He dropped the bolt gun. Gripping her shoulder, spinning her around, his empty hand raised and fisted—already rocketing toward her face.
She spun, using the momentum he created to swing out with the blade, even as she slipped the punch. It grazed her temple, catching her in the ear. The blade in her hand arced upward, separating the fabric of his shirt and the flesh beneath it.
She missed her target, slicing his chest instead of his throat. He roared, the hand on her shoulder gripping her, pulling her closer before throwing her into the wall, her hip slamming into the door jam. Knife clattering to the floor, spinning out of reach.
She didn’t scramble for it. She didn’t assess the damage she’d caused. She didn’t wait for him to attack. She just turned and ran.
87
She fought to stay upright, her abused ankle wobbling and bowing with each heavy footfall. Down the corridor he’d dragged her through. Around the corner. Passed closed doors.
Like Sabrina hoped, he followed her.
Just like old times, right, Darlin?
She ignored him, focusing on the footsteps behind her. The frustrated bellow, filled with rage and pain behind her, getting closer.
Keep moving. Don’t look back.
Her own voice again, urging her to focus. The sound of rain grew louder and louder until the sound of him behind her became lost in the clamor of it. The doorway came into view and the staircase beyond it. She looked past it, concentrating on the beam of her flashlight that still spilled across the floor.
Hands planted on her back and he shoved her with a roar that sounded like her name. She stumbled into the wall, flinging herself to the side, through the open doorway.
She fell face first at the foot of the stairs—her landing followed by a bright, breathless pain she recognized instantly. Manny fell with her, the bulk of his body pressing her into the floor, the knife Michael gave her, lodged in her back.
“You’re mine, Melissa,” he screamed at her, spittle hitting the back of her neck. She felt, it the shift of his hand, repositioning his grip on the hilt of the blade as he readied to lift it. Drag it from her to stab her again. “You’re mine and there ain’t—”
She rolled, burying blade even deeper, ripping it from his hand. As she rolled, she swung, crashing her fist into his jaw, breaking teeth. Fracturing bone. The force of the blow lifted him, created space between then and she planted her boot in it, kicking out.
Suddenly, she was free. She rolled over again and started to crawl.
Get the flashlight. Find the gun. Save Ellie.
Behind her, he laughed, the sound of it jagged and gleeful.
“You know where we are, Darlin’? This is room is special,” Manny said. The voice that carried his words was his. Their tone and cadence belonged to someone else. “This is where I fucked you—”
She kept crawling, attention focused on the wash of light in front of her.
“—where I killed you.” He’d found his feet, she could hear him, the shuffling limp of him coming after her. Moving faster than
Get the flashlight. Find the gun. Save Ellie.
He was standing over her now and he planted his foot in the small of her back, pushing her flat against the floor. “The way you bled for me... the way you fought me.” He stooped, gripping the hilt of the knife, jerking it from the meat of her shoulder. “And now here we are again, just like the good ol’ days.”
Don’t listen. Focus. Finish it.
She stretched, arm and hand splayed out, fingers brushing against the long handle of the flashlight. Pushing it further out of reach. Above them, the rain fell. A torrent of water poured through the open hatch. Running down the stairs in sheets.
He hooked his foot into the wedge of her shoulder, flipping her over, arms flopping above her head. Kneeling, he straddled her hips, grinning down as he ran his empty hand over her torso, pushing her shirt up, exposing her belly. He bowed his head, running reverent fingertips across the collection of scares that splayed across it, reading what they said. “I gotta admit,” he said, dragging the tip of the blade across her flesh, leaving a thin, red ribbon of blood in its wake. “I’m a little nervous, Darlin’. It’s almost like our first time, all over again.”
Sabrina stretched her right arm into the dark, her fingers splayed wide, the tips of them digging into the hard floor beneath her. The tip of her middle finger brushed against something round and smooth. The trigger guard of her gun.
Finish it.
She dragged the Kimber toward her, even as she lifted it, swinging the barrel of it toward him, burying it in his chest. The smile on his face dimmed. His eyes flared. She pulled the trigger twice in rapid succession, slugs slammed into his chest, blowing out the back of his ribcage.
___
Sabrina kicked him off of her and started crawling. Hands and knees, one after the other. Her shoulder had snapped back into place when Manny threw her into the wall but it was still slow going. It still hurt like a bitch.
You think it matters, Darlin’? You think you’ve won?
She’d made the stairs and started up, fingers gripping around stair treads as she clawed her way upward, toward the open hatch.
I’m still here. I’m always gonna be here.
Rain lashed at her face and hands, harder and harder with every inch she climbed, the voice inside her head growing fainter and fainter.
You’re mine, Melissa. You belong to me.
She made the landing and she tucked her chin into her chest against the rain that battered her.
Where you think you’re goin’? You can’t leave me here.
“Watch me,” she said, her hands and knees sliding over the lip of the hatch. She fell forward, through the open doorway, battered face pressed against rain-cooled concrete
She made it out. She was free.
