet attendants.

Despite an elaborate security setup at the front entrance, no one questioned Jazz's arrival from the hospital proper. She stood at the elevators, waiting for a car, with a few other nurses coming on duty. She noticed they were dressed like Susan Chapman, in old-fashioned nurses' outfits. Several even wore hats.

Jazz was the only person to get off on the fourth floor. Like the lobby downstairs, it was carpeted and paneled and decorated with fine art. A number of departing visitors waited for a down elevator. Several smiled at Jazz, and she smiled back.

It hardly seemed like a hospital. Her cross-trainers hardly made a sound on the carpet. Glancing into the patient rooms, she could see that they were decorated in an equally refined manner, with upholstered furniture and draperies. Visiting hours were ending and people were saying their good-byes. As she came abreast of room 424, she slowed. About fifty feet ahead was the central nurses' station, a beacon of bright light compared to the subdued illumination of the hall.

The door to room 424 was ajar. Jazz glanced up and down the corridor to make sure she went unnoticed. Stepping into the room's doorway, she had a full view of the interior. As she expected, there was no private-duty nurse. There were also no visitors. The patient was a muscular African-American man stripped to the waist. A large bandage swathed his right shoulder, and an IV ran into his left arm. He was sitting in the hospital bed with the back cranked up, watching a TV suspended from the ceiling over the bed's foot. Jazz could not see the screen, but from the sound, she could tell it was a sporting event.

Stephen's eyes pulled away from the TV and looked over at Jazz. "Can I help you?" he called.

"Just checking to make sure everything is okay," Jazz said, which was true. She was pleased. It was going to be a walk in the park.

"Things would be better if the Knicks would get their game together," Stephen said.

Jazz nodded, waved to the patient, then retreated back to the elevator.

With her reconnoitering accomplished, Jazz returned to the first floor and went into the coffee shop. She was pleased.

The first half of the night shift went as expected. Jazz had been assigned as nurse manager for eleven patients, which was one more than the other nurses, but she didn't complain. She was teamed up with the best nurse's aide, so things evened out. Unfortunately, she had not been assigned to Rowena Sobczyk, and as busy as Jazz was, there was no chance to do anything for Mr. Bob until her lunch break, which had just started.

Jazz descended in the elevator with the two other nurses and two nurse's aides who were sharing the lunch slot, but she made sure she lost all of them in the cafeteria. She didn't want to get caught up with their chitchat and have trouble getting away. Instead, she wolfed down a sandwich and polished off a pint of skim milk without sitting down. She had only thirty minutes, and she had a lot to do.

During the course of the shift, Jazz had added a couple of syringes to the potassium ampoules in her jacket pockets. Leaving the cafeteria, she ducked into the ladies' room. A quick check beneath the stalls convinced her that she was alone. For added privacy, she went into one of the stalls and closed the door. Taking out the ampoules one at a time, she snapped off their tops and carefully filled both syringes. With their needle caps back on, the syringes were returned to the depths of her jacket pockets.

Back out in the main part of the lavatory, Jazz quickly rolled the empty ampoules up in a number of paper towels. Still, no one had come in. Placing the roll on the tile floor, she crushed it with the heel of her shoe. The glass made a faint popping sound. She then tossed the flattened wad of paper and glass into the waste container.

Jazz looked at herself in the mirror. She ran her fingers through her fringed hair, straightened her jacket, and adjusted the stethoscope that was draped around her neck. Satisfied, she started for the door, now armed and ready for action. It had been as simple as that. She was beginning to appreciate the efficiency of doing two cases in the same night. It was like an assembly line.

