Blown Away

by Shane Gericke

  Emily exploded from the river and jammed the shard between his legs. “Ahhhhhh!” Marwood screamed. “You stinking cunt—”

  “Nobody calls me that, Brady Kepp!” Emily screamed, shattering Marwood’s left kneecap with a river rock. He flopped sideways, squealing like a stuck pig. She flattened his nose, then raked his face with her fingers, trying to pull his eyes out. He counterattacked, hurting her bad with every punch. He was insanely motivated, and she was half-dead from the rope.

  Benedetti burst from the tree line, closing the gap to the boiling water.

  “Perfect, Chief. Don’t move,” Annie commanded. Cross lay facedown, fingers stuffed in his ears, elbows and legs splayed so she could sandbag the rifle barrel on the back of his neck. It was a crude but effective platform to launch what she prayed would be the killing shot. She adjusted the telescopic sight for range and bullet drop, then welded herself to the black stock. “They’re next to the river,” she said, controlling her breathing to allow an instantaneous squeeze of the three-pound trigger. “Fighting. Too close together. Soon as they separate, I’ll fire. Don’t move an inch, Chief. Don’t even breathe.”

  Emily jumped behind Marwood and jammed the handcuffs against his carotid arteries. “Bad guy passes out instantly or double your money back,” the academy instructor had bragged about the choke hold. But Marwood dropped his chin to block the choker, reached up, and grabbed Emily’s hair with his good right arm. He body-slammed her into the mud like a pro wrestler, then dropped on top. All her injuries squirted fire. He kneed her till she went limp, then seized her throat with his huge right hand. “I’m going to strangle you anyway, Princess,” he gloated, muscling them both to their knees, keeping their faces so close their noses touched. “You should have known you could never win against me. This isn’t child’s play. It’s winner take all.”

  “You’re so right!” she croaked, reaching down for the shard still in his crotch. She wiggled till her palm ran red with their commingled blood. The pressure on her throat eased. She yanked on the glass till it snapped and watched pink drool run from Marwood’s mouth. His face turned pasty, and his head lolled to the right.

  Annie’s finger twitched. Her rifle thundered.

  “Emily! Duck!” Benedetti screamed, launching himself like Superman.

  “Ahh!” the psychologist gasped as his left eyeball exploded. He released one more breath, then flopped to the ground. The bullet slowed from punching through his skull but didn’t stop.

  Emily was drowning in mud. Her attacker jumped on her back, and her fury turned atomic. She bucked him sideways, then pounced, stabbing desperately for his face.

  Annie clutched Cross’s arm in horror. “No! No!”

  “He’s dead, Emily. He’s dead!” her attacker was shouting. “You stopped him! You’re safe!”

  “Marty!” Emily blurted, hands snapping back like bungee cords. “I thought you were Marwood! Thank God you’re all right!”

  He grimaced, shaking his head. “I’m shot.”

  Emily frantically checked him for bleeding. None that she could see. “Where, baby?” she demanded, panic rising like helium. “Where were you shot? Tell me!”

  “My cheek.”

  Her hands flew back to his face, but she saw no blood or holes.

  “My other cheek, Detective,” he groaned. “Marwood left the rifle in your kitchen. Annie and Cross found it. Their bullet hit Marwood in the head, but I guess a fragment caught me.”

  Emily ripped away his muddy trouser seat, ran her hands everywhere. She found the wound nestled in the fine hair of his lower right cheek. It was a shallow crease, not an entry hole. Raw but not life-threatening. She told him, then started giggling, all the fear and tension of the last three days transforming the oxygen into laughing gas.

  “You find something funny about this?” Benedetti demanded.

  “No sir, Commander sir, not me,” Emily said, trying to control herself. That made it worse. “You’ll need a new nickname, though. Since Halfass is already taken, we could call you Half and Half. Sir.” She fell to the ground, laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe. Benedetti scowled.

  “How did you find me?” Emily finally said, gulping air like a landed tuna.

  “Hang on,” Benedetti said, glaring at Marwood’s lifeless body. He got to his feet, grabbed Marwood’s arms, and dragged him several yards downriver. Then stumbled back and flopped into the mud next to her, draping his arm over her naked waist. “That’s better. We came here because of Branch. He figured out Marwood was the Unsub.”