88
Sabrina sat in a blue plastic chair, rather than the on the bed she’d been ordered into. “Put this on,” the nurse said, tossing a johnnie onto the bed beside her before rushing out, yanking the curtain closed behind her. As soon as she was gone, she hobbled over to the supply cabinet and jimmied the lock. Finding an ACE bandage, she used it to wrap her ankle. It was still swollen. Not broken but the sprain was bad enough to slow her down. Afterward, she wadded up the hospital gown and used it to stop the blood weeping from her shoulder blade.
Now, she waited. Truth was, she’d have left hours ago if not for the fact she’d been stabbed in a place she wasn’t able to stitch up herself. So, instead of making a slick getaway, she sat, pressing her shoulder into her wadded up hospital gown, watching CNN with the captioning on because she couldn’t reach the remote.
“Wanna play doctor?”
She looked up to see Church, wedged into the space between the curtain and the wall, wagging a surgical staple gun in her direction. In her other hand was a paper bag. She was wearing scrubs—bright purple bottoms with a multi-colored, tie-dyed top. Her hair was in a ponytail. The badge clipped her shirt front was turned backwards to hide the ID photo on it. If Sabrina saw her in the hall, she’d have walked right past her without a second glance.
Beyond her, nurses and doctors buzzed around, soft-soled shoes squeezing against worn linoleum while they tangoed with an assortment of uniform officers and reporters. It was starting all over again. Santos had already called twice with interview requests from local news stations—his superiors were pushing him to hold a press conference. It was only a matter of time before the story went national. “Yeah,” she said as she repositioned her grip on the wadded up hospital gown. “The sooner I stop leaking the sooner I can get the hell out of here.”
“Amen to that, Kitten.” Church slipped fully into the curtained room to circle behind her, snagging another chair to settle in behind her. A moment later, she heard the snap of surgical gloves being pulled on.
“How’s Ellie?” she said, hissing out a slow breath when Church peeled the johnnie away from her wound.
Church sighed. “She l
ost a lot of blood. Fractured skull. Severe concussion,” she said like she was reading off a grocery list. “They’re worried about brain damage.”
Listening to the commotion in the hall, she remembered when it had been her. The bright lights and the noise. All those frantic hands, fighting to keep her here. To save her when all she wanted to do was float away. She wished it was her this time too. She wished it was her instead of Ellie. Not because she wanted to die but because if Ellie did, she’d never forgive herself.
“Hey.” Church’s hand landed on her good shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “If she’s anything like her sister, she’s going to fight her way through,” she said, digging her finger into the hole Manny’s knife made in her shirt, opening it wider so she could assess the damage. “She's going to be okay—they both will.”
She nodded, smiling despite everything that’d happened over the last couple of hours. “You’re getting pretty good at that.”
“At what?” Church cleaned the stab wound on her shoulder, dabbing it with betadine-soaked gauze.
“Pretending to care.”
Church laughed, pulling the wound closed with one hand while straddling the stapler over the gash with the other. “I’m a fast learner,” she said, right before she pulled the trigger.
“How’d you find me?”
“Remember room service in Helena?” She pulled the trigger, the staple shooting forward, anchoring into the meat of her shoulder. “I ordered the entire menu and poured you a glass of orange juice?”
She remembered. She’d been sure it’d been poisoned. “I remember.”
“I put a tracker in it.” Church pinched. Pulled the trigger. “You’re welcome—and don’t worry, it’ll flush out of your system in a few days.”
After a few moments, she asked another question. “Where will you go?”
“If I told you that, I’d have to kill you, Kitten,” she answered, repeating the pinch and shoot process as she followed the line of her wound.
Sabrina thought of the man she’d called Jared. The man who was her brother, if not in blood than in shared experience. “Back to your family?”
Church paused, pressing the stapler into her shoulder. “That’s where you and I differ, Kitten.” She pulled the trigger again, setting the staple deep into her shoulder. “I don’t have a family to go back to.”
She breathed through the pain, eyes glued on the screen in front of her. The banner on the bottom of it read LIVE: SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA. Above it, a small group of men in expensive suits gathered around each other, shaking hands and clapping shoulders on the steps of the capital building, pausing for the flashbulbs before disappearing inside. “You can always—”
One of those men was Ben.
She focused on the words scrolling across the bottom of the screen, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
Senatorial candidate Benjamin Shaw met with a committee to discuss his potential appointment to the California Senate by Governor...
The stapling had stopped but the head of it was still pressed into her shoulder. She didn’t have to see Church’s face to know she’d just seen the same thing she had. “Did you know?”
Church pulled the trigger a final time. “Did I know what?” she said, setting the stapler down. “That he sold his soul to father to save everyone you’ve ever loved?” She wiped the wound with betadine a final time before covering it with gauze. “Yes.”
“He told you not to tell me, didn’t he?” Sabrina said, looking at Church over her shoulder.
“Yes.” Church anchored the gauze in place with a length of surgical tape, smoothing it out with her thumbs before meeting her gaze. “There’re some military types, poking around. Asking why the FBI didn’t contact them before poking around in their backyard.” she said before standing. She reached down, retrieving the paper bag from the floor before setting it on the bed. “Just to be safe—I think you should take the long way home.”
89
Easing her jacket over the gauze padding on her shoulder, Sabrina winced a bit as she zipped it up over the ballistics tank. Her shirt lay in a tattered mess on the floor.