She took the main elevators up to the fourth floor, avoiding the Goldblatt lobby, lest she arouse the curiosity of the security people. The fourth floor was all pediatrics, and as she descended the long hallway en route to the Goldblatt Wing, the thought of sick infants in the various rooms brought back an unpleasant memory of little Janos. Jazz had been the one who'd found him that fateful morning. The poor kid was as stiff as a board and slightly blue, lying face-down in his rumpled blanket. Being a child herself, Jazz had panicked, and desperate for help, she'd dashed in to where her parents were sleeping to try to wake them. But no matter what she did, she couldn't raise them from their drunken slumber. Jazz ended up calling 911 herself and later letting the EMTs in through the front door.

A heavy fire door separated the Goldblatt Wing from the hospital proper. It was as if it was rarely opened, and after an unsuccessful tug, Jazz had to put one foot up against the jamb and use her leg muscles to get it to budge. Stepping over the threshold, she was again reminded of how different the Goldblatt decor was. What particularly caught Jazz's attention was the lighting. Instead of the usual institutional fluorescents, there were incandescent sconces and picture lights, which had been dimmed since Jazz's earlier visit.

She put her shoulder against the fire door just to be a hundred percent sure it would reopen for her retreat. It moved with significantly less effort than it had the first time. Jazz set off down the corridor at a deliberate pace. She'd learned from experience not to be hesitant, since such behavior invited attention. She knew where she was going, and she acted like it. Despite a long vista down the hallway, she saw no one, not even at the distant nurses' station. As she passed patient rooms, she heard the occasional beep of a monitor and even caught a glimpse of a nurse bending over a patient.

As Jazz neared her objective, she began to feel the same excitement she'd experienced in combat in Kuwait in 1991. It was a sensation that only soldiers who'd been in war could understand. Sometimes there was a flicker of it when she was playing Call of Duty, but not with the intensity of the real thing. For her, it was a little like speed, but better and without the hangover. Jazz smiled inwardly. Getting paid for what she was doing made it even more of a pleasure. She came to room 424 and didn't hesitate. She walked right in.

Stephen was still propped up in bed but fast asleep. The TV was off. The room was relatively dark, with the only illumination coming from a combination of a dim nightlight and a vanity light in the bathroom. The bathroom door was open just a crack, causing a stripe of light to fall across the foot of the bed and along the floor like a narrow line of fluorescent paint. The IV was still in place.

Jazz checked her watch. It was three-fourteen. Quickly but silently, she moved over to the bedside and opened up the IV. Within the Millipore chamber, the drops became a steady stream. She bent over and looked at the IV site where the needle went into Stephen's arm. There was no swelling. The IV was running just fine.

Back at the door to the hall, Jazz leaned out and looked up and down the corridor for one last check. Still, no one was in sight. All was calm. Returning to the bedside, she pushed the sleeves of her jacket up above her elbows to get them out of the way. She then pulled out one of her full syringes and took the needle cap off with her teeth while holding the IV port in her left hand. Despite her excitement, she steadied herself before inserting the needle. Straightening up, she listened. She heard nothing.

With a strong, steady push, Jazz emptied the syringe into the IV port. As she did so, she saw the level of fluid in the Millipore chamber rise, which she expected. The potassium chloride solution was backing up the IV fluid. What she didn't expect was a rather loud groan from Stephen, followed by his eyes popping open to their fullest extent. Even more unexpected was Stephen's right hand lunging across his chest and grabbing Jazz's forearm with shocking strength. A muffled cry of pain escaped from Jazz's mouth as sharp nails dug into her skin.

Dropping the syringe onto the side of the bed, Jazz desperately tried to break the hold Stephen had on her arm, but she couldn't. At the same time, Stephen's groan melded into a shriek. Abandoning her attempt to release his grip on her arm, Jazz slapped her free hand over Stephen's mouth and leaned her torso into him in a desperate attempt to quiet him. It worked, although he bucked to try to worm himself free.

There was a continued brief struggle, but Stephen's strength quickly ebbed. As his grip on Jazz's arm weakened, his fingernails were drawn down her forearm, scratching her and causing her to cry out again.

