Free The Second Lie (Immortal Vikings Book 2) by Anna Richland Page B

flipped open a notebook. “I’ll need your name—”
    The ambulance stopped, and a paramedic wrenched open the rear doors, cutting off the rest of his question, but she knew what he wanted. Under no circumstances could she show him her passport, so she scrambled after the gurney.
    Stig raised a hand and moaned a word that sounded like her name.
    “I’m here, Will.” She reminded herself to use his new name. “Right here.”
    Her single heel and broken shoe click-slapped alongside the squeaking wheels, making too much noise for her to hear whether the police office followed her and the EMTs. The deeper into the hospital she got, the farther from the police, Wend, Skafe and anyone else. “I promise I won’t leave.”

Chapter Five
    The man was full of plans, crazy plans. On the gurney rolling down the hall, his chest covered in blood, he reached past the trauma nurse pressing a giant pad to his side and yanked Christina close enough to whisper, “Cut the lights and run.” He sounded perfectly normal.
    Another nurse shouldered Christina aside. “Stand back,” she barked. “Family members wait at the end of the hall.”
    Stig let go of her hand and groaned while he pointed at the wall on her right. His first finger stuck out from a loose fist, a gesture that didn’t look random. She glanced where he pointed, but saw nothing except a red fire alarm pull, an extinguisher, a bulletin board and a gray metal panel.
    Staff wheeled the gurney through a set of swinging doors. She couldn’t follow, but she watched through the large glass windows as a team of people worked over Stig.
    He porpoised with a violent seizure and sat straight up, facing her. His right arm raised, then jerked down in a pulling gesture before two nurses shoved his shoulders. With the medical staff occupied trying to push him flat and hook him to monitors, only she saw his lips quirk upward and his left eyelid close and open.
    He’d winked.
    She retreated until her spine hit the tile wall opposite the doors while doubt about his wounds infiltrated her gut. It would be insane, he couldn’t possibly have had Halloween-style fake blood stashed in his pocket, but everything else had been extraordinary. This might be too.
    The hall was bright and long. The gray panel Stig had pointed at was a circuit box. He really had meant
cut the lights.
    She studied the cover of the fuse box, more confident than ever that whatever had happened in Paddington with the gun, he wasn’t dying. Despite the stuff that she’d assumed was blood all over the floor, and the hole she’d seen in his side, he wasn’t injured.
    A small key dangled from the lock on the fuse box, like a gym locker key. Completely accessible.
    She abandoned her useless footwear and glanced left and right. The cop was twenty feet to her left, in profile to her with a phone in his hand. Any minute he’d find out Stig wasn’t another police officer, then he’d confront her with fresh questions. At this point there was more than her business at stake, because the way she’d come to Britain had been the dumbest move she’d ever made. If a momentary plunge in the dark would let her vanish, she’d do it.
    The key turned easily and the neat labels identified the switches inside. Only hit the lights, nothing else, don’t cut the equipment or the trauma bays except—she looked over her shoulder—number three, and this one at the bottom labeled alarm. The little clicks as she flipped the fuses caused an instant reaction. The entrance, the hall and finally the room holding Stig went dark.
    She ran. Stig hadn’t said where, so she ran away from the cop and the faint streetlight coming through the far doors, away from the shouting that erupted in her wake, and deeper into the hospital. Commotion swelled behind her, but she dashed silently in her shredded stockings. The linoleum tiles were cool and slightly slippery beneath her feet. By the time she’d turned a corner, run the length of a corridor