From her vantage she couldn’t see what Reed did as he came in view of the house, still over thirty yards away, adrenaline surging through him as he saw Pierce standing just outside the side entry to the home.
In front of him was Michael Rigas, his sword held at arm’s length, just a few feet of distance separating the two of them.
Lying between them on the ground was the crumpled mass of a body, Reed guessing by the uniform and hair color it to be Brandt. No blood appeared visible as he broke into a full sprint, eschewing the sidewalk, the thick grass of the yard bending beneath his shoes.
“Rigas!” he shouted as he ran, his voice sounding hoarse as it exploded forward, fighting to get out as he gulped down oxygen. “Michael Rigas! Put down the weapon and step away!”
The directive echoed through the quiet neighborhood, a squeal of rubber coming a moment behind it, his backup slamming the gas to close the distance between them.
The combined sounds drew Pierce’s attention towards him, a paper sack still clutched in his hands, his jaw hanging open. Fear and confusion had collided to render him motionless, standing and watching as Reed pulled closer.
In front of him, Rigas paid no mind to the order from Reed, not so much as glancing in his direction. Instead he drew back the sword past his right shoulder, gripping it in both hands, ready to bring it across in a wicked slash.
“Rigas!” Reed screamed again, stopping just fifteen yards from his target, planting his feet perpendicular to him. He dropped the flashlight from his left hand and brought his palm up under his right, using it as a base.
There was no pause from Rigas, no attempt to stop his attack as Reed curled back the trigger, a jolt of orange light sparking from the tip of his weapon. The gun bucked a tiny bit in his hand as the round spat out, closing the gap between them in less than a second, slamming into the left shoulder of his target.
The blow of the shot pitched the man forward, his own assault tailing to the side. From pure momentum the blade continued its path, cutting a flailing arc, slicing across Pierce’s thigh, splitting the flesh as if it weren’t even there.
Reed watched as bright red droplets sprayed from the wound, spattering against the asphalt, Pierce folding in half as he fell to his knees. A pained howl crossed his lips as he pressed his hands over it, blood seeping between his fingers.
“Rigas! Drop the weapon!” Reed screamed again, his first shot pulling Billie from her tracking, the animal now standing by his side. Her growl could be heard low and persistent by his knee, letting him know she was close, ready to move.
Behind him a pair of headlights cast a fluorescent glow over everything as Iaconelli peeled onto the driveway, grass and dirt spewing everywhere as he slammed the car to a stop, both men piling out.
For a long moment Rigas stumbled to the side, looking at Pierce on the ground in front of him, at Reed standing to the side with his weapon raised, at the two detectives emerging from their car.
Reed could see the thought process playing out in front of him, of the longing the man had to finish the job. “Michael Rigas, we will shoot you if you do not put down the weapon!”
To his complete surprise, Rigas did something Reed never saw coming.
He turned and ran.
One moment he was standing before them, sword in hand, the next he was little more than a shadow, a man clad in black, disappearing into the backyard.
In that moment things seemed to slow down for Reed, his mind fighting to process the sensory overload of everything around him. He stood rooted in place, inventorying everything, before his training kicked in, his thoughts catching back up with the situation.
“Hold!” he yelled, the word coming out elongated and angry.
At the sound of the command Billie shot away in a blur, just six long strides before she was gone, vanishing the same way as her target.
Following on her heels, Reed ran forward to Pierce, his hands still pressed over his thigh, blood spreading away from the wound, painting the entire left leg of his jeans red.
“How bad? How bad?” Reed yelled, his shoes smacking against pavement as he came to a stop.
Bringing up the rear were Iaconelli and Bishop, their footfalls even heavier as they approached.
“Go, go!” Bishop yelled, sliding in beside Pierce.
“We got this, get after him!” Iaconelli yelled, the last sound Reed heard before he too made his way around the corner into the darkened back yard.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Reed heard them long before he saw them, just two yards down, Rigas making it no further before Billie tracked him down. Just as commanded, she had him pinned against a tree in the corner of a sprawling lot, his back pressed against the trunk of it.
His left arm was pressed against his ribcage, the black material of his shirt slick with blood. In the right was the sword, the blade flashing as he swung it in wild swipes before him, using the weapon to keep the animal at bay.
Gun trained before him, Reed approached on a diagonal across the yard, his breath coming in short ragged bursts. With each swing of the sword in Billie’s direction he felt his heart rate spike, heard the labored cursing of Rigas, the gnashing of his partner’s teeth.
“Michael Rigas, put down the weapon right now,” Reed said, raising his voice enough to be heard, the tone non-negotiable.
Completely ignoring him, Rigas slashed another overheard swing at Billie, just narrowly missing her rear haunch as she ducked out of the way.
“That animal you are attacking is a police officer in the Columbus Police Department. If there is any way possible for you to be in even deeper shit than you are already, harming my partner is the way to do it.”
As he spoke, Reed inched his way towards them, closing the gap.
