The BATF agent verified her identification and accepted the check.
The lady stuffed her Etruscan gold back into her corset with wounded dignity and snapped shut the case, moving deeper into the departures area with an autocratic sniff.
“Next!”
Gate announcements sounded every ten minutes until the five-minute mark, after which the loudspeaker warnings began coming every minute, reminding stragglers they were running out of time. At the three-minute warning, a familiar voice from somewhere behind him startled Skeeter into glancing around.
“Skeeter!”
He caught a glimpse of Rachel Eisenstein pushing through the crowd. She was panting hard, clearly having run most of the way from the infirmary.
“Rachel? What’s wrong?” He entertained momentary, panic-stricken visions of Bergitta having thrown a blood clot from that beating or something else equally life threatening. As Shangri-La’s Station’s chief of medicine pushed her way through to Skeeter and Molly, he grasped her hand. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Rachel blinked in startled surprise. “Wrong? Oh, Skeeter, I’m sorry, of course you’d think something’s happened to Bergitta. Nothing’s wrong at all, other than I just finished triage from that riot and decided I’d better work Primary, too, just in case.” She patted a heavy hip pack. “Brought all the essentials. I was just trying to get here before the gate opened, hoping I might find someone I recognized who already had a good spot. Hi, Molly!”
Skeeter drew a long, deep breath and slowly relaxed. “Well, we’ve got a decent spot. You’re welcome to share.”