I’d made it halfway to the warehouse’s far wall when I heard footsteps to my right. I crouched low. Shooting stance. My heart hammering. “Stop right there.”
“Pat,” Ralph’s voice shot back. “I lost him.” Then Ralph let a string of curses color the air.
“We found Cassandra,” I said. “She’s OK.”
Just then, a flash of movement in the shadows caught my eye. I swung my light. Saw a glimpse of pale skin.
A face.
“Hey,” I yelled. The guy jumped to his feet. Bolted. Closer to Ralph than to me. I pointed my flashlight. “Ralph, take him down!”
Without hesitation Ralph exploded toward the cluttered center of the warehouse. I hurried toward the nearest door to block the suspect’s escape but kept my light trained on him as best I could.
From outside the warehouse, the whine of ambulance and police sirens told me the officers and paramedics had finally arrived. As the suspect neared the staircase I’d descended earlier, he grabbed a tool of some kind from a nearby workbench. “Ralph, he’s got a weapon!”
The man stopped suddenly, whipped around, and swung a clawed hammer at Ralph’s head. Instead of ducking, Ralph stuck out a hand, snagged the hammer in midflight, and wrenched it from the man.
Tossed it into the blinking darkness.
That would have intimidated me, but not this guy. Unfazed, he leapt at Ralph and unleashed a vicious packet of swift karate chops to Ralph’s neck and chest that stunned him for a moment, but Ralph landed an uppercut to the guy’s jaw that sent him toppling backward, and then Ralph was on him, crushing him to the concrete. A moment later Ralph had rolled him over and cuffed the guy’s hands behind his back.
Law enforcement and medical personnel were streaming past me.
Ralph heaved the suspect to his feet, and the SDPD officers swarmed around him. “Nice timing,” Ralph said sarcastically, handing the guy off to them. Then he rubbed his neck where the guy had karate chopped him. “He’s a frisky little fellow.”
As Ralph brushed himself off, I shook my head. “Ralph, why didn’t you just pull your weapon on him?”
Ralph held up a huge meaty fist. “I did.”
As he held up his hand, I noticed that his little finger was angled sideways, dislocated either from punching the suspect, or perhaps from tackling him. I pointed toward the finger, and Ralph stared at it for a moment. Then he wrapped his other hand around it and, with a slight grimace, yanked the finger forward and then sideways, popping the joint back into place. “Just the way I like it,” he said.
“Fast and clean.”
I think Ralph needs to get a hobby. Yoga maybe. Or one of those little Japanese rock garden deals. That, or a good therapist.
Then he jogged toward Cassandra and the shattered tank, and I noticed Detective Dunn coming my way. “What do we have?” he asked.
“There’s at least one more,” I said. “Could be anywhere in the building.”
“Flare out,” Dunn ordered his men. “Cover the space. Bring him in.” Immediately, the officers spread out across the warehouse to secure the premises.
I took advantage of the moment to settle my breathing. To calm down, to begin processing what had just happened. Austin Hunter was dead. Cassandra Lillo was alive. We had a suspect in custody.
Yes, breathe, breathe.
Breathe.
Tessa slipped into her hotel room with her secret, fresh raven perched on her arm. Her skin was so sore that it really did feel like the bird’s claws were clenching her. She winced as she closed the door.
Before she’d left the studio, Riker had given her a half-used bottle of antibacterial soap to wash her raven. “You can put a little hand lotion on it too,” he said. “But not too much or it’ll draw out the color.” Then Lachlan had wrapped her arm with gauze and told her to wait an hour before removing it.
But now that she was in her room, she was anxious to see her tattoo, so she gingerly shed her shirt and peeled off the soft gauze covering.
Her skin was red and swollen. And tender. Very tender. But the raven really was beautiful.
Lachlan was as good as Riker had said.
Tessa gently washed her tattoo, and then curled up on a pile of pillows on the bed, pulled out her notebook, and began to write about the deep blue depths of Riker’s eyes.
As two officers began reading the suspect his rights, someone found the main set of lights and snapped them on. A flood of fluorescents woke up, the warehouse came into view, and for the first time I was able to get a good look at the suspect. Late twenties, early thirties, five-ten, one-hundred-seventy-five pounds. Light brown hair. Sable eyes that reminded me of the dark stones you might find at the bottom of a northern lake. Jeans, sweatshirt, leather boots.
A number of discolorations and scars on his neck and face. No jewelry or visible body art or piercings. And bobcat tough, even against Ralph.
Then I noticed that near the wall of the warehouse, beside the shattered remains of the tank, pools of water were sloshing lazily across the concrete, feeling out the grooves of the uneven floor. The water had probably helped remove any trace evidence from the area, but breaking the glass had been the only way to save Cassandra.
