Chapter 6 - The Watchers of Mount Vernon Street
I didn't waste another second.
I pulled my phone out and dialed Croft’s private line.
It rang once. Twice. Three times.
"Julian," I barked the moment the line connected. "Where is Grace Harper?"
"She's in the private transport, Gabriel," Croft replied, sounding defensive and rattled. "We're two blocks from Massachusetts General. Her condition has deteriorated. The transport physician says her pupils are non-reactive. They’re running a broad-spectrum tox screen right now."
"Listen to me very carefully," I said, my voice dropping into the icy, precise cadence of an apex predator. "Do not take her to Mass General."
"What? Gabriel, that's absurd, she needs a level-one trauma—"
"Julian, if that ambulance pulls up to the public emergency bay, Grace Harper will not survive the night. Marcus Hayes has people on the board of trustees. He has people in the municipal dispatch."
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. Julian Croft had lived in Boston for seventy years; he knew exactly who Marcus Hayes was, and he knew the bodies that had floated to the surface of Boston Harbor during the Big Dig construction in the nineties.
"Where do I take her?" Croft whispered, his professional veneer entirely stripped away.
"The naval reserve station at the Charlestown Navy Yard," I said. "Pier 4. Commander Jack Miller owes me three separate favors regarding his son's court-martial. Tell him you are there on my personal instruction. Put Grace in the military infirmary under armed marine guard. If anyone without a Department of Defense badge comes within twenty feet of her, Miller has orders to shoot them."
"Gabriel... what have you gotten yourself into?"
May you like
"Get it done, Julian. Now."
I ended the call and turned back to Samuel Vance.