As quickly as the scuffle started, it ended. Stephen's eyes rolled up inside his head, and his body went limp, his head flopping onto his chest.

Jazz detached herself. She was furious. "You bastard!" she murmured through clenched teeth. She checked her arm. Several of the scratches were bleeding. She felt like punching the guy, but she held herself in check since she knew the guy was already dead. She snatched up the syringe and then got down on her hands and knees to find the damn needle cap that she'd been holding in her teeth and had dropped when she'd cried out. She quickly gave up. Instead, she merely bent the needle around 180° before putting the empty syringe back in her jacket pocket. She couldn't believe what had happened. Since she had started dispatching patients, this was the first one to pull off such a stunt.

After slowing the IV back to where it was when she'd first come in and replacing her stethoscope around her neck, Jazz quickly went to the door. She glanced up and down the corridor. Thankfully, apparently no one had heard Stephen's cry, since the corridor remained as quiet as a morgue. She gingerly straightened the sleeve of her jacket over the scratches on her forearm, glanced back once more at Stephen to make sure she wasn't forgetting anything, then stepped out into the hallway.

Wasting no time, she retraced her steps back to the fire door. Once on the other side she leaned her back up against the door. She was a bit unnerved by the unexpected complication, but she quickly collected herself. She reasoned that she had to expect problems once in a while, despite her planning. She then examined her forearm in the better light. She had three gouges on the volar surface of her forearm from Stephen's nails, with trailing linear scratches about three inches long extending down toward her wrist. Two of them were oozing blood. She shook her head, thinking that Stephen certainly had it coming to him.

Jazz warily replaced her sleeve and checked her watch. It was three-twenty, and she had one more sanction to accomplish. She knew it was an opportune time, because the nurse assigned to Rowena was on break with her and wouldn't be back for another ten minutes. But she couldn't dillydally. Walking rapidly, Jazz returned to the main elevators and went back up to her floor.

There was only one person at the nurses' station. It was Charlotte Baker, a pixieish nurse's aide. She was busy writing nurse's notes. Jazz glanced in the utility room and the drug room, the Dutch door of which was open on the top. Both were empty.

"Where's our fearless leader?" Jazz questioned. She looked down the corridor in both directions. She didn't see anyone.

"I believe Ms. Chapman is down in room 602, helping with a catheterization," Charlotte said without looking up. "But I'm not entirely sure. I've been holding down the fort here for fifteen minutes or so."

Jazz nodded and looked down toward 602. That room was situated in the opposite direction from Rowena's room. Sensing that the time would not get any better, she pushed away from the counter that overlooked the nurses' station, made sure Charlotte was not paying her any attention, and headed toward 617. Once again, her pulse quickened as she anticipated action, only this time the thrill was tinged with anxiety after her experience with Stephen Lewis. A mild ache from the scratches on her forearm was a reminder that she couldn't control all the variables.

A patient caught a glimpse of Jazz as she hurried past his door, and he called out to her, but she ignored it. Checking her watch, she figured she had six minutes before anyone was scheduled to return from their lunch break, including the nurse assigned to Rowena, but since no one was ever early, she had a bit of a buffer. Six minutes was plenty of time.

The stage was similar to what she'd found in Stephen's room, but without the carpet, fancy drapes, upholstered furniture, and fine art, and the only light was a nightlight. The bathroom door was ajar, but the lights were off. Rowena Sobczyk was asleep in the bed with both feet bandaged from a bilateral hallux valgus repair. She was on her back and snoring slightly. Jazz looked down at the woman. Although she was twenty-six, she appeared much younger, with tiny features and a mop of dark, unruly hair splayed out against the white pillow.

Jazz opened the IV to run freely, then bent over to check for any swelling. There was none, so all was set. She pulled out the full syringe and, holding it in her right hand, lifted the IV port with her left. Just as she'd done in Stephen's room, she used her teeth to remove the needle cap. Immediately, she inserted the needle into the port and then repositioned her hand with her thumb over the syringe's plunger. After taking a breath and holding it, she smoothly depressed the plunger.

