Valentino Pier (Rapid Reads) Read Online Free PDF Page A

stopped. It was all hands on deck to save his or her life. Was it the kid? What had gone wrong? Would he be okay? Then he saw that medical staff were running in the opposite direction of the kid’s room. It wasn’t Ellis Torres who needed their help. Gulliver let out a sigh. He relaxed.
    The relief didn’t last long. He looked down the corridor to where the kid’s room was. Just as he had feared, there was no cop guarding the room. And with the Code Blue alarm, no one was paying attention to Ellis Torres. Gulliver hurried as best he could. But he kept bumping into people running the other way. He felt like a salmon swimming against the stream.
    Now he noticed something else that really scared him. All the other doors along the corridor were at least partially open. Some were wide-open. The only closed door was the one to Ellis Torres’s room. Now Gulliver ran. Or what passed for running.
    He had overcome many things in his life. But there were things that all the trying in the world couldn’t fix. Uneven legs was one of them. What was just a hobble when he walked was much worse when he ran. It was also hard to keep his balance. But he had to. He had to get to the kid’s [enedk, room fast.
    He didn’t knock. Instead, he shouldered the door paddle. The door flew back. A big man dressed in hospital scrubs was leaning over Ellis Torres. He was holding a pillow over the kid’s face.
    The big man turned to look at Gulliver. He had pale white skin. His eyes were such a light blue that they almost didn’t have any color at all. He sneered at him. Laughed. As if to say, “What is a little bug like you going to do?” And then he turned back to the kid, pressing the pillow down.
    Gulliver thought about shooting the man, but knew he couldn’t. Hospital rooms had all sorts of pipes and tanks in the walls. He couldn’t risk hitting a compressed-gas line or oxygen tank. He couldn’t risk the bullet setting off a fire in a place full of flammable chemicals. And the walls were thin. A stray bullet might pass right through and hit someone in the next room.
    Instead, he slid his hand under his jacket and felt for the handle of his knife. Pulled it out of its sheath. Laid the blade along his fingers and palm and reared his arm back. Then let the knife fly. The big man screamed in pain. The knife handle was now sticking out of his right shoulder blade. The back of his scrubs turned wet. Red. Soon the back of the shirt was soaked with blood.
    The big man let go of the pillow. He tried to reach the knife and pull it out. He couldn’t. He turned away from the kid. Turned to Gulliver. He charged. Gulliver stepped to his right and, as the big man got to him, snapped a side kick at the charging man’s thigh. But this guy was good. He, too, had martial-arts training. He blocked Gulliver’s kick. Grabbed his leg. Shoved him. Gulliver stumbled backward iete and brick

CHAPTER EIGHT
    D etective Patrick looked as unhappy as Gulliver Dowd felt.
    “We did have a uniform guarding the room. They found him unconscious in the stairwell.”
    “What happened to him?” Gulliver asked.
    “Doesn’t remember. He took a pretty good knock on the head. Got a bad concussion.”
    “How about the guy who tried to kill the kid? I’d like to get my knife back.”
    “Very funny, Dowd. We got him on video leaving the hospital through a side entrance,” Patrick said. “There was a car waiting for him. It was a stolen car. F Brooklyn University Hospitalvkzound it in Mill Basin. Motor still running. Seat covered in blood.”
    “Any leads at all?” Gulliver asked.
    “The car’s being gone over by the Crime Scene Unit. If there’s anything to find, they’ll find it. We’ve alerted all hospitals. Walk-in clinics. Doctor’s offices. They have to report anything like a knife wound to us. So where did you say you hit him with the knife?”
    “In the right shoulder blade. Got him good. Went in pretty deep. I didn’t want to risk killing him by hitting