  Emily stiffened, thunderstruck. “How did he know?”

  “Remember when you guys visited him on the way back from the safe house?” Benedetti asked. “He was paralyzed but wide awake, listening to everything?”

  She wiped mud off Marty’s nose. “I remember.”

  “At some point Marwood asked for cold pop. Doc Winslow returned with a few cans. A couple minutes later you told Branch that Marwood was born and raised in Manhattan.”

  She shook her head, not following.

  “New Yorkers call soft drinks ‘soda,’” Benedetti continued. “Chicagoans call it ‘pop.’ Very distinct regional dialects. It suggested to Branch that Marwood was lying about his roots and, therefore, might be our wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

  “Incredible,” she said. “But how did Branch tell you? He was paralyzed.”

  Benedetti shifted with a soft moan. “The doctors said it was impossible for Branch to semaphore the news. But he did. He broke through the paralysis.”

  “To save me,” she breathed, starting to tear up.

  Benedetti kissed her cheek. “Yeah. He spelled out M-A-R before going into spasm. We couldn’t find you on the road, so Cross thought Marwood might bring you back to the house.”

  “Because of his obsession.”

  “Right. And here’s the rest.” He stopped to catch his breath, then leaned over and kissed her full on the lips.

  Smiling through her tear-filled vision, Emily kissed back, then pulled Marty as close as her wounds allowed. She heard Cross bellowing at cops to get paramedics down to the river, then put up crime-scene tape. Always the martinet. But if Cross hadn’t griped and bullied her into thinking under pressure, she’d be dead, and Marwood gone with the wind. She owed him.

  She kissed Marty again, then asked about Shelby, fearing the worst.

  “Tough little hombre,” Marty replied, admiration in his voice. “He was halfway down the hill when we arrived, trying to get to you. Couple of cops rushed him to the animal hospital on Main Street. He’ll survive, Em. Battered but unbowed.”

  Emily wiped her eyes, explaining how Shelby and Annie had tried to rescue her, and how the cops in the basement had paid the price. “It was Hangman, Marty,” she said, shivering in the frigid mud. “Our final game was Hangman. Marwood—Kepp—told me everything while I was hanging in that noose. It all started in grade school—”

  “Plenty of time for that,” Benedetti said, removing his shirt and draping it over her. “The task force will take your statement after the hospital fixes you up. Just relax.”

  Emily nodded, turned her gaze to the river. The wind had whipped the surface into frothy whitecaps. Towering purple clouds raced across the French vanilla sky. Lightning flashed not too far away—1,001; 1,002—followed by kidney-shaking thunderclaps. It looked like the long drought was ending. She looked at Marty, who was wincing himself into a new position. Yes, she decided, stroking his mud-riven back. The drought is finally over.

  “Jesus Christ, Ken,” Viking puffed as he ran up to Cross. “Can’t you stay in your office and play with yourself like all the other chiefs?”

  “I’d tell you to kiss my ass,” Cross groaned. “But I ain’t got one.” Viking dropped to his knees to examine the leg wounds. “They’re not too bad,” the medic declared. “One bullet in your left thigh, two in the right. No broken bones and the bleeding’s only seepage. Surgeons will dig them out, and you’ll be fine.” He replaced Annie’s
duct tape with bandages, splinted her broken pelvis, and ordered them to the idling ambulance.

  As they slid inside, Cross reached over and squeezed Annie’s hand. “You done good, Sergeant,” he murmured.

  She squeezed back. “You, too, Chief. You, too.”

  Emily started as the oddest thought struck her. “I’m still suspended, aren’t I?”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Marty asked, cringing as paramedics swabbed disinfectant on his butt.

  “Annie and I got suspended. By the chief. For my shooting the library floor. Annie tried taking the blame, but Cross caught us. We each got a week’s suspension for lying.”

  Benedetti raised his eyebrows. “And you’re thinking about this now because—”

  “So I don’t have to think about the rest.” She fell silent. “That’s a week of income I can’t afford to lose, Marty. With my house destroyed and all. Maybe he’ll forget about it.”

  “Would you? If you were chief?”

  She thought about that, looked at her feet. “I guess not.”

