Chapter 16 - Hostage Situation.
Fuck! His arm still hurt! ‘How the fuck long did it take those meds to start working,’ thought the tall stocky blond. Hobbs had located the drinking fountain on the fifth floor fairly quickly and had downed the pain relievers the ER doctor had prescribed. Then, he’d ducked into the men’s room to lay low while he waited for the meds to work. But that had been more than twenty minutes ago and his arm was still throbbing. It probably wasn’t helping matters that he was absolutely exhausted by this point and had been awake for more than twenty-four hours straight. But, he had a plan now and that was enough to keep him on his feet and moving for the time being. Hobbs was determined to find Taylor’s room. He knew he wouldn’t get another chance like this and he wasn’t going to leave this hospital until he found the little fucker and finished this once and for all.
Agonizingly painful arm though, or not, he wasn’t going to find Taylor hiding out here in the toilet. Hobbs took a deep breath and decided to get moving again. He managed to heft his laundry sack back up onto his shoulder and headed out the restroom door.
Outside the bathroom, he turned to the right - opposite from the stairwell he’d come in by - and walked around the corner into the long arm of the hallway. As soon as he’d rounded the corner, however, Hobbs froze in his tracks. Not more than a dozen paces down the hall was a cop sitting in a chair next to the door of one of the patient rooms.
Shit! He knew that the police were probably actively looking for him by now. He’d been lucky so far that nobody in the hospital had recognized him. But, he knew his luck wouldn’t hold out forever.
The boyfriend and that Schmidt guy had to have told the authorities about the scuffle in Taylor’s apartment - that had to be why they had all turned up at the school. After finding Taylor there, he knew that they’d be after him. Would this cop recognize him if he tried to walk past? Even dressed up as a hospital employee, they might recognize him. By now, Hobbs figured they’d have out an APB and maybe have even run his picture on the local news stations. Maybe everyone already knew who he was and what he’d done. What if that football girl had seen the news reports and told the authorities what she saw? What if Trey or Paul had ratted on him to the cops. Fuck! What if Will had told the police that he’d left Hobbs at the hospital last night? They might have the whole hospital staked out. They were probably just waiting for him to stick his nose out of the right door, like a rat caught in a trap. They would all know by now and he’d never escape the shame.
While all these paranoid thoughts flooded his brain, Hobbs was unable to move. He just stood there in the fifth floor corridor with his bag of stinky, foul laundry draped over his back and stared at the cop, waiting for him to rise and come arrest him. The guilt felt like a lead ballast tied to his legs and holding him in place. He couldn’t move. The thought that this cop knew about him, knew of his failings, knew that he couldn’t get away from his horrible life and these degrading thoughts he had about Taylor, knew that he was a failure - all these thoughts and more kept running on a loop through his brain negating any real rational thought. He was sure it was probably all over the news by now and everyone in the state - fuck, everyone in the country - probably already knew all about how he’d been infected and was now a fairy faggot like Taylor and his friends. It was too much. It was so unfair. How had his life come to this!
However, after standing there immobilized for more than a couple minutes without the cop even looking in his direction, Hobbs’ brain unfroze just enough that he wondered why the police officer hadn’t yet come to arrest him. At that very moment, the cop let out a big snuffling snore and dropped the rolled up magazine he’d been holding in one hand, his head tilting backwards to lean more comfortably against the wall behind his chair with his mouth wide open and the loud snoring now bellowing out through his rather large nose. The cop’s new, completely undignified pose, elicited a quiet snort of laughter from the worried fugitive as soon as Hobbs realized he wasn’t in any danger of this particular cop stopping him. Hobbs almost giggled in relief, but stopped himself at the last moment, not wanting to make any noise.
The wanted man figured that his luck must still be holding. He therefore grabbed hold of his waning courage and continued to shuffle down the hall, looking at the patient name on each door as he walked past. When he reached the doorway with the sleeping cop seated nearby, Hobbs thought at first that he should just skip that room - he didn’t want to get any closer to the cop than he absolutely had to - but, the guy seemed so fast asleep that, in the end, Hobbs decided to risk it.
And, there it was! The name he’d been searching for all morning: Taylor, Justin. It was written in large black sharpie marker on the top of the chart sitting in the little plastic tray affixed to the wall on the right side of the door. Finally!
Now, to end this.
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Brian had managed to speed back to the loft, shower and change in record time. He knew he should try to sleep, but he just couldn’t. Not without Justin here. It was hard enough sleeping alone these days (not that he’d admit that to the silly little twat), let alone sleeping solitary here when he knew Justin was still in the hospital and still hurting. The exhausted man figured that, until Justin was out of the hospital, the only place he’d get any sleep would be in the hard plastic chair next to his boy’s bed. It didn’t matter though. All that mattered was that he’d found Justin and the blond was safe. Justin would get better and then come home to the loft and then they could both sleep - together - in their bed where they both belonged. Brian just hoped it would be soon.