Rowena stirred, writhing her upper body. Jazz removed the syringe, and as she did so, she heard footsteps out in the hall on the composite flooring. Her intuition immediately flashed a warning as the sound of the footfalls made her think of Susan's clodhopper nursing shoes. She glanced briefly at the half-open door to the hall, then back at Rowena, who was now clutching at her arm with the IV and making gurgling noises.

In a panic, Jazz dropped both the syringe and the needle cap into her pocket and backed up from the patient. For a second, she thought about hiding in the bathroom in case Susan heard the noises, but then discarded the idea as it might make a bad situation worse. Instead, she started for the door, thinking the best defense was offense.

Confirming her worst fears, Jazz literally ran into Susan coming into the room just after Susan had stepped over the threshold.

Susan took a step back, acting indignant and looking up at Jazz with the same challenging expression she had had earlier. " Charlotte said you'd come down here. What the hell are you doing? This is June's patient."

"I was passing in the hall, and she called out."

Susan bent around Jazz, who was trying to fill the doorway, and squinted into the half-light of the room. "What was the matter?"

"I guess she was dreaming?"

"She looks like she is moving around. And the IV is running full tilt!"

"Really?" Jazz questioned. Susan pushed by, forcing Jazz to step aside.

Susan slowed down the IV as she bent over Rowena. "My God," she said. Then, turning to Jazz, she shouted: "Hit the lights! We've got a code here!"

Jazz did as she was told while Susan sounded the alarm. Susan then directed Jazz to help get the opposite-side bed rails down. Seconds later, the code was announced over the hospital PA system.

"She's got a thready pulse, or she did!" Susan barked. She had her fingers pressed into Rowena's neck to feel her carotid artery. She let go and climbed up to kneel on the bed. "We've got to start CPR. You breathe, and I'll do the compressions."

With great reluctance, Jazz pinched Rowena's nostrils shut and placed her mouth over Rowena's. She blew in and inflated the lungs. There was little resistance, suggesting to her that the patient was essentially flaccid. She was the only one who knew that at this stage, trying to resuscitate Rowena was a joke.

Charlotte and another nurse named Harriet arrived and managed to get an EKG hooked up and going. Susan was continuing the compressions, and Jazz, for appearances' sake, continued with the breathing.

"We have some electrical activity," Harriet said. "But it looks like strange complexes to me."

At that point, the resident cardiopulmonary resuscitation team arrived and quickly took over. Jazz was pushed to the side as Rowena was expertly intubated and started on pure oxygen. Drug orders were barked out, and the drugs were given. Arterial blood was drawn and sent off to the lab for a stat report on blood gases. The strange complexes as noted by Harriet at the outset had quickly disappeared. The EKG traced a straight line, and the residents began to lose their enthusiasm. Rowena wasn't responding to anything.

While the resuscitation was still technically going on, Jazz walked out of the room. She went back to the nurses' station and stepped into the utility room. She sat down and cradled her head in her hands. She needed a few minutes to pull herself together, She had been unnerved by what happened with Stephen Lewis, and then having something untoward happen with Rowena seemed like too much. Jazz couldn't believe it. She'd never had any problem whatsoever on all her previous cases. She couldn't help but wonder if she would be spooked on her next mission.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Susan appear out at the nurses' station. Jazz couldn't hear but assumed Susan had asked the aide manning the desk where Jazz was, because the aide was soon pointing in Jazz's direction. When Susan started toward the utility room, Jazz knew that she was about to weather another confrontation.

Susan came in and closed the door. She didn't talk, even after she sat down. She just stared at Jazz.

"Are they still trying to resuscitate the patient?" Jazz asked, discomforted by the silence. Jazz wanted to get it over with if they were going to have an argument.

