by Blake Pierce
The killer gave another pull. Kate felt her body trying to moan, to scream, to even simply grunt.
But it could no nothing. It was helpless now as this pull brought her to her feet and then, as if she had already left her own body, off of the floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
She blacked out for a moment.
She was only aware of this because when the killer gave another violent pull on the rope, the jerking motion at her neck jarred her back to consciousness. Right away, she started gasping for breath. Her lungs were begging for air and her head was starting to ache. As she ran out of oxygen, she was surprised to find that her head was just as agonizing as her lungs; it felt as if there was pressure growing inside of her skull and that it might pop like a grape at any moment.
Her instinct told her to fight. Fight or flight had come and gone and now there was nothing but the primitive human need to survive. And while that panic-laced instinct was indeed front and center, the trained agent still operated somewhere distant, far behind the scenes.
This part of her was aware of two bits of information. It tried focusing on these tidbits, doing everything it could to keep Kate anchored to logic and strategy.
The first thing was that dust, plaster, and other bits of debris were gently raining down on her. She did not have to crane her neck upward (surely that would have been next to impossible as she dangled in the air) to know this was coming from the ceiling, where the base of the massive chandelier was being worked loose from the excessive weight being applied to it.
The second was that with the last pull of the rope, he had stepped closer to her. She didn’t think it was arrogance on his part, but just a lack of awareness. She could easily regain control of her flailing legs and deliver a kick that would land squarely on his forehead. But even then, there was no guarantee that he would drop the rope.
And given the tight, constricted feel of her lungs and the red tinges to everything in her field of vision, she figured she might have about five seconds before she passed out—and maybe never opened her eyes again.
Using this as fuel, Kate centered all of her fleeting strength to her core. She tightened her ab muscles and brought her legs up toward the killer. He saw it, assumed she was trying to kick out, and sidestepped her easily. This actually played to Kate’s advantage, though. She rested her left leg on his shoulder, hooking her knee along the side of his neck. As he tried pulling to the right to escape this weak hold, she cradled the other side of her head with her right leg.
She felt instant relief against her neck and was suddenly able to draw in a series of small breaths as she now had weight beneath her to push off from. The killer tried fighting against her, but she had already started to wrap her calves around the front of his neck. She knew it must look ridiculous, this bastardized version of a triangle choke, but it was working. And surprisingly, the rope that was connecting them was making it more effective than she could have hoped; when he tried pulling away, it only tightened the pressure she applied to his neck.
And just like that, the tables had turned. Now he was the one fighting for breath. And if he continued to try pulling away, he was going to pull her with him, eventually tearing the chandelier from the ceiling.
Little by little, the breaths Kate was now able to draw in were larger. There were still spots in her vision, but her lungs were starting to feel normal again, her chest loosening up as she started to breathe more normally. She figured if she could maintain this hold for another thirty seconds or so, the killer would start to weaken considerably. And if he dropped the rope, she’d be freed. If he would—
Suddenly, the killer stopped fighting against her. Still holding the rope in his right hand, he grabbed her lower legs, trying to loosen the hold. When he realized she had it locked it tight, he started hammering away at her legs. He wasn’t able to get much power behind the punches, as he was having to punch in a backward motion, but the panic and fury in them still made them quite effective.
Kate felt and heard a slightly primal growl escape from her throat as she clenched the sloppy triangle choke tighter. When she did, her right knee reminded her in drastic fashion that it had been hurt. Putting so much force on it sent a shuddering pain through her entire leg, one that resonated all the way up to her stomach.
The killer, sensing some sort of hesitation, continued to pummel her. The punching didn’t do too much damage—until his right fist landed squarely on the side of her right knee.
The pain was immense. Her body reflexively released the hold and the killer was able to get out easily. He was sneering in anger, wasting no time when he stepped free. He grabbed the rope with both hands and gave it a hard tug. Kate felt herself launched upward, the pressure once again tight around her neck. Her legs kicked blindly, but the killer had distanced himself this time, having learned his lesson.
He circled around her, taking the free end of the rope to the stairs. There, he started to tie the rope around the railing. Kate looked from him to the floor beneath her, estimating that there was about five feet of open space between her floating feet and the hardwood floor.
The only thing she could think to do was to reach up for the rope that connected her neck to the chandelier. She figured if she could grab it and pull hard enough, maybe she could pull the chandelier right out of the ceiling. She reached up to do that but found it much harder than she had imagined. It was almost impossible to bend her body that way and even when she did manage to do it, she found that the rope was too far beyond her reach to do anything.
Again, her lungs started to ache, begging for air. Her neck felt like it was being crushed. And in a moment of absolute sadness, she thought of Melissa and Michelle. She thought of Allen. She thought of them getting the news that she had been killed—fifty-six years old and strung up from a rope while she’d been out acting like a thirty-year-old federal agent.
She let out a desperate little mewling noise, knowing that she was out of options…knowing this was how she was going to die.