Ambient light spilled out from the rear of the house behind Reed, the glow enough to show him for the first time the face of the man he’d been hunting.
His original assessment of the sketch drawing was correct, the curly hair an obvious wig. Otherwise the recollection of Winters was pretty spot-on, the resemblance obvious, even through the mask of pain and exhaustion Rigas wore.
“Michael Rigas, you will drop that weapon,” Reed said, stopping just five yards away from him, Billie continuing to pace back and forth by his feet. “And then I will place you under arrest for the murders of five men, for the attempted murder of a sixth, and for the assault of two police officers.”
He waited for any sign of a response, any signal that his words were being heard. Opposite him Rigas seemed intent to watch Billie, the sword still held by his side.
“Michael Rigas,” Reed repeated.
“Michael Rigas is dead! He died two years ago!”
The words came out in one breath, a spray of spittle spraying from his mouth, his eyes starting to glass over.
“I know all about what those men did,” Reed said.
“Do you? Do you?!” Rigas challenged back. “Do you have any idea what it was like to have to watch as someone did that to your wife? To knock you out and carve you up? To put you to sleep for two months only to wake up and find out the only person in your world that mattered was gone?”
Twin tears fell from Rigas’s eyes as he stared back at Reed, hatred on his features.
“And I was close too. All I needed was a few more minutes and my Janice would have been at peace.”
Already Reed could sense where this was going. There was no chance Michael Rigas would ever allow himself to be arrested, would ever succumb to living in a prison.
Michael Rigas had no desire to live any more at all.
“You really believe that?” Reed asked, trying to buy himself any bit of time, anything that might touch whatever humanity still existed in the man across from him. “You think this is what Janice would want? You becoming a killer? Terrorizing the men that did this to her?”
For just the briefest moment Rigas paused, appearing to consider the question, before the same mask of defiance fell back into place.
A throaty, guttural roar erupted from somewhere deep inside of him as the sword rose above his head. Pressing his backside off the tree trunk he rushed forward two quick steps, charging as if on the field of battle.
Billie reacted first, her body springing towards him, her first instinct to protect, to guard over Reed, to neutralize the threat.
Reed was just a moment behind her, the same internal mechanism working within him. He would not lose another partner. He would not let a madman with a sword harm her.
The first round Reed put into Rigas’s chest, the force of it jerking his shoulders to the side, his forward progress slowing. The next two hit side by side a moment later, a near-perfect triangle center mass, shredding his chest cavity.
A torrent of blood passed from the corner of his mouth as the light faded from his eyes, the sword drifting from his hand, his body going slack.
He provided no resistance at all as Billie slammed into him, toppling him over backwards, not to move again.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
“He’s really a good kid, you know.”
Reed knew who the voice belonged to even without turning around. It sounded older, exhausted, but strong and clear.
“Yeah?” Reed asked, shifting his focus on the window before him from Pierce lying on a hospital bed to Eleanor Brandt approaching.
“Yeah,” Brandt said, walking up beside him, coming to a stop just a few inches from his shoulder. A heavy gauze patch was extended vertically from her cheekbone to her hairline, held in place by a swath of elastic tape encircling her head. Already her right eye was swollen and puffy, the shadow of bruising beginning to color the entire side of her face.
“How you feeling?” Reed asked, glancing over at her, his arms folded across his chest, before turning back to face forward.
On the opposite side of the glass Pierce laid with his left leg in a stirrup, a metal chain and canvas strap carrying all the weight. Padded gauze enveloped everything from his ankle to his hip, his eyes closed, oxygen tubes pressed into his nostrils.
“Like hell,” Brandt deadpanned. “I wish I could say nothing hurt but my pride, but...”
She drifted off without finishing her sentence, Reed already knowing exactly what she meant. Not only had she suffered the indignity of letting the suspect they’d been chasing for weeks get so close, she had suffered heavy personal injury in the process.
“I imagine,” Reed said. “I’ve seen up close what this guy can do. You’re fortunate it wasn’t worse. Both of you.”
It was difficult to say the words without sounding condescending, though Reed did mean them. Compared to the fates that had befallen Mentor and Wright, the two people beside him had been quite lucky.
Brandt seemed to sense all of that, or at least had the good sense not to press it.
“He had a bad spell,” she said, jutting her chin towards Pierce on the other side. “His dad was never really in the picture and his mom was an Air Force lifer. When he was growing up she was stationed out of Rickenbacker, never missed a ball game or a school function.
“When he went on to college though, she finally accepted the promotion they’d been trying to foist on her for years. She was gone and he was left to his own devices.”
Reed nodded at the explanation. It did little to change what happened or what Pierce had said hours before, though that was no longer in his hands. Finding out about that incident years before was solely a means to an end for him, a way to determine who was coming after the Kings.
“We all tried to help,” Brandt said, her voice again fading away. “I don’t need to tell you my role in it.”
She paused and looked over at him, Reed getting the impression she was searching for some sort of response, to which he gave none.
