by Steve Lee
Returned with their second gurney, they delicately lifted a woman up onto it as she drifted in and out of consciousness. They wheeled her to their vehicle too.
While Konrad climbed into the back with their two patients, Hubert leapt into the driver’s seat. A moment later, the engine roared, the siren wailed, and away they sped into the night.
In the back of the ambulance, Konrad quickly assessed his two patients. What nightmare they’d endured to end up here he could only guess at – he’d read of the horrors of human trafficking, but never imagined he’d ever see it other than in the movies. But that didn’t matter now. The women were safe. All that concerned him was assessing their injuries and seeing they were treated as quickly as possible.
While the blonde woman wailed constantly, the other woman concerned him more because she was covered in blood. However, an initial assessment proved her vitals were strong and that there appeared to be no head trauma and no obvious wound.
Okay, maybe the blonde was the more urgent case – people rarely moaned the way she was without good reason. He moved over to the other patient.
He talked calmly and gently to her, as he flashed a light into her eyes. “Can you tell me your name?”
She flinched at being touched. But her pupils responded correctly to the light.
“Do you know what day it is?”
She whined like a dog that had been left out in the cold but said nothing comprehensible.
He took her pulse. While her heart rate was elevated, which was only to be expected, it was strong and regular. He concluded his initial checks. The woman had no life-threatening injuries but was suffering from shock and extreme dehydration.
After raising her legs, he covered her with an orange blanket, placed a mask over her face to provide oxygen and then administered fluids intravenously.
He turned back to the bloody patient.
The woman lay unconscious. She had blood on her face, on her hands, and on her leather jacket, but he could see no obvious wound. Maybe the blood wasn’t hers. However, that needed to be confirmed through a thorough examination.
He unzipped her jacket and then began to cut away her black T-shirt, but stopped. What was that? He felt the strange, stiff material secreted under her clothing. He pulled the cut T-shirt away.
What the hell?
Was that…?
It was. It was a goddamn bulletproof vest.
He looked into the woman’s face. Who the hell was she? An undercover cop?
The woman’s eyes popped open. Her hand shot out, grabbed him and yanked him down to her.
She clamped her arms around his neck. Squeezed.
He fought, flailing to break free.
He tried to shout for help, but he could barely breathe, barely make a sound. For God’s sake, he was trying to help her. Couldn’t she see she was in an ambulance?
The inside of the ambulance darkened as his vision tunneled. His brain starved of blood, he was about to black out, but he could do nothing about it. His beautiful Anna flashed into his mind. He wanted to hold her, wanted to—
The ambulance raced toward a sharp left-hand turn onto Jana Pawla II Avenue. Ahead, the shadows of Ronald Reagan Park crawled away into the night. As the vehicle slowed to make the turn, one of its back doors flew open.
Lying half-conscious on the floor of his ambulance, Konrad’s eyes flickered open and closed as if seeing the world under a strobe light. Through darkened, blurry vision, he thought he saw the woman leap out of his ambulance, roll across the asphalt, and spring to her feet. Clutching her side, she hobbled toward the park and vanished into the gloom, like a shadow in a dream.
On a straight road again, the ambulance accelerated and shot along the street, siren wailing, lights flashing. Konrad stared at the park as it disappeared into the distance. And then, it too was nothing but a dark memory.
Chapter 21
Tess heard rolled Rs and a conglomeration of ‘sh’ and ‘ch’ sounds that could only be an Eastern European language. She looked at the speaker beside her.
A young man had hoisted his son onto his shoulders to gaze out at Manhattan’s skyline, as if the sixty-ninth floor of the Rockefeller Center – the Top of the Rock – wasn’t high enough already.
Standing on the observation deck, behind the eight-foot-high protective plexiglass screen, Tess gazed far, far away. In distance and in time. She sighed. Was Catalina still out there? Or had her unidentifiable body been laid to rest in an unmarked grave somewhere in Europe, or the Middle East, or even here in the US?
Tess hadn’t given up hope of finding her, of honoring the memory of her dear friend Elena, but Krakow and Gdansk felt a lifetime ago.
However, it was always good to be reminded of how all this had begun. Her new life had started that day. By complete accident and to Tess’s immense surprise, Elena had changed her life in ways Tess would never have dreamed possible. She’d gone to Asia seeking the tools for revenge but while making her way back home, she had found something very different instead. So very, very different. She’d found purpose.
She hadn’t realized it at the time, but the reason she’d become stuck in Europe and hadn’t yet claimed her justice was because she simply hadn’t been ready. Elena hadn’t just provided that answer but had been the catalyst that pushed Tess forward.