Tucked into it was the chain Michael gave her. The key hanging from it would get her home. She cast a final look at the television. The story about Ben’s pending senatorial appointment had been replaced by an image of Detective Santos standing in front of the hospital. Mark Alvarez stood next to him, hands dug into the front pockets of his Dockers, face tilted toward the sidewalk. Both of them looked uncomfortable but Alvarez wore an expression of dazed panic that said he knew his life was about to change. She understood exactly how he felt.
The phone in her pocket let out a buzz. A text from Church.
Hospital surveillance is down for the next fifteen minutes.
She looked inside the bag Church left behind. A baseball cap and two medication bottles. Tramadol and 800 Ibuprofen—one for pain, the other for swelling—and what looked like a turkey sandwich with a note taped to it.
Don’t worry, Kitten, it’s not poisoned.
Her phone buzzed again.
Shake a leg, Kitten.
She tucked her phone away before slipping the hat over her head. Tugging the bill of it low, over her brow, she left the curtained room she’d been stuck in. Formulating an escape route on the fly, she headed for the elevator. The emergency room entrance was a zoo, clogged with reporters and even more uniforms. Better to go up and over. She’d use the sky bridge, cross to a different tower and ride back down before exiting the hospital from the back. She’d catch a bus to the bank and the safety deposit box Michael—
The elevator dinged, a split second before the doors slid open and she slipped in, keeping her face tipped down as she pressed the button for the fourth floor. The doors began to close but bounced back when someone stuck their hand into the car. She didn’t have to look up to know who it was.
“The doctors are cautiously optimistic about Ellie’s recovery,” Val said quietly, “They told me the FBI agent who brought her in saved her life, so... thank you.”
“Ellie’s a fighter.” She nodded, eyes stuck on the button panel in front of her, remembering what Church said earlier. “Like her sister.”
Val was quiet for a moment. “You’re leaving,” she said, her voice broken and sharp.
She nodded her head, the movement of it drawing a small sound from the back of Val’s throat. “Riley dropped out of college.” Val looked up at her, pleading with her. “She’s getting ready to take the SFPD entrance exam. She feels like she's supposed to follow in your footsteps,” she said, her tone laced with panic, trying to find a way to make her stay. “Like it’s her job to finish what you started now that you’re... gone. Maybe if she knew that you—”
“No.” She shook her head, even though the thought of Riley as a cop filled her with a dizzying mix of anxiety and pride. “She can’t know. No one can know,” she said, finally raising her gaze to meet her friend’s. “You have to forget about me. Move on. All of you.”
Val nodded and looked away, rubbing a gentle hand over her belly while she let out a slow breath. “I know.” When she looked back at her, there were tears in her eyes. “Are you happy?”
She thought of the house she shared with Michael. Of the kids, running through the woods. Grilled cheese and pancakes. Her dog sunning herself on the front porch. “Yes,” she whispered and she was.
The elevator dinged, signaling their arrival to the fourth floor.
She reached down, finding her friend’s hand dangling between them. “Thank you, for saving me. For fighting for me, even when I didn’t want you to,” she said, giving Val’s hand a gentle squeeze.
Val smiled through her tears. “Anytime.”
When the elevator door slid open, Sabrina exited alone.
90
Yaak, Montana
October ~ 2016
“Here you go, miss…”
The truck slowed, its vintage engine easing from growl to purr while it rolled i
nto the stop. He pulled over onto the soft shoulder of the road, mindful not to jostle the young woman who rode in the truck bed. He’d picked her up Just outside of Eastport, walking along the 95 like she’d been out for a Sunday stroll instead of stranded in the middle of nowhere. She hadn’t stuck out her thumb or flagged him down but he pulled over anyway and asked where she was headed.
“South,” she’d said, swinging a long leg over the back of his truck and settling into the bed of it.
“Miss...” He hesitated before reaching for her through the truck’s rear sliding window, hand hovering just above her shoulder. He didn’t want to touch her. He’d make that mistake about a hundred miles back, tapping her on her shoulder when he pulled over in Moyie Springs for gas and to tell her this was as far as he’d be willing to take her. She’d damn near snapped his hand off at the wrist for his trouble.
She’d filled both gas tanks on his Ford—the primary and the auxiliary—by way of apology and offered his five-hundred dollars if he’d take her as far as Yaak. He’d been on his way to Troy but seen the wad of cash she had on her when she paid for his gas so he figured she was good for it. He also figured driving a few hours out of his way’d be a hell of a lot easier than trying to take it off her.
She’d been sleeping since they passed the Golden Nugget, about fifty miles back. Or at least he thought she was sleeping. She wasn’t much of a talker and his offer to her to ride up front with him had been met with nothing more than a slight narrowing of her eyes, shadowed by the brim of her battered ball cap and a polite but firm no thank you.
He sighed, rubbing a hand over his chin, the stubble that covered it rasping with each pass of his palm. The nervous gesture sent a twinge through his abused wrist, reminding him of what she’d told him while he cradled his wrist and she pumped his gas. I don’t like being touched.
The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 2 Page 67