“Anyway, two years ago he suddenly snapped out of it. I concede he’s still pretty arrogant, and does run a little too much while his mom’s away, but he’s much better than he was. Should finish at Ohio State in the spring.”
More than once while she spoke Reed got the impression she was building towards something, that her entire speech was predicated on more than just clearing the air. Still he remained silent as he listened, his hands back into the pockets of his sweatshirt.
When her explanation was complete she fell silent for a long moment, glancing his way again.
“Sounds like he should make a full recovery,” Reed said. “Little nerve damage maybe, but nothing like it could have been.”
“Yeah,” Brandt said, rising up on to her toes to get a better view through the window. She remained there a long moment before turning to examine Reed, the bandages giving her face a misshapen appearance that made her look like she was listing to the side.
She stayed in the position as her mouth worked up and down, trying to find the words, but no sounds escaping.
Reed could only guess at the number of things she would say to him if she found her voice. He imagined the difficulty she had in speaking stemming from her attempting to thank him for coming to the aid of her and her nephew. Perhaps she would even apologize for trying to have him removed, making his life so difficult in the preceding days.
On the flip side, she might be attempting to offer him something, her mind trying to find the best approach. She could be hoping to quiet him about what he had heard that afternoon, extending a marker to him just the way she had Judge Bennett.
Whatever it was she wanted to say, Reed didn’t want to hear it. He was fatigued and hungry, his partner in the same state in the car. There was no interest in any bribe Brandt had to offer, as she couldn’t give him what he most desired.
He left her standing outside her nephew’s room, the first bits of dawn visible through the windows as he headed towards the parking lot.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
A bit of blood was still crusted into Billie’s fur as she climbed from the backseat and out into the parking lot. Reed could see clumps of hair matted together with it as she stood beside him, striping either side of her face and her left ear. First thing upon getting home he would load her into the bath tub and scrub it away, removing any lingering residue of Michael Rigas from them both.
“Go ahead,” Reed said, motioning towards the expanse of grass stretched before them, the same one she had visited at least three times a week for the past two months.
Unlike most trips though, there was no pent up energy for her to shed away, no long night in need of working off. Like Reed she had spent the entire work week with her body clock flipped on its head, every function she possessed out of sorts.
For a long moment she just stood and stared at Reed, giving every indication she wanted to climb back into the rear of the car, before drifting off towards the grass.
“I’m not sure which of you looks more exhausted.”
The words tugged at the corners of Reed’s mouth as he remained leaning against his car, not bothering to look over his shoulder at the person he knew was there. The look stayed in place as Dr. Mehdi stepped up alongside the car and came to a stop beside him, assuming the same pose.
“Doc,” Reed said, ignoring the prior barb.
“Reed,” Mehdi replied. “Congratulations.”
The smile rose a bit higher as Reed watched Billie work her way around the park, moving slow, her nose aimed at the ground. “Thank you. It was a long week, but mercifully it’s all over now.”
“Oh,” Mehdi said, “so you got your man?”
The question caught Reed by surprise, the smile fading as his eyebrows pulled inward. He tilted his head and cast a sideways glance at Mehdi, her attention still trained on Billie.
“I did. What were you referring to?”
A long moment passed before Mehdi pulled her gaze from the dog, matching Reed’s glance. “The call came in this morning. You’re now officially free of me. I guess since you proved you could do this on your own agai
n, they decided we didn’t need to keep having these little morning get-togethers.”
She watched a long moment as a bit of confusion remained on Reed’s face. “But apparently that was news to you, too.”
“It was,” Reed agreed, nodding as he broke the glance, once more focusing on the park.
There were only two places the call could have originated from, Grimes and Brandt. He doubted the captain would have made such a call on his own, certainly not having contacted Mehdi in the middle of the night to pass along the news.
That left only the chief, a woman that was used to getting what she wanted, wasn’t afraid to dole out the occasional gift in exchange for it. What the reprieve on his counseling sessions was meant to procure from him he couldn’t be sure, the options quite lengthy.
“Just now, you said I proved I could do it on my own,” Reed said, his voice neutral. “That definitely wasn’t the case.”
Without looking over he could sense Mehdi raising the corner of her mouth at the statement, staring at Billie. “Yeah? She did a good job?”
In the five days since they had last spoken, Billie had proven herself in every way possible. She wasn’t Riley, would never be Riley, but she offered a skill set that Reed had never before known.
“Excellent.”
Silence fell between them a long moment, both staring out, neither one saying anything.
Never before had Reed spoken with a therapist, unsure how their final interaction should go. The past week had done a great deal in bringing him along, though that still didn’t mean he was suddenly ready to let the walls down, spilling out everything he felt inside.
Barring that, he doubted there was any way the doctor would ever realize how much she had helped him in the preceding months. Despite his abhorring the mandatory meetings, despite his clamming up whenever possible, his ire wasn’t aimed at her.
It was directed at the fact that speaking with her only served to drive home everything that was wrong with his life.
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