"Yes," Susan said simply before another pause. Jazz felt it was like some kind of weird staring contest, so she decided to wait it out. Finally, Susan said, "I want to ask you again why you were in Sobczyk's room. You say the patient called out. What exactly did the patient say?"

"I don't remember if it was any words. I just heard her, okay? So I went in to check."

"Did you talk with her?"

"No. She was asleep, so I just turned around and came out."

"So you didn't see that the IV was wide open."

"That's correct. I didn't look at the IV."

"Did she seem all right to you?"

"Of course! That's why I was coming out when we bumped into each other."

"What are those scratches on your arm?"

The way Jazz was sitting with her elbows on the built-in desk, her sleeve had fallen just enough to reveal the three scratches and a bit of dried blood.

"Oh, these?" Jazz questioned. She took her arms off the desk and shook her sleeve back down to cover the wounds. "It happened in my car. It's nothing."

"They've been bleeding."

"Maybe a little, but it's no problem, really."

Jazz again found herself having the same weird staring contest, as if they were in the third grade. For almost a minute, Susan didn't say anything and hardly blinked. Jazz had had enough. She pushed back and stood up. "Well, time to get to work." She skirted Susan and opened the door.

"It strikes me as a strange coincidence you being in that room," Susan said as she swung around and faced Jazz.

"Obviously, when the patient called out, it was the beginning of whatever caused her code. It just wasn't apparent when I went in there. Maybe I should have checked her better than I did. But tell me! Are you trying to make me feel worse than I already do or what?"

"No, not really," Susan admitted. She looked away.

"Well, you're doing a pretty good job, whether you're trying or not," Jazz said before walking out to find the nurse's aide she'd been assigned to work with that night.

At first, Jazz felt like she had talked herself out of a potentially problematic situation with Susan, but as the rest of the shift wore on, she got progressively paranoid. It seemed like every time she turned around, Susan was staring at her. By the time report rolled around and the morning-shift nurses were hearing about the evening, including the code on Rowena Sobczyk, the problem had advanced to a point of ridiculousness. With Susan's behavior, there was no question in Jazz's mind that she was suspicious. All Jazz could think about was Mr. Bob telling her that there could be no ripples. As far as Jazz was concerned, this situation with Susan wasn't threatening ripples-it was portending a tidal wave.

Jazz's biggest fear was that Susan would take off after report and go directly to blab her suspicions to the nursing supervisor, Clarice Hamilton, an enormous African-American woman who Jazz thought was as big a dud as Susan. If that happened, all hell would probably break loose, and Jazz would surely have to use the emergency number to call Mr. Bob. Yet what Mr. Bob could do at that point was fairly limited.

The moment report was over, Jazz remained where she was and pretended to be doing a bit more chart work. Susan spent another five minutes debriefing the day charge nurse about specific problems. As close as Jazz was, she could hear most of the conversation. Luckily, Susan didn't say anything about Jazz. When that was over, Susan got her coat, and laughing and carrying on with June, she went down to the elevators. That was when Jazz got her own coat. She also grabbed a pair of latex gloves from a box on the utility-room desk next to the door.

At that time in the morning with the shift changing, the elevator area was crowded. Jazz made sure she stayed in the periphery, as far from Susan and June as possible. When the car came, she wormed her way to the very back. She could tell where Susan was by her ridiculous bun.

When the elevator stopped on the second floor, Jazz pushed her way to the front and disembarked, along with a half dozen other people, including Susan. Jazz knew that Susan, like herself, drove to work. Like a clutch of cackling hens, the group walked down to the door that opened onto the connecting bridge that crossed over to the parking garage. Jazz hung back to bring up the rear. As she walked, she pulled on the latex gloves.

Once in the garage, the group splintered off to their respective vehicles. At that point, Jazz upped her pace. She had her hands in her pockets with her right hand gripping the Glock. She closed the distance between herself and Susan so that when Susan slipped in along the driver's side of her Ford Explorer, Jazz was doing the same on the passenger side. The second Jazz heard the unlocking mechanism activate, she opened the passenger-side door and slipped into the front seat.

