The Blonde

7:34 a.m. and 55 seconds

You.” The man with the thinning hair pointed to the hallway. “Out.”

He followed Jack, who stumbled out into the hallway, and nearly tripped over Kowalski’s bleeding and semiunconscious body. It was bedlam in the hall. Nurses backing away. Worried stares from people in wheelchairs. Two security officers jogging toward them.

The guy who’d decked Kowalski pulled a badge from inside his jacket, barked something about “Defense Department,” and told one of the guards to stand in front of the door. “Do not allow anyone in this room for the next hour. No one. Matter of national security.” He was going to call in backup, he said. No one gets in the room, understood?”

The guards nodded. Oh, they understood. No one.

Then the guy walked down the hallway, rounded a corner.

Uh-uh, Jack thought. That bastard wasn’t walking out of here. Not after what he’d been through all night.

Jack needed some fucking answers.