by Ladew, Lisa
Why me?
Why again?
Chapter 7
Two hours later, with Nina dropped at Mrs. Lowell’s house and someone at West’s house replacing the sliding glass door, West sat in a small room at the police department, waiting for someone to tell them something – anything. Katerina was next to him, her head on her hands, sleeping, or at least resting. West stared at the white walls, listening to the maddening tick of the clock, his mind picking apart everything that had happened earlier in the night for the fifth or sixth time.
The door finally opened and Blaise entered, haggard and upset, a deep frown on his face, a folder in his hands. Before West could say anything he held up a hand. “We didn’t catch them. We brought the dogs in and they found a trail but it dried up quickly. They must’ve had a car waiting for them. We questioned all the neighbors but no one saw anything.”
He took out his notebook. “I have a name for you on the overdose victim.”
Katerina raised her head, her eyes bloodshot. “Deputy Director Ronan,” she said.
Blaise looked surprised.
West explained. “They questioned us about him. They wanted to know what he told us.”
Blaise nodded. “He is the assistant to the national security director, who has a direct line to the president, so I’ve no doubt the FBI will be coming in and commandeering this case soon.”
West blew out a breath and put his hands behind his head. “Was this Deputy Director Ronan the one who was shot at the hospital?”
“Yes.” Blaise opened up the manila folder and took out several sheets of paper, spreading them in front of West and Katerina. “Here’s the video from the security cameras at the hospital. Recognize him?”
West and Katerina looked closely. The first image showed a short but powerful looking man with a baseball cap pulled down over his face walking in one of the doors to the hospital. The angle of the security camera didn’t let them see much of his face under his cap. West flipped to the next picture. It showed the man entering a room in the hospital, then the next showed him pushing his way out of the room, and behind him West could see a nurse staring after him with a shocked and horrified expression on her face.
Katerina tapped the picture. “It’s hard to see his face, but I think that is the man who forced him to take the pills in the first place.”
Blaise flipped to a new page in his notebook. “Can you describe him for me?”
“Dark complexion. His mouth is quite thin and twists downward on one side. A scar runs across his chin and down his throat. It’s thick and ugly, like it was a horrible injury and he didn’t have stitches.”
Blaise scribbled in his notebook and then flipped a few pages backwards. “We went back to the house and talked to the owner, Mrs. Dora Hawker. She gave us a guest list but the National Security Director had already left. No one else we spoke to on scene or on the phone later had any idea what had happened. The national security director hasn’t returned our phone calls yet and we have no way of knowing where he is. We saw no security at the house. Mrs. Hawker claimed that the head of security showed up at the door and said they were hired by the deputy director himself. She said she just let them in, but never confirmed it with him.
West made a face. “That’s strange.”
“Not according to her. She said she throws parties like that all the time and plenty of people bring their own security.”
Blaise shrugged as if he didn’t know, then his frown deepened and he took a deep breath. “There’s one more thing I have to tell you, and you need to prepare yourself. It’s bad. Really bad. After engine twenty-two left the hospital this evening, they called off on an apparent car accident on a deserted stretch of Highway 41. When dispatch couldn’t raise them, the fire captain drove out to check on them. All three of them were shot in the head.” Blaise looked down at his notebook and read off the names. “Jeb Higgins and Marco Valdez were dead on scene. Frankie Sanderson is at Westwood general, in surgery, his condition critical.”
Katerina uttered a strangled sob and hid her face in West’s chest. West held her close, feeling his own tears flow down his face. Those were his friends. Even as the thought went through his mind, he knew what was going through Katerina’s thoughts. More bodies on her conscious.
Blaise pressed his lips together for a moment, then kept talking. “That’s why I ended up at your house tonight, West. As soon as I heard that, in conjunction with the shooting at the hospital, I knew they would be coming after you two also. I tried to call you, but you didn’t answer your phone so I drove over as quickly as I could.”
“Thanks, man,” West said, pulling Blaise into a rough, one-armed hug. His friend was a true hero in his eyes, saving them over and over again.
Blaise nodded then pulled back. He still had more business. “The chief wants you two in a safe house tonight.”
West thought this was probably a good idea. He waited for Katerina to say something but she continued to weep into his chest. “Will you go with us?”
Blaise shook his head. “No, but I know the two guards who will be assigned to watch you. They are good guys.”
West nodded. “We have to work in the morning.”
Blaise pressed his lips together. “I don’t think the chief wants you going to work. Look what happened to the firefighters.”
Katerina spoke up, her voice full of emotion but muffled. “I have to go to work. I’ll be fired if I don’t.”
West nodded his head. She was probably right. She’d already missed as much work as she possibly could. He appealed to Blaise. “Look, what if we work only during the day? You said yourself the shooting on the highway happened on a quiet part of it - plus it was in the middle of the night. They won’t dare to attack us in the middle of the day.” He spoke directly to Katerina. “I can get someone to cover the last three hours of our shift, no problem.”
“Let me check with the chief,” Blaise said, his voice resigned. He left the room but was back shortly. “The Chief says OK, as long as you only work while the sun is shining.”