Her legs started spasming as her body fought for oxygen. The edges of her vision were growing red, then black. Her head felt as if it were slowly floating off of her body and—
The world exploded. Or at least, that’s what it sounded like. An exploding sort of sound, and the musical noise of broken glass, somewhere far off…
And then Kate was falling. She fell to the hardwood floor, striking her right knee yet again. The pain rocketed through her like a surge of electricity, and it was likely what kept her from blacking out.
Through foggy vision, she saw the murky shape of Agent DeMarco getting to her feet. Kate’s sludgy mind put the scene together as well as she could. DeMarco had come in through the sliding glass doors on the back deck, somehow shattering them and spilling into the house. She was currently tacking the killer down, both of them sliding through little fragments of glass.
Kate rolled over onto her side, using her left leg to push herself back against the wall. Gasping and coughing, she watched as DeMarco did her best to pin the killer to the floor. She had a good hold on him but the glass was causing them to slip around more than the hardwood floors would have allowed.
DeMarco drove a hard elbow into the man’s solar plexus and he screamed in what sounded like nothing more than a raspy puff of air. DeMarco used this moment to grab the man’s left arm, tossing him over onto his stomach.
As he rolled, Kate saw the man’s hand reach out, grabbing the plank of wood he had barely brained her with. She opened her mouth to shout a warning but her voice would not cooperate. Her neck was too sore, her windpipe aching from the rope which, she realized, was still wrapped around her neck.
As it turned out, DeMarco saw what he was reaching for. She reached out to stop him from grabbing it, but was a millisecond too late. By the time she was leaning forward to stop his arm, the killer brought the piece of wood up. It struck DeMarco in the side of the head—not too hard, but hard enough to knock her off of him.
He scramb
led to his feet, took in the situation, and realized it might be best to just tuck his tail between his legs and retreat. He started for the door as DeMarco groggily picked herself up off of the floor. Kate looked to her right, saw her Glock still lying on the floor, and reached for it. She was still so weak that when she held out her arm, she nearly fell over on her right side. She grabbed the gun and brought it up just as the killer was unlocking the front door.
Kate pulled the trigger just as the killer opened the door and dashed out of it. The bullet that chipped the door frame was less than two inches from taking the killer right between the shoulder blades.
Kate’s instincts took over and, without thinking, she got to her feet. When weight was put on her right leg, she fell against the wall. DeMarco was on her feet now, rushing for the front door.
“You hurt?” she asked.
“My damned knee,” she managed to croak. Though, as she spoke, she wondered if there might also be something wrong with her throat now, too. Carefully, she removed the rope from around her neck. It was pulled right by the other end, still on the railing, but she managed to slip it off.
DeMarco nodded, satisfied that her partner was not near death, and hurried through the door after the killer. Kate hobbled to the door, too. Her right leg was now pretty much useless, so she could only lean against the doorway and watch as the killer hurried across the front yard, out toward the street. DeMarco was giving chase, but the killer had a good head start and looked to be very fast.
Kate figured DeMarco was so involved in the chase that she could not see the chain of events unfolding before them. From where she stood at the opened front door, Kate saw a car coming down Duffey Street. It was coming fast, but not really speeding. Still, unless the driver was paying very close attention, Kate was fairly certain of what was going to happen next.
Standing at the doorway, she tried screaming out again but it only pained her. The words came out, but they were little more than a whisper.
The killer glanced back to see how much of a lead he had on DeMarco. He did this just as he dashed out into the street. He did not turn back around until he heard the screeching of brakes. But by then, it was too late.
The car—a newer model Lexus—came to an abrupt stop but not before striking the killer. The corner of the hood caught him in the legs. The killer did a little half flip up onto the hood, bounced once, and then fell to the road in a heap. Kate doubted the impact had been enough to kill him, but it had sure as hell slowed him down.
DeMarco took immediate advantage, rounding the corner and falling on the man. The car hid what happened next, but Kate figured DeMarco must be putting handcuffs on the killer. Slowly, Kate lowered herself to the floor and scooted herself out onto the porch. As she reached into her pocket to notify Armstrong of all that had happened, she watched as the driver of the Lexus stepped out.
It was Brett Towers. He had the look of a man who had stepped out of a particularly surreal dream. He looked to the front of his car, rushing around to the side to where DeMarco was still busy with the killer.
Kate pulled up Armstrong’s number and placed the call, not realizing until the phone started ringing that she was going to have to actually speak.
“This is Armstrong,” the sheriff answered.
“Got him. On Duffey Street. It’s not Redman…”
She set her phone down, ending the call. Kate leaned against the door frame and did her best not to cry. In the thirty-four years of her career with the bureau, she had come close to being killed only once before. This had certainly been even closer than that, and it made her realize that perhaps she was indeed too old to keep up.
Her knee flared in pain, pulsing in a sick rhythm, as if to remind her of this.