Sixty-nine floors below Tess, specks crawled along the streets, each one looking for their own answers, for something to drive their lives forward too. Love, wealth, fame, happiness, achievement, companionship… People looked for their answers in countless places. However, few realized they were all looking for the same thing – purpose, a reason to be. Each one of them deserved the chance to find that which would make them feel complete. And those who lost that chance because they fell victim to someone else’s greed deserved something else – justice.
Tess often came up here to watch all these specks and to be reminded of why she did what she did. She hoped she’d never look down from here and feel nothing – no empathy, no sympathy, no… purpose. Other than finding him – which had proved impossible to date, despite all her efforts – this was her sole reason for being. And what better reason could there be than one so noble?
Her cell phone rang. She answered. “Hey, Bomb.”
“Yo, Tess, I got a location on our boy.”
“The rapist or the shooter?” There seemed to be a never-ending line of those who deserved the justice only she could bring.
“The guy whose phone you found – I traced the cell tower ping history.”
Tess snatched her black backpack containing all her gear from the concrete floor and turned for the stairs down to the elevators.
“Great. Send me the details. I’m already moving.”
“You got it. Good hunting. Ciao, Tess.”
Tess disappeared into the darkness of the stairwell.
A senseless killing demanded payback. And she would claim that payback today. In blood. No argument, prayer, or plea could save them after what they’d done. They would die today. Period.
Who, how, and where she didn’t yet know.
But one thing was set in stone – justice would be cold, swift and brutal. Just another day at the office.
The End.
(Tess Williams will return in Angel of Darkness. See below.)
The Story Continues…
Tess Williams will return. Grab a sneak peek below at the next instalment in the pulse-pounding Angel of Darkness Suspense Thriller Series.
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Free Stuff – Bl
ack File 01
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Free Stuff – Angel of Darkness extract
Chapter 01
As sunlight shafted through Riverside Church’s narrow stained-glass windows, Christian grinned like a homeless guy who’d just found the jackpot-winning lottery ticket lying on the sidewalk.
People said money couldn’t buy happiness. They said it because they wanted to convince themselves it was true. Endless decades of work, bills, and sacrifice had to be better than possibly losing what little they’d scraped together on chasing the elusive American Dream.
So, could money buy happiness? His Porsche 911, Caribbean vacations, and invitation-only AmEx Black Card said it could.
But this?
Sunbeams speckled the church’s weary gray stone with rainbow-colored joy. Pew upon pew burst with smiling faces. Organ music danced through the air.
This? This wasn’t just happiness. No, this was…?
He glanced at her.
Ecstasy.
Yes, ecstasy. That was the only word for it.
Money couldn’t buy this.
Hell, no.
This made every Christmas, every birthday, every Thanksgiving feel like a rain-drenched Monday morning stuck in gridlock.
As they glided back down the main aisle, Christian looked down at Angelique’s hand in his. The ring he’d just placed on it was still there – this was not a dream. He clutched her hand tighter. He never wanted to let it go. Her skin the color of coffee with just the barest dash of milk, his hand looked like that of a ghost beside hers.
His gaze drifted up to Angelique’s beaming face.
He smiled at his wife. His wife. My God, she’d said ‘yes’ the very instant he’d asked her to marry him, but he’d never dreamed it would actually happen, that he’d be here one day with the most beautiful woman on God’s green earth as his wife. He’d always worried something would go wrong, but…
As they approached the rear of the church, heading for the central arch beneath the choir loft, an enormous bronze statue of Christ gazed down upon them, blessing their union.
The shafts of sunlight illuminating the church’s interior faded. The weather forecast had said it might become overcast midmorning, but that didn’t matter. As if anything could spoil their perfect day.
Christian smiled again at his wife. “Ready?”
Angelique squeezed his hand and simply smiled back.
They strolled through the foyer, on through heavy wooden doors decorated with black wrought iron curls and swirls, and emerged from the solemnity of the shadows into the radiant light of jubilation.
Smiling faces surrounded them.
Voices erupted in celebration.
Rice showered by the handful.
Money? Power? Sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll? You name it, but he could flat-out guarantee it was absolutely squat compared to this. This was a whole other level. She was a whole other level.
Atop the stone steps, the bells in the gigantic tower pealing just for them, Christian stood with his friend, his lover, and now, his wife. As wealthy as his family was, how foolish he’d been to think he’d had it all. Now… Now, he had it all.
And to think they’d argued because he wanted to postpone this day. Argued so much just four days earlier, he’d made her cry. What a tool!
Cameras clicked.
Flashes flashed.
Phones recorded this precious moment for them to delight in.
He felt Angelique’s touch. He glanced down. She brushed something off his chest. Something small and red. Fluff or something. Oh, yeah – get rid of that. Nothing should spoil the perfect photos of their perfect day. Memories they’d treasure for a lifetime.
