Betrayal - Book 3 of Guardians Saga - EDITED

CH 10.1 Leaving Charity Hospital

It was the three evenings later when Brockner flipped open his CIA billet and waltzed past the suspicious ICU nurses. Their gaze followed his every move, so when he entered Alex's room, he acted unruffled by the sight before him. Her once smooth skin now a map of angry red scars and blisters. She lay facing away from him, wires running from a monitor beeping a steady rhythm attached to her fragile frame. White bandages covered her arms like mittens, but it was the large expanse of gauze taped over her back that gave him pause. An ECG monitor beeped rhythmically, its green line flashing its repeating pattern.

Brockner strutted around the bed and nonchalantly leaned his hip against the bedrail. "Hello, dear," he greeted her with a wicked smirk and continued on, undeterred by her lack of response. "I'm guessing Morgan disabled your tracking device; he doesn't know I had hidden a miniaturized one inside the slipstream generator. It only activates if touched or scanned and then quickly deactivates. The staff here must have x-rayed it to find it. Wish I could've seen their faces when they saw that; priceless."

He snickered cruelly before refocusing his attention on her form. In an unsympathetic voice, he tsked at the larger bandages wrapped around her body. "Morgan never was good at controlling his temper, not even for a profit. That moron."

Brockner caught one of the many IV tubes hanging over the bed and examined it before flicking it away. "You're certainly not worth much like this. Of course, he couldn't kill you, so the dirty work falls to me." He deftly caught a swinging IV tube. With his other hand he pulled out two syringes.

At last, Alex looked at him.

"Now I have your attention," Brockner said.

He certainly had Gabe's. He was watching from outside the window, claws gouged into the concrete side.

Brockner wagged the syringes by Alex's face, out of sight of the nurses. "These are propofol and succinylcholine to grant you a painless death, unlike what Morgan threatens." He leaned in close, his breath hot on Alex's ear. "I'm your only friend here," he whispered. "Grange, myself, and your other three allies are powerless against him. But I can save you from a long and painful end." Brockner's voice grew stronger with each word, as if he relished the power he held over the situation. "I really am your best friend. The higher-ups want you dead and gone, so I have no worries about prosecution for murder. James Bond wishes he were me."

Alex stared at the call box in her hand, a small white plastic square with a single red button. Its surface was scratched and worn from countless hands that had gripped it before hers.

"Yes, all you have to do is push the button and the nurse will come running." Brockner shrugged.

"Push it," Gabe whispered.

"Push the button and you can go on living, if that's what you call this." Brockner looked around the room. "I'm sure they'll transfer you to the regular hospital floor in a week or so."

"Push it," Gabe pleaded. "Just push it."

Brockner continued speaking, his voice almost musical in its cadence. "After a month on the rehab unit, you could even go home. A little carriage house apartment, isn't it? If it isn't already rented out, you understand. Of course, it might be a little lonely. I doubt if your friends will be visiting much after what I told them about your powers. They know you manipulated them. Oh, I almost forgot, you'll have at least one visitor. Morgan can't resist seeing you, like a moth to the flame, or in your case, the flame to the moth. So go ahead and push—"

He paused when he saw her release the call box, which swung back and forth on its cord like a noose from a gallows. "Good girl. At least this will be painless." Brockner inserted one of his syringes into the IV's port.