The Last Minute Read Online Free PDF

black-skinned and had a strong face that wore a frown. He blinked.
     He wasn’t dreaming.
    She closed the door and turned to him. His eyes widened in shock. A nurse’s uniform?
    ‘Well,’ Ricki said. She came close to the bed, leaned down to his ear. ‘You’ve been a lot of trouble to find.’
    Jack decided to keep his ongoing silence, although he could not believe she stood before him.
    ‘Do you know how worried I’ve been? I could kill you for not letting me know you’re okay.’
    Jack made a noise.
    ‘I’ve had to hack into you don’t want to know how many databases, looking for you.’ Ricki was originally from Senegal, in
     West Africa, and her accent, fueled by anger, chopped the words into shards. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’
    He shook his head, pointed to the surgical scar on his throat. She can’t know what I’ve been doing, he thought, I can’t put
     her in danger.
    ‘Are you kidding me? I go through hell to find your hidden ass and you aren’t going to talk to me?’
    His heart felt like it would burst. He let his lips form thebeginning of a word: I am so glad you’re here, please get me out of this. But then he stopped. Ricki had known Nic, slightly.
     He couldn’t connect her to Novem Soles. He had to keep her away from these lunatics.
    So he shook his head: no.
    Then she fell onto him, crying softly, putting a kiss in his hair. Not on his lips. They’d broken up weeks ago. She held him
     and he thought he might cry, he might let out all the emotion penned up inside him out, like a long-echoing wail.
    She sat next to the bed.
    He pointed at her nurse’s uniform and raised his eyebrows. She shrugged. ‘I had to wait for the night shift, and if I get
     caught I’m arrested. I had to sneak down here and talk my way past the guard because he hadn’t seen me.’
    The door opened, the guard peering in. Ricki had his wrist, as though taking his pulse. Jack gave the guard a nod. The guard
     shut the door.
    ‘The police have been hiding you.’ Ricki leaned close in her whisper.
    Hiding him. And yet she’d found him. He loved how smart she was. He wanted to take her hand but they’d broken up, he reminded
     himself. She kept hold of his wrist.
    ‘Ming’ – and it shamed him she didn’t know his real first name – ‘what have you gotten involved in?’
    He shook his head, pointed at the surgical scar.
    ‘You don’t fool me. You can talk. God knows most days you never shut up.’
    He closed his eyes.
    ‘Don’t protect me,’ Ricki said. ‘Let me help you.’
    The police officer outside opened the door and Ricki’s voice shifted into a louder tone. ‘So, everything looks okay. Sorry
     tohave woken you.’ She stood, nodded smartly. She glanced at the police officer.
    And she walked out without a backward glance.
    Let me help you. No one, though, could help him. Unless he found Nic’s red notebook.

4
Upper West Side, Manhattan
    It’s not easy getting two bodies of heavy-set men out of an apartment. We had to assume the apartment was tied to Bell, and
     right now we didn’t want people looking for him or linking him to two dead guys. We didn’t want his name in the papers.
    I called Bertrand to help. He showed up an hour later. With a moving van and crates. He brought Mila a moving van uniform
     and a cap that seemed to cover most of her face. He raised one eyebrow at the bodies, muttered something in his Haitian-accented
     French and got to work. The bodies were loaded and gone within fifteen minutes. He took Bell, too, now uncuffed from that
     corpse, shot up with a load of tranquilizer, and put into a crate.
    ‘You’re not taking him back to the bar?’ I asked.
    ‘You want me to carry an unconscious man past customers?’ Mila always seems to assume I’m brain dead. ‘I’ll stash Bell where
     he can’t be a problem and have a little chat with him. A man with a family to consider, he wants to keep a nice life, he will
     work with us. You go arrange travel to