  “And for good reason,” Benedetti said. “It keeps maniacs like you from shooting poor old innocent carpets that never hurt no one.” She stuck out her tongue, and he smiled. “Actually, Detective, Ken said you owe him a week after the Unsub’s safely behind bars.”

  “I just said that, Marty,” she said. “Soon as Dr. Winslow clears me, I’ll serve it.”

  “You’re not listening,” Benedetti said. “Ken said you’ll serve your suspension when the Unsub’s safely behind bars. Until then, he needs you out on the street.”

  She stared, then got it. The Unsub would never be safely behind bars because he was dead. Ergo…“So the chief isn’t suspending us.”

  “Correct.”

  “But he said he was.”

  “Also correct.”

  She shook her head. “Why say one thing when he means the opposite?”

  “It’s what us management types do.”

  “I see. So if I said I hate you…”

  Benedetti grinned. “Happy birthday, Emily. With many more to come.”

  “And many more together,” she said, closing her eyes and smiling.

  Blink, her Mama said.

  Special Bonus! Here is a preview excerpt from Cut to the

  Bone, the heart-pounding new thriller by Shane Gericke,

  coming from Pinnacle in 2007.

  On June 29, 1972, the state of Illinois strapped an innocent man into the electric chair and threw the switch, executing him for a crime he didn’t commit. Now, more than three decades later, Naperville Police Detective Emily Thompson may pay the price for that tragic miscarriage of justice—as she becomes the target of a serial killer obsessed with payback.

  “Glad you came?” Emily Thompson asked.

  “Oh, man, this is great,” Martin Benedetti groaned as the attendant shoveled another layer of steaming mud onto his chest. “I feel like the marshmallow in the hot chocolate. I should have done this years ago.”

  Emily reached across the tub-for-two to pat his face. They were spending the morning at a high-tone “mud spa” on Ogden Avenue in Naperville. She’d been asking Marty for a while to try it with her. He kept insisting he wanted nothing to do with “toenail polish and dulcimer music.” Then, on her forty-second birthday, he handed her a gift certificate for two, agreeing to join her.

  Emily settled herself deeper in the 104-degree mud, a “mystic Zen formula” of “precious minerals and botanicals” that “detoxified and cleansed” the body. The attendant’s description was just sales puffery, she knew—it was peat moss and volcanic ash. She didn’t care. Its clinging heat whacked her stress like a hitman. Having Marty next to her in the deep redwood tub was a bonus—they could make fun of everything tonight as they snuggled up in bed.

  The attendant poured them flutes of Soy-Carrot Infusion Juice, then offered to swaddle their eyes with citrus-misted cucumber slices. “So your inner child stays cool,” she murmured in a breezy Jamaican lilt. Emily tilted her face to accept them. Marty muttered about needing a testosterone patch. Emily pinched his leg, making him yelp. The attendant giggled, shoveled on the final thick layer, said she’d step out to let the mud “work its magic.” After the door closed, Marty cleared his throat.

  “You can’t tell anyone about this, you know.”

  “About what?” Emily smiled into the lemon-scented darkness.

  “About me. Parking my ass in a tub of goo.”

  “And liking it,” she reminded.

  “Don’t rub it in.”

  Emily pushed her hand through the slurry, threaded her fingers through Marty’s. “Don’t worry, tough guy. I wouldn’t dream of blowing your cover—” Her eyelids popped open so fast the cucumbers flew. “What was that?”

  Marty was already struggling to his feet. “Gunshots,” he said, his buttery baritone turned hard and flat. “Three. Nearby.”

  Emily fought to sit up. Marty pulled her wrists, sucking her torso out of the hot mud. She heard voices shrieking, “Omigod! Help! Help!”

  Their attendant raced into the mud room, slamming the door so hard the frosted glass cracked. “Somebody shot Leila in the lobby!” she screamed, eyes wide. “Hide or he’ll kill us all!”

  “Call 911!” Marty roared, bounding out of the tub. “And get our clothes!”

  “No time for that!” Emily shoved her heels against the bottom until she popped out of the mud. She swung her legs over the side and lunged for their guns—she went nowhere unarmed since the serial killer Ellis Marwood had knotted a noose around her neck and hanged her in her own kitchen. She slipped on the cornflower tiles and fell sideways, banging her head off the wall. “Ow! Dammit!” she yelped.