So, as quickly as he could, Brian bustled back out of the loft, got in the Vette and drove straight back to the hospital. He did stop to pick up a bag of take out food at the Double Day’s Famous Burgers on the way to - it was Justin’s favorite fast food place but, since Brian regularly and loudly denigrated the greasy high-calorie food, Justin rarely got to indulge. Brian thought that after everything he’d been through, Justin deserved to be indulged just this once and therefore he went out of his way to pick up his boy’s favorite meal. He didn’t even care if this seemed overly sentimental to anybody.
As Brian came rushing through the front door of the hospital with the greasy fast-food take out bag and a cardboard drink caddy in hand, he literally ran into Carl Horvath. The older detective had just come in through a side door and, like Brian, was headed for the elevators up to Justin’s room. The drink caddy tipped immediately and spilled its contents down the sleeve of Carl’s unattractive brown houndstooths sports jacket.
“Watch the fuck where you’re going,” Brian growled at the man who had just spilled Justin’s soda and his coffee, before he recognized the man wearing the atrocious jacket.
“I was watching where I was going, Kinney. You’re the asshole running through a hospital tossing your food all over the place,” Carl groused as he grabbed a wad of napkins out of Brian’s take out bag and tried to sop up some of the messy liquid.
Brian was sure that there was no way to make the ugly shapeless jacket look any worse, so he wasn’t all that upset about the mishap, but Carl was still cursing him out under his breath. He thought briefly about offering to buy Horvath a new jacket just to shut him up, but then realized he had no idea where to find a replacement that would be equally hideous. Fuck it, Horvath and the jacket would survive and Brian was wasting time down here when he could be upstairs with his blond. Therefore, Brian didn’t bother to respond to the ongoing diatribe from the wet detective, and merely scooted around the irate man and resumed his trek towards the elevators.
“Hold up there, Kinney,” Horvath growled again at the retreating brunet, half-running to catch up to the other man before he could escape to the nearest elevator. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, son. Where do you get off kicking my detective out of the room when he was trying to get Justin’s statement and complete his report. Roberts said you practically threw him out of Taylor’s room this morning. Do I need to remind you that this is an active crime investigation and you have no authority to tell my officers when or how to do their duty . . .”
The lecture went on for several minutes. Brian had determined that the quickest way to get away from Horvath so he could get back to Justin was to just let the older man spout for awhile and get whatever it was out of his system. Brian wasn’t really listening and wasn’t about to apologize, so he just stared blankly at the ranting man and waited impatiently till he was through.
“Are you done?” Brian asked when Horvath’s lecture eventually ground to a halt. The policeman was unsure that anything he was saying had even registered in the anxious brunet’s consciousness, but he also realized that making a second attempt to get through to him would be wasted effort, so he gave up for now and just nodded.
“Good,” was Brian’s only comment as he hit the elevator call button again and then promptly stepped in through the doors as they opened.
Horvath just huffed out a laugh and followed Kinney into the elevator.
As soon as the elevator stopped on the fifth floor and the doors had inched open barely wide enough for a body to slide through, Brian was off at a lope towards Justin’s room. Horvath followed at a more reasonable pace. When they neared the end of the hallway where the patient’s room was located, both Brian and Carl realized at the same time that something was wrong. The police guard who was supposed to be watching the room was slouched down in his chair and snoring loudly - completely oblivious to everything going on around him.
“Winston! What the fuck is goin on here!” roared Horvath, waking his sometime guard with a start, interrupting right in the middle of one loud snore and causing the sleeping man to snort and sputter loudly for several moments in confusion before he could reply.
Brian didn’t wait to hear the rest of the dressing down that Horvath was going to give his man. He rushed into the room, focused solely on making sure that Justin was alright. Unfortunately, things were definitely NOT alright inside Justin’s room.
Brian was absolutely stunned by what he saw as he came into the room. Standing over Justin’s bed was the LAST person he ever wanted to see again and definitely not a person he wanted anywhere near his partner. Christopher Hobbs was here, in Justin’s room, and he was standing over the blond’s bed, holding the sleeping patient’s hand in his right hand and pointing a gun at his victim’s head with his other hand.
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Horvath was still berating Officer Winston for falling asleep while on duty outside the door to Justin Taylor’s room when the two men heard the lock inside click. Carl reached over to the door and pulled at it ineffectively, confirming that the click meant someone inside had locked them out of the patient’s room. The lead detective was already in a pissy mood after a rather long morning and finding his officer asleep on the job definitely hadn’t made matters any better. He was not amused by Kinney’s antics in locking the door now. Carl had work to do - he needed to finish the interview with Taylor and get back to the station to coordinate the search for Hobbs. Screw Kinney if he thought now was a good time for a little hanky-panky with his boyfriend. They could fool around later. Right now, Horvath was just getting even more pissed off.
