“Very resourceful.” Kate moved closer. “Now if only we could get you to use your talents for the good of humankind. Where've you been, Angie? Who hurt you?”
Kate was at the doorway now. The girl hadn't moved on the chair. She wore the same ratty jeans she'd worn from day one, now with dark stains that looked like blood on the thighs, the same dirty jean jacket that couldn't have been warm enough in this weather, and a dingy blue sweater Kate had seen before. Around her throat she wore a set of choke marks—purple bruises where fingers had pressed hard enough to cut off her wind and the blood supply to her brain.
A ghost of a bitter smile twisted Angie's mouth. “I've had worse.”
“I know you have, sweetie,” Kate said softly. It wasn't until she started to crouch down to take a closer look that Kate saw the utility knife in the girl's lap—a razor-blade nose on a sleek, thick, gray metal handle.
She straightened away slowly and took a half step back. “Who did this to you? Where've you been, Angie?”
“In the Devil's basement,” she said, finding some kind of sour amusement in that.
“Angie, I'm going to call an ambulance for you, okay?” Kate said, taking another step back toward the phone.
Instantly, tears filled the girl's eyes. “No. I don't need an ambulance,” she said, nearly frantic at the prospect.
“Someone's done a number on you, kiddo.” Kate wondered where that someone might be. Had Angie escaped and come here on her own, or had she been brought here? Was her abductor in the next room, watching, waiting? If she could get on the phone, she could dial 911 and the cops would be here in a matter of minutes.
“No. Please,” Angie begged. “Can't I just stay here? Can't I just be here with you? Just for a while?”
“Honey, you need a doctor.”
“No. No. No.” The girl shook her head. Her fingers curled around the handle of the utility knife. She held the blade against the palm of her left hand.
Blood beaded where the tip of the blade bit her skin.
The phone rang, shattering the tense silence. Kate jumped.
“Don't get it!” Angie shouted, holding her hand up, dragging the knife down inch by inch, opening the top layer of flesh, drawing blood.
“I'll
If she meant it, if she brought that blade down a few inches to her wrist, she could bleed out before Kate finished the call to 911.
The ringing stopped. The machine in the den was politely informing whoever to leave a message. Quinn? she wondered. Kovac with some news? Rob calling to fire her? She imagined him capable of leaving that message, just as Melanie Hessler's boss had.
“Why would you want to cut yourself, Angie?” she asked. “You're safe now. I'll help you. I'll help you get through this. I'll help you get a fresh start.”
“You didn't help me before.”
“You didn't give me much chance.”
“Sometimes I like to cut myself,” Angie admitted, face downcast in shame. “Sometimes I need to. I start to feel . . . It scares me. But if I cut myself, then it goes away. That's crazy, isn't it?” She looked up at Kate with such forlorn eyes, it nearly broke her heart.
Kate was slow to answer. She'd read about girls who did what Angie was describing, and, yes, her first thought was that it was crazy. How could people mutilate themselves and not be insane?
“I can get you help, Angie,” she said. “There are people who can teach you how to deal with those feelings without having to hurt yourself.”
“What do they know?” Angie sneered, her eyes shining with contempt. “What do they know about ‘dealing with' anything? They don't know shit.”
She considered and discarded the idea of trying to wrestle the knife away from the girl. The potential for disaster was too great. If she could keep her talking, she might eventually persuade her into putting it down. They had all the time in the world—provided they were alone.
“Angie, did you come here by yourself?”
Angie stared at the knife blade as she delicately traced it along the blue lines of the tattoo near her thumb, the letter A with a horizontal line crossing the top of it.
“Did someone bring you?”
“I'm always alone,” she murmured.
“What about the other night, after I took you back to the Phoenix? Were you alone then?”
“No.” She dug the point of the blade into the tattooed blood droplets on the bracelet of thorns that encircled her wrist. “I knew he wanted me. He sent for me.”
“Who wanted you? Gregg Urskine?”
“Evil's Angel.”
“Who is that?” Kate asked.
“I was in the shower,” she said, eyes glazed as she looked back on the memory. “I was cutting myself. Watching the blood and the water. Then he sent for me. Like he smelled my blood or something.”
“Who?” Kate tried again.
“He wasn't happy,” she said ominously. In eerie contrast, a sly smirk twisted her mouth. “He was mad 'cause I didn't follow orders.”
“I can see this is a long story,” Kate said, watching the blood drip from Angie's hand to her dining room rug. “Why don't we go in the other room and sit down? I can get a fire going in the fireplace. Warm you up. How's that sound?”
Distract her from her knife play. Get her out of sight of one telephone and near another, so that one way or another a call might get placed. The phone/fax in the den had 911 on the speed dial. If she could get Angie settled on the couch, she could sit on the desktop, work the phone off the hook, punch the button. It might work. It sure as hell beat standing there, watching the girl bleed.
“My feet are cold,” Angie said.
“Let's go in the other room. You can take those wet boots off.”
The girl looked at her with narrowed eyes, raised her bleeding hand to her mouth and dragged her tongue along one wound. “You go first.”
In front of a psychotic with a knife, possibly going toward some waiting lunatic serial killer. Great. Kate started for the den, walking almost sideways, trying to keep one eye on Angie, one scouting ahead, trying to keep the conversation going. Angie clutched the knife in her hand, ready to use it. She walked a little bent over, with her other arm braced across her stomach, obviously in some pain.
“Did Gregg Urskine hurt you, Angie? I saw the blood in the bathroom.”
She blinked confusion. “I was in the Zone.”
“I don't know what that means.”
“No, you wouldn't.”
Kate led the way into the den.
“Have a seat.” She motioned to the couch where she and Quinn had made love not that many hours before. “I'll get the fire going.”
She thought of using the poker as a weapon, but discarded that idea immediately. If she could get the knife away from Angie by trickery, it would be preferable to violence for many reasons, not the least of which would be Angie's state of mind.
Angie wedged herself into a corner of the couch and began tracing over the bloodstains on her jeans with the point of the knife.
“Who choked you, Angie?” Kate asked, going to the desk. A fax had come in. The call she hadn't answered.
“A friend of a friend.”
“You need a better class of friends.” She eased a hip onto the desktop, her eyes on the fax—a copy of a newspaper article from Milwaukee. “Did you know this guy?”
