“Not all of them are nice.” Marisol pursed her lips like she was tempted to say more.
“Well, if you give me an address, I’ll send you one when I get home so you can play with me and Kev.” I figured Kev wouldn’t mind tricking out another one with satellite capability. “And you can use mine now if you want. Pretty sure some trolls are heading toward the homestead, so you can fight them off.” I showed her which buttons to click while her grandmother looked on.
Luz’s heart rate was within normal range, but she was still in very critical condition. Back in Tennessee, I would have access to a lab that could do bloodwork, a cath lab, and a whole host of surgical options, and I found myself enraged yet again that none of those things were possible for her. With so much crime and corruption around, even the best hospitals weren’t able to help the people who needed it most. But there had to be something the Rogers Family Foundation could do.
I got out my blood pressure cuff and showed it to Luz with a smile, hoping she could follow my English if I used props. “Let’s check this one more time, okay?”
“Okay,” she answered tiredly.
When I heard Riggs’s boots clomping through the front entrance, I told him without looking up, “When we get back, I’m talking to my grandfather. There has to be something we can do about—”
“Manos arriba,” a rough voice—definitely not Riggs’s voice—said behind me. Marisol jumped off the bed with a gasp, dropping the Horn on the coverlet, and lifted both hands in the air.
“Eep!” I whirled around to find a painfully skinny man holding a big, giant machine gun pointed right at me, so I raised both my hands too. My stethoscope dangled uselessly from my ears. “I don’t have my wallet!” I stammered out, like this was some kind of generic Nashville mugging situation.
“Eres el doctor?” Skinny demanded.
A guy with a beard holding a second giant gun filed in behind him and trained his gun on Marisol, while a third guy stood in the door with his big weapon trained on the street.
Really, one gun would have been plenty. Plenty.
Marisol cleared her throat. “El doctor?” she repeated, looking at me significantly, like she wasn’t sure why I wasn’t speaking.
Oh. For the briefest of seconds, I thought, “What would Riggs do?” and concluded that he would not want me to volunteer any information whatsoever. But considering the stethoscope dangling off me, it would be kinda hard to pretend I was just a lost tourist, right?
“Si, um… Y-yo estoy el doctor.” I paused and licked my lips nervously. “I mean, yo soy el doctor. Whichever. Please don’t shoot me.”
“Soy,” Marisol whispered. “Soy for things that don’t change. Estoy for things that change, like weather.”
“Hunh.” This was distracting enough that I turned my head away from the gun to look at her across the bed. “That’s so interesting. I didn’t realize Spanish verbs were—”
“Cállate!” Beardy barked out, and I jumped.
On the bed, Luz began breathing rapidly, her eyes filled with fear.
“You guys, can we cool it with the guns, please? This woman is very ill. Her heart. Her corazón.” I took a chance and lowered one hand to place over my own heart in demonstration.
Beardy and Skinny exchanged a look. Skinny raised his eyebrows significantly, and Beardy grunted and called to Silent, over by the window, who nodded in agreement.
“¿Eres cardiólogo?” Beardy demanded.
Did that mean cardiologist? Uh…”Yes. I mean… si?” Riggs was not gonna be happy with me.
Beardy and Skinny had an extended conversation in Spanish too rapid for me to begin to follow, but included the words “enfermo” and “corazón” and, inexplicably, “estupido mierda,” which I thought meant some stupid piece of shit had a sick heart, but I couldn’t be sure.
Then Silent spoke up and said, “Secuestralo,” which, judging by the way Marisol’s eyes widened, was not a good thing.
“Kidnap,” she whispered to me from the corner of her mouth, which was really helpful since then both of us started to panic.
“¿Cómo se llama?” Skinny asked me.
“Dr., um….” I had a mental image of them sending a ransom demand to my elderly grandfather. “Carter?”
Skinny nodded. “Vamonos, Dr. Carter.” He grabbed me by the arm.
Ah, fuck. Riggs had been ready to kill me for vamonos-ing with sweet Marisol on a mission of mercy. He wouldn’t hesitate to murder me if I vamonos-ed with armed men. But also, what else was I supposed to do when they were holding a gun on Marisol? At least I knew he’d find me and rescue me.
I nodded like a bobblehead. “Okay, yeah, we—”
The sound of happy whistling drifted in the door before Riggs did, and I saw him stop dead the second he realized we weren’t alone, his entire body going on high alert. He glanced at me, trying to convey some kind of message, which I sincerely doubted was “Hey! I’ve been trained for exactly this type of situation! I will disarm these hostiles and have us on the road to Gelada in no time!” Even a guy like Riggs could not handle three gunmen at once.