“Kinney! Unlock this door, you asshole. I need to finish up with Taylor and get back to the station. You can suck each other off when I leave!” Carl yelled through the door, knocking loudly when his words alone got no response.
There was no response at all to Horvath’s knocking and yelling. In fact, it was eerily quiet - there was no noise whatsoever coming out of the locked hospital room. The veteran policeman knew immediately that something was very wrong.
Horvath thrust his right hand under the lapel of his jacket and pulled his service revolver out of its shoulder holster. He made sure the safety was off and was just about to knock again on the locked door when he was interrupted by a startled gasp from the uniformed officer standing next to him. Horvath looked over at a confused and shamefaced Robert Winston, still staring blankly at his hip holster where his own gun was supposed to be. The strap that would normally hold the gun in place was unsnapped and the leather strap was flapping freely. There was no gun there. A quick survey of the area around the chair where the officer had been napping didn’t turn up the missing gun either.
Winston looked up at his commanding officer with a face full of worry and apology. Carl Horvath growled at him but didn’t say anything - there wasn’t really time for that now. If the seasoned detective’s instincts were right, and for once he hoped that he WASN’T right, there was a high probability that they’d find Winston’s missing gun along with their missing principal suspect inside this locked room with the victim they were supposed to have been protecting.
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Brian had been so stunned by what he found that he was slow to react. Hobbs, though, had reacted immediately as soon as the Boyfriend had come storming in. With a slow, vindictive smile aimed in the Boyfriend’s direction, Hobbs cocked the hammer on the gun he was holding and ordered Kinney brusquely, “Lock the door!”
With the gun pointing directly at Justin’s temple, Brian could barely breathe, let alone move.
“I said, Lock the Fucking Door!” Hobbs directed in a louder voice, jarring Brian’s attention away from the unconscious blond in the bed and onto the sneering ex-jock. “Move it, now, or I’ll shoot him.”
Brian moved quickly then. He was only a pace away from the extra-wide solid wood door. It took only a moment for Brian to turn to the door, flip the lever that would slide the lock into place and then turn back to the tableau inside the room. Brian was just about to take another step forward, intent on getting to Justin, when he was interrupted by another imperative from Hobbs.
“Stop right there! Don’t come any closer,” the gunman demanded.
Brian immediately obeyed, holding up both hands in a ‘surrendering’ motion, trying not to startle the armed and jumpy man that was still holding a gun on his partner. When Hobbs indicated with a jerk of his head that he wanted Brian to move over towards the far side of the bed, the worried older man complied without comment. As soon as the tall brunet was far enough away from the door, Hobbs ordered him to sit down in the hard plastic chair where Brian had been sitting most of the previous night. Unfortunately the chair had been pushed back away from the bed and Brian wasn’t close enough to reach out to Justin or get any closer to Hobbs. All he could do was sit there, a couple meters away from the bed and watch Hobbs, hoping that the psycho wasn’t going to do anything more to hurt his lover.
“Fuck! Now what? Why is everything always going wrong? . . . I just want to make things right again . . . the way they were before . . . You understand that, right? I didn’t really want to hurt you . . . You left me no choice . . . Why did you do it, Taylor? Why? . . . I just can’t do this anymore. Everyone KNOWS . . . I want my fucking life back, Taylor! I want to be normal again. Why did you do this to me? . . ."
Hobbs’ whispers kept going on and on. Brian could only hear one word in ten but what he did hear was freaking him out. He knew that Hobbs had to be deranged to have tried to bomb the club and to hold Justin prisoner in their old high school, but he wasn’t prepared to hear just HOW deranged the man truly was. The babbling, ranting monologue just kept on, the man’s skewed reasoning leading him in endless loops. And, all the while, Hobbs was holding and stroking Justin’s hand, caressing his arm and smiling down on the sleeping form like he would a lover.
The most creepy thing of all was the way Hobbs was using the barrell of the gun he still had pointed at Justin’s head to playfully brush through the beautiful golden locks. Each time the gun moved against the sleeping man’s temple, it literally made Brian sick to his stomach. Luckily, Hobbs was so focused on the object of his obsession that he was no longer paying attention to the Boyfriend in the corner and he missed the disdainful looks that the brunet kept shooting his way.
All this time, Brian could hear Horvath outside the door, knocking and yelling, but he didn’t have time to focus on what the man was yelling. He had to keep watch on Hobbs and Justin right now. Carl would have to figure things out for himself. Brian wasn’t going to answer the police or do anything else that might jeopardize his lover’s life. Right now it seemed that Hobbs might have forgotten his very presence, which was good. If he just sat quietly, Brian would be able to watch out for Justin and hopefully stop Hobbs from doing something drastic.
At least that was what Brian was hoping.
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