One Step Ahead

Goodbye

    February 15th, 7:30 AM  

Harris lay back against the pillows, glancing once again at the handcuffs affixing his hands to the bed rails, and then at the uniformed deputy seated just inside the doorway. He knew that there was at least one other, possibly more, in the hallway, and had no doubts that at least one of his former colleagues was still somewhere in the building as well.

      "Pluth the fucking FBI, of course," he muttered, his missing front teeth, along with the stitches in his swollen lips, giving him an unaccustomed lisp. "Bathtards won't be able to resist hamming it up in front of the damn preth, telling everybody how they took down the big, bad therial killer. Glory-hogging prickth."

      He experimentally rattled his restraints, wincing at the bolt of pain that shot through his injured arm. The doctors had been forced to enlarge the wound caused by the arrow in order to remove the wickedly barbed head from his flesh, and since the pain medication he had been given was beginning to wear off, that injury was actually causing him more discomfort than the bullet wound in his calf.

      Fortunately, they had left the call button within his reach, and he pressed it with his thumb, not releasing it until a burly male nurse appeared in the doorway, accompanied by one of the FBI agents. "You don't have to hold the button down, we can hear it very clearly at the desk," the nurse informed him. "What do you need?"

      "I could uthe some more painkillers, and I really need to take a pith right now, if somebody can unfathen me from the bed so I can go to the john."

      The nurse turned to look at the agent next to him, who said, "Go ahead and do your job, get him whatever he's supposed to be taking, if it's that time. We'll take care of the rest." They both left the room, and the deputy rose from his chair, placing himself between the door and the bed.

      Fully aware of what this meant, he sighed, abandoning the faint hope he had been nurturing of being able to overpower whoever released him and making his escape from the facility. After a remarkably brief wait, the first agent returned, now accompanied by a second, who held a mass of thick chain draped over one arm. The nurse followed a moment later, and cautiously approached the bed, holding a syringe in one gloved hand.

      Harris offered the man a wry grin, rattling the handcuffs against the metal rails to demonstrate his essential helplessness. "Relaxth, my man. Even if I could get looth, you're the latht perthon in this place I'd want to hurt. That thing in your hand is my betht friend right now."

      The nurse injected him with the medication and stepped away, allowing the FBI agent to bring the restraints to the bed. With a weapon trained on him from either side of the bed, Harris offered no resistance as shackles were fastened around his ankles, and the chain was pulled under his body to be fastened around his waist. Only after this had been done were the handcuffs around his wrists opened, one at a time, allowing the agent to replace them with the shackles already attached to the waist chain.

      Once this was done, he was finally allowed to swing himself from the bed and hobble to the bathroom, where he glared at the deputy as he entered the room behind him. "Seriouthly? I'd like to pith in private, if you don't mind."

      "Now, you know better than that, Detective," one of the agents said from the doorway, placing a sarcastic emphasis on the last word. "You're in custody now, so you don't get any privacy. And once you go to prison, the whole cell block will be able to watch you take a shit, so you may as well get used to an audience."

      "Fine, then. If you guyth get off on watching me take a whiz, be my guethts."

      After he had finished, and washed his hands, he shuffled back into his room, only to find Garrett Sanger, Yesenia Pruitt, and Dean Bledsoe standing near the bed. Sanger and Pruitt both appeared to be on the knife-edge of exhaustion, while the commander was not only alert, but visibly angry, glaring at Harris with his lip curled into a contemptuous sneer.