“What about the hospital? I want to visit Frankie.”
“Sorry man, he’s in surgery. No one can see him until tomorrow anyway.”
West nodded, disturbed. Katerina’s hands pulled at his shirt as she started to cry again.
***
An hour later, after a circuitous route to the safe house, Katerina and West lay on top of the covers in one of the bedrooms, fully clothed, with even their shoes on. West couldn’t help but feel that they were in worse danger than they’d ever been in before. He kissed Katerina on her forehead as she trembled slightly against him.
“When is this going to end?” Katerina moaned.
“Shh, baby, shh. It was just bad luck that we got involved.”
“See! That is why I hate this,” she cried. “I hate this power! I hate that this happened! If I didn’t have this fucking curse I never would’ve known about Frank or Dylan or about this guy. None of this would’ve ever happened.”
West was silent for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was resigned. “That’s certainly true. I don’t know what was supposed to happen or what’s going to happen with this mess we’re involved in right now, but I have to say that I’m glad you discovered Frank and Dylan. If you hadn’t, they would both still be killing women. Women would still be trapped in those underground cells.”
Katerina was silent for a long time. West hoped he hadn’t offended her. Finally, he realized she was asleep.
He didn’t close his eyes until the sun shone in the windows, and even then his sleep was uneasy, thin, and troubled, as he dreamed about his friends and the vulnerable woman beside him.
Chapter 8
West and Katerina woke late the next morning. They greeted the two sleepy-looking cops in the living room and checked the kitchen for breakfast. There was no food in the house except for a half-empty jar of pickles in the refrigerator. Katerina turned up her nose at it, thinking she’d never be th
at hungry.
“Is there any breakfast?” West asked the house in general.
“Nah, they forget about us out here, besides it’s lunch time,” the heavyset, older cop on the couch said.
West looked at the clock. They had to be at work in two hours. He looked to Katerina. “Want to go out for breakfast?”
She nodded. “Maybe we can go by the hospital after? Check on Frankie?”
“Good idea.”
He looked back at the officer who had spoken to him. “What’s good to eat around here?”
“The Rise and Shine Cafe is a couple blocks over on Parish. You guys coming back here?”
West shook his head. “Not until dark. Maybe not at all. Is it too much to hope for that the bad guys are caught already?”
The older cop laughed. “That’s never too much to hope for.”
West said his goodbyes and pulled Katerina out the door. They both had changes of clothes at work and they could take showers there too. As they were walking to West’s truck, Katerina squeezed his hand, hard.
“What?”
“I don’t know. I’m getting a bad feeling though.”
West stopped walking. “Should we stay here?”
Katerina looked around at the houses in the neighborhood and the empty street. “I don’t know,” she said miserably. Finally she decided. “No, let’s just go. I feel like something’s coming, but staying here won’t keep it from coming.”
West looked jumpy now and Katerina felt sorry to have done that to him. They climbed into his truck and found the Rise and Shine Cafe within a few minutes. Katerina ordered the big breakfast, which turned out to be three eggs, a side of hash browns, two pieces of toast, and bacon. West watched her as she ate heartily, finishing it all.
“Are we still in danger?” he asked her.
Katerina wiped her mouth. “I don’t think so,” she answered, a smile in her voice. “Maybe I was just hungry.”
They finished their breakfast and West left a pile of bills on the table. As they walked outside, Katerina’s bad feelings returned. She looked around, hoping to spy anything that was out of place. Her eyes were drawn across the street, then up, as a glint of light flashed off something on the roof of the building there. She opened her mouth to say something to West but he was already moving. He tackled her around the waist, pushing her down and to the side, as she heard what could only be two gun shots crack through the humid afternoon air. She felt a searing pain along her left ear as they moved. She cried out, but within an instant she was hidden behind a car, West on top of her, the hot blacktop burning her back where her shirt had rucked up.
West lifted his body off of her slightly and her hands flew to the side of her head. Shot! She was shot! The word reverberated off the inside of her skull eclipsing everything else. She felt hot, sticky wetness on her hand.
West crouched and looked around the car. Katerina climbed to her knees, still holding her ear.
“Help us,” West implored someone. Katerina looked up to see who he was talking to. A man sat behind the wheel of the car they were hiding in front of, looking at them with wide frozen eyes. At West’s words he shook his head in fear. He started his car, threw it in gear, then reversed as quickly as he could.
Katerina sat immobile, unable to believe what had just happened. Some part of her knew she had to move, and quickly. Another half a second, once the car was completely gone, she would be an open target for the gunman again. But West wasn’t frozen in disbelief. He grabbed her by the upper arms and dragged her to the next car before the man who had deserted them was even fully gone.
If Katerina lived to be a hundred years old she would never forget how that man had not only refused to help them, but had almost sentenced them to certain death by leaving.
No shots rang out and Katerina deliberately tried to push the incident to the back of her mind. They had to get out of there. But how? Could they wait until the cops came? Were the cops even on their way yet? When police showed up, would they be lured into the open and then still get picked off, as the police watched in horror?