She looked out to the street where Brett Towers got on his phone and placed a call. He was pacing back and forth, only stopping once to look at the damage the killer had done to the front right corner of his hood. Behind him, DeMarco finally got the killer to his feet, pressing him against the car. As she watched it all go down, she noticed something else.
Sitting half a block down the street, barely visible from the front door of the house, was the old worn-down black Taurus she had approached yesterday before becoming distracted by Regina Voss.
She had a very strong feeling that they would easily discover that it belonged to the man currently pressed against Brett Towers’s car. The same man she had stood in front of and spoken to for a space of twenty seconds or so the day before.
It made Kate feel weary and almost sick. He’d been right there, right in front of her, and she hadn’t known…
It was information she would likely be getting from a hospital room, as she was now convinced that her knee was in much worse shape than she had originally assumed. It continued to throb as she looked out to DeMarco, putting the finishing touches on the first case she had ever led.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
It had taken a lot of convincing, but DeMarco managed to get Kate into a wheelchair when they arrived at the hospital. DeMarco seemed more than happy to push Kate around the hospital while a small team of doctors escorted the killer to a private area to tend to his injuries. As it turned out, the car had caused more damage than Kate had assumed. The killer had at least a few broken ribs and a concussion. It could be worse, which was why the doctors were so quick to treat him.
“And now,” DeMarco said as she wheeled Kate into the second floor waiting area, “we need to get you some attention.”
“I’m fine for now. Just need some pain meds or something.”
“I call bullshit.”
A doctor came rushing up behind DeMarco, having branched off from the group that was tending to the killer. “I agree,” she said. She was a younger woman, eyeing Kate with some odd blend of respect and sympathy. “If not for the knee, then the abrasions on your neck.”
“I want to know about the killer first,” Kate said.
“I’ll update you as information comes in,” DeMarco said. “Now for once, Kate…forget being Superwoman. Get yourself taken care of.”
Kate said nothing, but was willing to admit defeat. She had been whooped pretty good; her neck felt like someone had taken a razor to it, her throat felt as if it had been crushed, and she didn’t even want to speculate on just how badly she had screwed up her knee.
The doctor—who introduced herself as Dr. Kelley while pushing Kate to an examination room—was pleasant enough. She asked no questions about the case, or about how she had managed to hold her own. Instead, she remained quiet aside from the introductions…which Kate appreciated greatly.
As she was wheeled into an examination room, Kate pulled out her phone and noticed she had received a text. It had arrived while she was struggling with the killer. She opened up her text messages. When she saw that the text was from Allen, she almost felt guilty—almost like she did not deserve a man so loving and understanding.
Hope all is well. Sorry things got heated last time we talked. I miss you. I love you. Take care of yourself.
Something in her heart wanted to call him right then and there, to tell him what had happened to her. She was perfectly okay with being alone in these situations but in that moment, she would have given anything for him to be there while Dr. Kelley prepped the room and started asking her questions about the injury.
She answered the questions as well as she could, recounting the first time she had injured the area when she had hyperextended it during a foot chase almost twenty years ago. It felt like she was telling a story about someone else, some other woman she had heard about but had never met. It was not only surreal, but it was another reminder of how this part of her life could have easily closed a few years ago.
“Agent Wise?”
Kate realized that she had zoned out, staring at the wall across the room. She looked to Dr. Kelley and saw that she was offering Kate a small plastic cup with two pills inside.
“For the pain,” Dr. Kelley said. “One will push it off a bit. T
wo will make you feel a little loopy.”
Kate didn’t think twice about taking them both. She did so with the small cup of water that Dr. Kelley also offered her.
“Okay, now,” Dr. Kelley said. “We know the knee is going to need some attention. But let me get a look at that neck while I wait for the specialist to get in. With all due respect, it looks like you’ve been put through the wringer.”
Kate offered a wry smile but only out of courtesy. She just wanted the day to be over. She just wanted the pills to kick in so the pain would stop and, hopefully, she could get that blank kind of rest that only really good pain relievers could provide.
***
“Kate?”
Kate stirred at the sound of her name. She knew the voice uttering it well. She opened her eyes and saw DeMarco sitting by the side of her hospital bed. “DeMarco…why are you still here?”
“Oh, it’s only eight o’clock. You’ve been sleeping for about an hour and a half. I thought you might want the few updates we have on the killer.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Kate said. She was still groggy but did her best to break through it.
“His name is Dougie Hanks. He’s thirty-one years old and grew up in New Castle. He worked at a furniture outlet in New Castle until recently. His mom passed away not too long ago and from what we can tell, he quit his job soon after.”
“Moved to Estes?” Kate asked.
“We don’t know. He has no permanent address in the town, though we have confirmation that he sort of bounced around a few hotels in the area. I’d assume if he was the one that had been squatting in those houses, that’s where he was sleeping.”
“Any idea how long?”
“No. And we’re not being allowed to speak to him just yet.”