Years ago I’d learned to pick locks, so I decided to help free Cassandra from the shackle on her ankle, but when I looked up I saw that the paramedics were already wheeling her toward me on a gurney. Maybe Ralph had helped pry the chain loose to free her.
One of the EMTs walking beside Cassandra placed an oxygen mask over her mouth and began adjusting the dials. The doctors would need to check Cassandra out, of course, but it looked like we’d made it just in time. She appeared to be conscious and responsive. Lien-hua was walking beside her, holding her hand. Thankfully, Cassandra was lying down and didn’t see the suspect standing ten meters away. I could only imagine what her reaction would have been if she would have looked up at that moment.
As the paramedics neared the door, the suspect called something to Lien-hua that I couldn’t hear. She stopped. Turned. “What did you say?” She let go of Cassandra’s hand and approached him. “I couldn’t quite make that out.” I thought he might be taunting her so I started walking in his direction to put an end to it.
But before I could get there, he spoke again and I heard him this time. “That sure is a nice dress she has on,” he said. “I hope the water didn’t ruin it.” Without hesitation, Lien-hua stepped over the discarded clawed hammer, whipped around, and gave him a lead leg punch to the abdomen, driving him out of the clutches of the two SDPD officers beside him and sending him careening to the ground. Then she rushed him, and it took both Ralph and me to hold her back. She fought against us with a fierce strength that startled me. It was the first time I’d ever seen her lose her cool. The guy might sue or press charges, but I don’t even think she cared.
Her reaction was so much like mine when Basque mocked Sylvia Padilla’s death thirteen years ago that it gave me chills.
“Easy,” I whispered to her as she pulled against my grip. I felt the ropes of tension in her muscles. “Easy,” I said again. Finally, she began to relax, and Ralph and I let go of her, but we stayed close beside her, just in case.
Dunn motioned for the officers to lift the suspect to his feet, and then stared at him toe-to-toe. “I can’t wait to get you downtown.”
But the man just eyed Dunn coolly, as if the detective were the prey and he were the predator. “Sorry, detective.” He threw a glance toward Lien-hua. “But I’d rather dance with the lady. She’s going to be my next girlfriend.”
Dunn got right in the guy’s face, and I thought we might have to restrain him too, but thankfully he held back. “Get this slimebag out of here.” Then, in a moment of uncharacteristic gentleness he walked over to Cassandra, brushed some of the wet hair from her forehead, and said, “It’s all over now. Everything’s going to be OK.”
I took it all in. Took everything in.
One of Dunn’s officers returned. “The warehouse is empty.”
“Search it again,” I said. “We believe there were at least two abductors.”
Dunn watched the paramedics wheel Cassandra away. “All right,” he said. “Scour it. Set up a perimeter. We’ll grill this guy about his partner once we get him to the station.” The officers all began their duties of searching and investigating and securing the scene.
“Did we get anything from Drake?” I asked Detective Dunn.
He shook his head. “He doesn’t know anything. We’ll follow up tomorrow.”
I wanted to talk more with the suspect, find out Shade’s identity, learn what the device really was and why part of their demands involved burning down Building B-14. So many questions. And I wanted to talk to Cassandra too. Listen to her story of what happened at the Sherrod Aquarium, ask her about her research, and find out how much she knew about the fires Austin Hunter had set.
But now wasn’t the time for any of that. The police needed to process the suspect, the doctors needed to treat Cassandra, and the criminalists needed to set up their crime scene perimeter, no doubt using the parking meters and stop signs on the streets surrounding the warehouse to string up their caution tape. As I was thinking about all these things, I heard Ralph mention offhandedly to Lien-hua that Executive Assistant Director Margaret Wellington had arrived in town and wanted to swing by the scene. Great.
I realized that all in all, there wasn’t much else for Ralph, Lien-hua, or me to do here tonight, so we gave our statements, filled out the prerequisite paperwork. I turned in Austin’s cell phone as evidence, and then, as we were leaving, Ralph said to Lien-hua, “I bet that felt good. Kicking him like that.”
“No,” she said. “It didn’t feel good. None of this feels good.
None of it at all.”
Her words sent my thoughts flying back to Basque yet again.
That unforgettable night in the slaughterhouse. How it felt to hit him, to step over the line. And then, in light of Lien-hua’s words, I felt a dark surge of shame, because, unlike her, part of me had enjoyed the descent into the darkness. Part of me had wondered what it would be like to live on the other side of the line. And part of me still wondered, even after all these years.
Only after Lien-hua and I had stepped outside the warehouse and were climbing into the car did I notice that some of her blood was still on my hand from when I’d tried to stop the bleeding of the gunshot wound on her neck.
I laid my palm flat against my leg and held it there all the way back to the hotel.