Another equally terrifying thought struck her. What if a second shooter was on foot and already on his way to their location? Katerina looked around wildly, blood trickling down into her shirt from her left ear. If only they had parked in the front row. But West’s truck was in the second row, and getting to it would require crossing an open area about ten feet wide.
A crack burst across the open air and a tire of the car they were hiding in front of popped with a hiss. West jumped and pulled Katerina close.
The door behind them opened and someone started screaming. Katerina looked around for the screamer, wondering if someone else had been shot. A tall, willowy looking woman stood in the doorway of the cafe, staring directly at Katerina.
Oh yeah, Katerina remembered. I’m shot. Her left hand and the side of her head felt positively slick with blood. It was in her hair and running rivulets down her neck. Under her fingers, she could feel a groove in the side of her head and a ragged hole where the top of her ear should have been.
Another crack and another pop and hiss and a second tire blew. The woman screamed again in the doorway.
“Call the police,” Katerina spit at her, motioning for the woman to go back inside. The traffic ran up and down the street ahead of them like normal. No one but them, the man who had run, and the screamer, had even noticed they were hiding for their very lives.
West pulled at her. “Katerina, see that truck coming? I think we should run behind it. Get ready,” he said, pulling her along before she was ready for anything.
West wrenched her to her feet and was running with her, both of them crouched behind the truck that was slowly traversing the parking lot. It pulled into the only open stall, right next to West’s truck and West ripped the door open, shoving Katerina inside, then climbing in after her.
She watched as two blood droplets flew through the air and stained West’s upholstery. Hydrogen peroxide, she thought crazily as West pushed her down into the foot well.
She’d been here before. Done this already. Back when psychotic Frank Phillips had shot at them in the woods. But she had not been bloody that time. She looked at her left hand as West started the truck and stomped hard on the accelerator, throwing her forward.
“Going to have to get this thing fitted with bulletproof glass,” he growled and she looked at him quickly. He almost sounded like he was enjoying himself. She turned her attention back to her hands, dismayed at how much blood was there. She explored her head with a light touch. Torn, tender skin met her probing fingers.
Katerina clamped a hand back on the wound, thinking it couldn’t be too bad. But she was shot! Any gunshot wound was bad. It needed to be cleaned and disinfected and perhaps sutured to heal correctly. As these thoughts were going through her head, Katerina’s hand grew stiflingly hot suddenly. The heat was soothing against her head and she pressed the hand harder over the wound, not pondering or trying to make sense of it, only reacting. The heat made the pain recede, so she sought it out. A feeling of sudden contentment overtook her, even as the truck she was in turned hard corners and accelerated madly. She felt like things would be OK. She breathed a sigh of relief, as sleepiness flooded her body.
West was talking. She tried to listen but the words didn’t seem to mean much. “… shooter - Rise and Shine Cafe on Parish Street. I don’t know the address. We left. Get the police out there — no we’re not going back, we were the ones being shot at. We’re not stupid.”
West’s words were coming as if from a great distance. She figured out he was talking to dispatch but she couldn’t quite follow the conversation.
“I gotta go,” he finally yelled into the phone. “Just give the cops my number!”
Katerina’s mind couldn’t latch onto the meaning of the words. They flowed by, like the sound of the transmission or the engine.
“You OK?” West called to her, turning another corner, hard.
Her
lips formed an automatic response. “Yes.” Her hand was hotter still, but not burning.
“I’m calling Blaise,” he said.
Katerina lay in the foot well, curled up, feeling safe and protected and trusting. West would take care of her like he always did. She dozed, not knowing why or how, only knowing she felt incredibly tired and like this was a good place and time to rest.
Fluffy, indistinct dreams and visions came to her as she floated in and out of sleep. But then West was shaking her lightly in the foot well.
“Katerina, are you OK?” His voice sounded scared. “Have you lost a lot of blood? We are close to the hospital and we can go in if you need to. I don’t know if it’s safe but if you need a doctor we’re going, police or no police.”
Katerina opened her eyes. She felt tired beyond anything she had ever felt before, but her head didn’t hurt anymore.
“Let me see your injury, Katerina, talk to me!” Katerina heard the fear in his voice and she forced herself upright. She hauled her body onto the seat and looked at West, unable to figure out how she should be acting.
He took her chin gently in his hand and turned it so he could see her injury. His fingers barely grazed her and suddenly she felt a little better, knowing she was unintentionally drawing energy from him, but unable to help it.
“What in the … ?” he said and she couldn’t read his voice. Surprised? Incredulous?
“What?” she said.
“Where’s the blood coming from?”
Katerina’s bloody hand crept to her ear. “Here,” she said, but even as her lips moved she realized her ear felt normal again. Well, mostly whole and normal. She felt a slight depression at the very top of her ear, like a small divot had been carved there.
Her fingers scrabbled to where the long grazing wound had been. She felt only soft unbroken skin there.
She pulled at her hair and felt the sticky blood there. It had happened. She had felt it! The blood was proof!