Angelique brushed again.
What was that thing?
He brushed it.
It went.
But it didn’t drop to the ground.
It moved.
Sideways.
What the…?
He brushed at it to knock it off the delicate white lace of Angelique’s bodice. Brushed it so it would fall with the grains of rice still raining down on them.
But again it didn’t fall.
Again it moved. Only not sideways like last time. This time, it moved upward.
He gasped, realizing what it was. No!
A rifle shot cracked the perfect day.
Chunks of brain and shards of skull splattered the dark church doors.
Angelique fell backwards like a rag doll taken by the wind. Flesh bursting from where her right eye had been. Blood spattering her wedding gown. So bright, so red against such virginal white.
After an initial moment of the remarkable stillness and silence that shock brings, panic erupted.
A woman in a long lemon dress dragged her screaming daughter away, but her dress knotted around her legs. She crashed to the sidewalk. Scrambling up, she lifted the girl with one hand, her dress with the other, and ran for the sanctuary of the church.
Clutching two wailing children to his chest, a father sprinted into the road, a woman trailing alongside. A black car blared its horn and swerved. The family didn’t even look, but just shot for the cover of the trees of Riverside Park.
All around, guests grappled with each other to flee the slaughter.
Christian sank to the ground beside his wife. He pulled her lifeless, blood-soaked body to him.
His gray-haired father knelt beside him. He looked at all those running for shelter, running to distance themselves from the happy couple whose perfect day they’d been so eager to share.
His father shouted, “Get an ambulance! For God’s sake, get an ambulance.”
Christian cradled Angelique and sobbed. Tears ran down his cheeks as blood ran down the church steps into the gutter.
He’d begged her to postpone the wedding. Begged her. Why hadn’t she listened?
He’d told her it was too dangerous. Told her they were prime targets. Told her he couldn’t live without her.
Why hadn’t she listened?
Why?
Why?
Chapter 02
Alone in Marlowe’s Grounds, at a round table with a white vase in the center holding a plastic pink orchid, Tess Williams shook her head.
What was wrong with the world? Well, not the world. The world was doing just fine. No, it was people. What the hell was wrong with people?
Cradling her coffee, she closed her blue eyes and drew a deep breath in through her nose. She held it, and then let it out slowly through her mouth. She opened her eyes again. The world was just as she’d left it. Sadly.
The aroma of fresh Javan coffee wafted up from her cup. She stared at the wisps of steam for a moment, then looked back over the heads of the customers at the coffee shop’s counter, to the wall-mounted television and the breaking news from Riverside Church, Morningside Heights. The couple couldn’t have picked a more beautiful spring morning for a wedding. Nor a more beautiful church. Couldn’t fault them there. They must have figured it would be a perfect day.
All Chanel and attitude, the woman reporter tried to look concerned but was clearly ecstatic at having landed such a high-profile story. She gestured over the police cordon to the church, where a forensics team scoured the steps and detectives interviewed t
raumatized wedding guests.
She said, “As you can see, Peter, the police have sealed off the area and are investigating what is yet another truly heinous shooting. The third in just seven days.”
In the studio, so well-groomed he looked like a waxwork model, the news anchor, Peter, said, “And what’s the official response to the incident, Janice? Do the police suspect it’s the work of the Pool Cleaner?”
“Well, Peter, while it’s way too early to speculate, initial indications do indeed point to another Pool Cleaner killing, yes. Though there hasn’t yet been official confirmation of that, I’m sure it won’t be long in coming.”
Tess hung her head. It just never stopped. So she could never stop.
She took a last gulp of her coffee, then shut down her tablet and stuffed it into her black backpack. Her article on gang violence in Little Russia would have to wait. Another story had grabbed the headlines. A story she’d hoped she’d only ever see reported and never have to become a part of. But like that was ever going to have happened.
She strode toward the door. While most people shuffled or loped or lumbered or slouched, Tess flowed, her gait effortless, gliding, like an exquisite Swiss timepiece, each part precision engineered to interact perfectly with the next.
With slabs of gray cloud gnawing away the blue sky, the sharp spring air bit like a starving dog at the boy teasing it. Tess zipped up her black leather jacket as she exited the coffee shop and emerged onto Broadway.
When the average person thought of Broadway, they pictured the razzmatazz of theater shows, seeing famous actors in the flesh, and the excitement of Times Square. Few people realized that the vast proportion of this world-famous landmark was nothing but an ordinary city street, like countless other city streets across the US.
Burger joints, delis, banks, cafés, grocery stores… Broadway ran the length of Manhattan and then continued on for miles. To most New Yorkers, Broadway was merely another street. Nothing exotic. Merely functional.