Jazz had timed it perfectly. It was almost as if she'd been sitting there when Susan climbed in. Under different circumstances, Susan's shocked expression would have been hilarious. The trouble was, Jazz wasn't finding any of this funny.

"What the hell?" Susan questioned.

"I thought maybe we could talk in private and mend fences," Jazz said. She had both hands in her pockets with her shoulders scrunched up and her arms straight.

"I don't have anything to talk to you about," Susan snapped. She put her key in the ignition and started the engine. "Now get out of my car. I'm going home."

"I think we have plenty to talk about. You've been giving me the evil eye all night. I want to know why."

"Well, you are an odd duck."

Jazz laughed with derision. "That's funny, coming from you."

"That's the kind of comment that underlines my impressions," Susan spat. "To be honest, I've never felt confident in you. I don't know why you are a nurse. You don't get along with anyone. You have no compassion. Every night, I have to give you the easiest cases."

"Oh, bull!" Jazz sputtered. "You give me all the junk cases."

For a second, Susan stared at Jazz just the way she had been doing all evening. "I'm not going to argue with you. In fact, if you don't get out of my car, I'm going to go get security and let them deal with you."

"You still haven't told me why you have been gawking at me. I want to know if it has anything to do with Rowena Sobczyk."

"Of course it has something to do with Rowena Sobczyk. It's too much of a coincidence with you coming out of her room when she wasn't your patient. And I happen to remember you were seen coming out of Sean McGillin's room, and he wasn't your patient, either. But talking to you about all this is not my job. It's the nursing supervisor's job, so you'll be talking with her I'm sure."

"Oh, yeah?" Jazz sneered. "I don't think you should be so sure, you freaking loser." With a little effort, Jazz got the Glock out of her pocket.

Susan saw the gun coming and was only able to raise her right hand when Jazz shot her twice in the side of the chest. Susan slumped laterally against the door, with her cheek pressed up against the glass.

Despite the suppressor, the noise within the car was more than Jazz expected. So was the smell of the cordite. With her free hand, she fanned the fumes. Twisting around, she looked out the back of the SUV. Multiple cars were coming into the garage, but all were going by and up the ramp, since all the second-tier slots were taken. A few cars were going out. With all the noise and commotion, Jazz was confident that no one would have heard the double thump of the Glock. Jazz worked the gun back into her pocket.

Reaching over, she grabbed Susan by her bun and righted her, letting her head fall against her chest but keeping her upright. What a loser, she thought as she positioned the woman's lifeless arms to rest on the steering wheel. And losers deserve to lose. She switched off the car's ignition.

Next, Jazz opened Susan's purse and rifled through it to find her wallet. Opening the wallet, she took out the cash and the credit cards. Then she tossed the wallet and the cards on the floor, hoping for the appearance of a fatal mugging. Twisting around again, Jazz looked through the back window at the door to the connecting bridge. As she did so, a group of nurses emerged and waved to each other as they split up to go to their respective vehicles. Jazz hunkered down until they were out of sight.

Sitting back up, she eyed her Hummer. It was only two cars away. After a quick check to make sure the coast was clear, Jazz got out of Susan's vehicle and away from it by going around the front of the immediately adjacent car.

Inside her own SUV, she stripped off the latex gloves and pocketed them. She started the engine, backed out, and headed for the exit. As she passed behind Susan's car, she glanced inside. It looked as though Susan was taking a catnap after a hard night. It was perfect.

Out in the morning traffic, Jazz allowed herself to take a deep breath. She hadn't realized how tense she'd been. It had been a hard night, but she was confident she'd handled it well. She was ten thousand dollars richer, and she'd managed to eliminate a potential problem. Operation Winnow was alive and kicking. Life was good.