sweethearts discovering themselves.
“I’m telling you, Vince: Shada is convinced that the son of a bitch is going to hurt McKenna.”
Vince dialed her cell one last time, gripping his phone tightly as it rang once, twice-and then the ringing stopped.
“McKenna?”
No answer. But someone had picked up, he was sure of it.
“McKenna, is that you?”
The voice on the line was weak, but the words were unmistakable.
“Help… me.”
Vince leaped into action, kicking the front door open and drawing his firearm as he burst into the foyer.
“Police!” he shouted. “McKenna! Where are you?”
He switched on the lights. The stairway brightened, and Vince immediately spotted drops of blood on the beige runner. He charged up the steps with his pistol drawn, the cell to his ear as he identified himself and called for backup.
“Possible sexual assault,” he told the dispatcher. “Ambulance needed!”
The upstairs hallway was dark, except at the very end. Outside the third bedroom on the left, the faint glow of a lamp shone through the open doorway and hovered like a ghost in the black corridor. Vince planted his back to the wall, eager to find McKenna but cautious of a possible confrontation with her attacker.
“Miami police!” he shouted again. “McKenna, are you up here?”
No response. Vince moved a few steps closer to the lighted bedroom and halted. More drops of blood in the hallway. They led like a crimson trail to the doorway. From this angle, he could see partially into the room. On the rug was a pool of blood.
Dear God.
Vince jumped into the open doorway, feet spread in the marksman’s crouch, pistol aimed at any possible perp.
“Freeze!” he shouted, but even that single word caught in his throat. McKenna was naked on the floor, her twisted body covered with her own blood.
“McKenna!”
Vince went to her, knelt at her side, and raised her head from the floor. He saw no weapon in the immediate area, but the defensive wounds on her hands-her left thumb was hanging by a thread-ruled out any possibility of self-inflicted injuries. The largest wound was to her rib cage, a gaping hole that was spewing bloody foam and almost certainly indicated a punctured lung-a sucking chest wound. The internal bleeding had to be massive, but most of the blood on the floor was from the slash across the left side of her neck. A direct hit to the carotid artery would have been fatal long before, but hers had at least been nicked. Blood everywhere, so much blood, more than any human being could lose and live to tell about. Vince checked for a pulse. Weak. Almost nonexistent.
“McKenna?” he said, his voice rising.
Her eyes blinked open.
“Hold on, baby,” he said.
McKenna’s body was going cold, so Vince pulled a blanket from the bed and covered her. He tore the top sheet into bandages. He wrapped a long strip around her chest, and he took it as a bad sign that she didn’t writhe in pain; she was barely conscious. The other strip he folded into a square and applied pressure to the neck wound, careful not to obstruct her airway. Neither was much help. The blood kept coming, the noisy wound in her chest kept spewing red foam. In complete frustration, he dialed the police dispatcher again.
“Where the hell is the ambulance?” he shouted. “I need one, now!”
“It’s on its way.”
Two squad cars to patrol all of Coconut Grove just weren’t enough, but Vince was all too aware of the department’s economic reality.
“I have a sixteen-year-old white female, multiple stab wounds. Get me a doctor on the line. I need someone to tell me how to help her!”
“Keep her warm to prevent shock.”
“Already did that,” said Vince.
“Apply pressure to the wounds to slow the bleeding.”
“I’m doing that, but she’s got a sucking chest wound and possible damage to the carotid artery. We need help!”
“ETA is three minutes,” said the dispatcher.
McKenna was trying to speak. Vince added one last plea for the dispatcher to hurry, and then he disconnected, putting his ear to McKenna’s breath.
“Am I…”
“McKenna?” he said, as if to help her finish her thought.
“… gonna die?” she asked.
Blood was coming from her mouth.
Holy shit!
A huge part of him wanted to think only of that healthy and determined little girl he used to watch on the soccer field, the beautiful and intelligent young woman who had survived the social horrors of middle school. But as he looked into her eyes, he saw past his own denial and found himself staring into two darkening pools of the obvious and inevitable. Vince had seen that same look in the eyes of a fallen soldier in combat, in the eyes of his father in hospice care. McKenna was not long for this earth-he was almost certain of it.
Cop instincts took over. He wasn’t giving up all hope, but if the worst happened, Vince wanted to make damn sure that the lowlife bastard would pay for what he’d done to McKenna. He grabbed his phone, dialed his home number, and waited for his answering machine to pick up. From that point forward, all words-his and McKenna’s- would be spoken directly into his cell and recorded onto his machine.
Vince put the phone to McKenna’s lips. She seemed scared, so helpless, as she looked up at him.
“Tell me,” she whispered. “Am I dying?”
Blood had soaked all the way through the blanket. The folded square of torn bedsheet on her neck was completely red. But Vince couldn’t be that brutally honest.
“No, sweetheart. You’re gonna be just fine.”
“Really?”
“Who did this to you?”
“Am I going to die?”
“No, McKenna. You’re going to be fine. Who did this?”
“You really think I’m going to be okay?”
“Yes, it’s not your time. I saw much worse than this in Iraq, and they’re all fine. Tell me who did this to you.”
She was fading. Vince tried again.
“Who did this to you?”
She coughed on the blood in the back of her throat. Vince checked the chest wound beneath the blanket. Even with the makeshift bandage, the foam oozing from the slit between her ribs emitted a gurgling noise. That hole in her chest was literally sucking the life out of her.
“McKenna, tell me who did this to you.”
He put the cell to her mouth, and her eyes closed. It was too much effort to keep them open and speak at the same time. “Jamal,” she whispered.
“Your boyfriend?”
She tried to nod but couldn’t. “My first,” she said, her voice barely audible.
The gurgling noise from her chest gave way to sudden silence. McKenna’s eyelids stopped quivering. Vince dropped the phone, threw his leg over her body, and jumped into CPR mode.
“Come on, McKenna!” he said as he pushed against her rib cage. Frothy blood squirted from her chest wound like seawater from a blowhole, and Vince froze, not sure what to do. He tried mouth to mouth, but he was breathing into a pool of blood that had risen up in her throat. He checked her pulse. There was none. Her body was motionless. Vince tried one last series of chest compressions, and more blood shot from the blowhole. Vince fell
