Something about his actions made the man lying on the bed struggle to remember where he had seen the orderly before. True, the man was wearing a mask but his movements- they seemed familiar in some way, a negative way.
St Just had been sedated the previous night and he knew that his movements were sluggish.
But he was alert enough to know something was off, when the man looked over his shoulder in a desperate way, as though he expected someone to barge in any minute and stop him.
St Just frowned as he thought of the other nurses who had come in with confidence and had fixed the bag on the IV stand with no hesitation. This man was fumbling and the patient heard him swear coarsely.
Not an orderly, definitely not hospital staff.
But St Just’s hands were not moving fast enough to keep up with his thoughts which were sending out alarm bells.
The man tried to stab the IV bag unsuccessfully with his syringe. He did it three times, getting more and more flustered with each attempt.
Now St Just was convinced; Something was definitely off.
He opened his mouth and said slowly,
“What are you doing?”
The man whirled around, his eyes above the mask widening in shock.
The patient could see the whites of his eyes and with some horror, he guessed that eh man who was disguised as a nurse, was as high as a kite.
And then it hit St Just in a flash. He recognised the man by the scar on his forehead.
This was one of the men who had been on the ship all those days ago, one of the traffickers who had got away.
Someone who was working for Gabriela Perez.
And just as that thought hit him, he knew he was too drained to overpower the stocky man who had jerked out an evil-looking knife as he prepared to attack the hapless St Just.
In an instant, St Just was up, pushing his tired, medicated body to its’ limits as he yelled,
“HELP!!!”
The man spun around, anger and frustration in his eyes. He had unsheathed a sharp knife and he swung around to St Just, intent on attacking him lethally.
*
O’Grady and Bianca were in the corridor leading to St Just’s room when they noticed that the door was unguarded.
“The f*ck is Lennox?” grumbled O’Grady and Bianca felt her body go cold. A premonition of some sort, she would think later.
Suddenly, all hell broke loose.
A familiar voice could be heard, shouting,
“HELP!”
They looked at each other, the two loves. It was St Just and he sounded weak but desperate.
In a flash, Liam O’Grady had darted ahead and was in the room, just as the orderly raised his hand to plunge the bloody knife which he held in his hands once again. The Irishman roared and fell on him, unthinking of the danger the assistant presented. His only thought was his friend and brother, who was bleeding, white-faced as he clutched his arm.
Bianca was in the room, having screamed for help as she ran after O’Grady and suddenly, a s O’Grady wrestled the intruder to the floor, having brought him down with a series of hard blows, knocking him to the ground, and overpowering him,
The room was flooded with nurses and doctors, hospital staff who had come to investigate on hearing the shuts.
“How is my brother, you f*cking morons?” shouted O’Grady, his shirt hanging pen, his face dark with rage as he continued to grip the man who had fallen to the ground, his face tense as he looked up at the burly boxer.
Some of O’Grady’s men had run in behind them and they had lifted the hapless would-be assassin
He shoved a nurse out of the way and bent over his brother,
“Ah, lad, don’t ye go and die on me now, Saint,” he said and despite himself. Finn St Just smiled, despite the pain in his throbbing shoulder. He had managed to place his arm over his chest when the man had launched his attack and now, his arm looked mangled and torn.
A doctor moved O’Grady away, saying calmly,
“We need to stich him up, Mr O’Grady.”
Suddenly there was a shout from the corridor and a muffled gunshot. Whipping his head around, O’Grady ran from the room, fearing the worst. And he was not very surprised to see the dead body of the man who had tried to kill St Just. “Boss…he just…grabbed my gun…” Stuttered the man who had been leading the assailant from the scene. O’Grady ran a weary hand over his handsome features. He was not really surprised to find the man dead, having blown out his brains.
Someone had scared him to such an extent, he had preferred death to being interrogated.
He sighed as another thought struck him; where were the men who had been guarding St Just?
They had been part of Louis Delano’s’ outfit, hadn’t they…?
*
Gabriela Perez was furious when she heard the news of how her man had taken his life after an unsuccessful attempt on St Just’s life.
Just as well, she mused as she sipped her scotch pensively. Or she would have killed him and it would not have been an easy death.
She gnashed her teeth.
“Lucien Delano,” she thought, I will come after you, but before that…” her eyes lit up. The little Latino girl who was being shared by eh brothers O’Grady and St Just was pregnant, wasn’t she?
The tall elegant Argentine woman tapped her fingernails thoughtfully on the table as he planned…
Taking her out, along with her unborn child would be far more hard-hitting to those two meddling brothers.
Smiling in anticipation, she began to draw up her plans.
*
Lucien Delano heard about the abortive attack as he sat at the dining table. He wiped his lips carefully and looked across at his Woman, who was trying to sulk but her naturally sunny disposition tended to spoil things.
He pulled her as she walked past, swinging her shapely hips, and forced her onto his lap. Quickly, he gave her the bare details of what had happened and her eyes widened in shock and sorrow.
“Louis has lost two of his trusted men,” he added casually, hiding his fury at that.
He did not give her the gory details of how their bodies had been found in the washroom stalls, knifed brutally.
“Woman,” he growled, kissing her neck, “This is why I need to keep you home, my love.”