  “Emily! You all right?”

  “Go! Go! I’ll catch up!” she gasped.

  Marty knotted a bath towel around his waist. Emily reached over her head and yanked her knockoff Coach tote from the wall peg. She fumbled with the zipper then pulled out a pair of .45-caliber Glocks.

  The attendant shrank into a corner. “Don’t hurt me,” she begged, covering her head with her mud-streaked arms. “Please, miss, I’ll do whatever you say.”

  “We’re the police!” Emily said, thrusting Marty’s black pistol over her head like the Statue of Liberty’s torch. Marty snatched it and bolted through the door. A moment later he stuck his head back in, pitched her a belted terrycloth robe and took off.

  Emily grabbed the pitcher of Infusion Juice and poured it over her head, gasping as the icy slush chilled her warm body. The bells fell silent. She scrambled to her feet, jammed her arms in the over-large robe, wrapped her muddy hands around the checkered butt of her gun, and ran down the hall to the lobby.

  “Oh Jesus,” she breathed, absorbing the horrific scene. Blood slopped the walls as though a tomato can had exploded. The room stank of burnt gunpowder. Marty was on his knees, blowing air into a short, slender woman. Ugly holes were torn in her chest and forehead. Her face was white as cake flour. Blood fizzed from the holes when Marty blew. Emily knew instantly the CPR was not going to help her. She scanned the handful of onlookers.

  “Naperville Police! Which way did he go?” she said, primed to pull the trigger if the shooter was in the crowd. “Is he here? Did he leave? Talk to me!”

  A manicurist, slender as a willow whip, pointed to the centermost of the lobby’s five doors. “He went that way. He didn’t say anything. Just started shooting!” she said, tears splashing down her cheeks. “He killed Leila and ran!”

  “Parking lot,” Marty said, looking up. “Watch yourself, detective. I’ll be there as soon as someone takes over.” He surveyed the crowd. “All right, who knows CPR?”

  Emily charged into the lot, robe flapping, eyes flashing. Nobody was fleeing. Nobody sauntered nonchalantly. Nobody jumped in a Dumpster or darted behind a store.

  Breathing fast, she searched the nearest row of parked cars. Nobody hiding. No tailpipe exhaust. Ditto second row, third, fourth.

  S
he heard an engine turn over. He’s out there. Go get him. Her bare feet flew over pavement, litter and broken pop bottles. She still saw nothing. “Police!” she screamed. “Come out with your hands up!”

  “Look behind you!” Marty yelled.

  Emily whirled to see a black Grand Prix bear down on her like a runaway locomotive. Shooting wouldn’t save her—the car was too close. She jumped straight up, desperately clawing air to clear the bumper—

  “Aaaah!” she screamed as her body flew up over the hood. She smashed into the windshield, heard a sickening crunch. The driver jammed the gas pedal. His acceleration flipped her onto the roof. She windsurfed until a sharp swerve bucked her off.

  She slammed into a rust-bucket SUV and tumbled to the pavement. She started rolling as soon as her shoulder touched, to avoid breaking her neck. Her Glock skittered out of her hands. Dizzy, she rolled to hands and knees and crawled after it, skin on fire from pavement scrapes.

  A gun behind her barked. The Grand Prix’s rear passenger window shattered. Energized by Marty’s counterattack, she struggled to her feet, scooped, aimed and fired three quick .45s at the driver’s door. Holes appeared but did no good—the car careened onto Ogden Avenue and disappeared into eastbound traffic.

  Emily yelled out the license plate. Marty fed the information into a cellphone. She tightened her robe and took off, running diagonally across the lot, hoping to catch the Grand Prix before—

  She fell to the pavement, clutching her leg in agony.

  “Officer down!” Marty bellowed as he ran up. He flung the phone and knelt to check her for bleeding or broken bones.

  “It’s the scar!” Emily said, groaning. She’d taken a submachine gun bullet in her left calf two years ago during her wild escape from Marwood’s noose. The thumb-sized wound healed well enough for her to pass the medical exam and return to work. But sometimes it spasmed when she pushed herself too hard.