attach meaning to it, couldn’t fasten onto the ramifications. He remained motionless a half step into the house, one hand still behind him on the doorknob, his hip a few inches off the kitchen counter, the handle of the omelet pan poking his forearm.
The man fell to his knees, the jolt shuddering his shoulders, and Mike caught a glimpse of Annabel’s blanched face above his shoulder. Then the man shifted, and only her arm and hip were in view, her sleeveless shirt hiked up from her fall, bra strap misaligned. Ink gurgled from a slit in her left side, just below the ribs.
‘You couldn’t just listen and sit on the couch and wait for him to get here.’ At first it seemed the guy was whispering like a lover, but then Mike caught the tension – no,
In total, maybe three seconds had passed.
Surreally, the silence was split by a Muzak version of ‘The Blue Danube.’ The man dug a shitty plastic phone from his pocket, the ringtone ceasing when he clicked to answer. ‘Hello?’
His voice jarred Mike from his stunned suspension. Grabbing the protruding handle of the omelet pan, he closed the distance in four or five massive strides and tomahawked the disk of stainless steel at the man’s head. The guy registered Mike’s footsteps late, his head craning around to look over his shoulder, his eyes flying open a second before impact. He emitted a terrified noise like a whinny.
Mike caught him at the corner of his jaw with all his force, the momentum twisting his head back around his neck the wrong way, the brutal sound like the snap of a stick wrapped in wet cotton amplified ten times over. The guy toppled over, body hitting carpet as a single rigid piece and giving off a deadweight vibration.
Sobs flashed across Annabel’s face – downturned lips, then normal, a strobelight of pain. Her mouth came open, but there was no sound. Air moved through the hole in her side. Mike clamped both hands over the wound. She pawed at his shoulder, missing, missing, and then hooked his neck. He leaned over, pressed his forehead to hers.
Mike took her hand and firmed it over the wound. ‘Hold this. Hold this tight.’
To her side lay her attacker, his eyes turned to glass, one boot obscenely touching her calf. His shitty cell phone, an untraceable throwaway model, lay on the carpet where he’d dropped it. Mike pulled back, Annabel’s fingers trying weakly to hold him there, and snatched the phone off the floor, remembering only now that there had been a live call going. The connection had been severed, and he wondered who had-
– but then he was dialing 911, not giving a shit about alerts, which agency suspected him of what or how this would play, not giving a damn about anything except-
‘-an intruder stabbed her bleeding everywhere get someone here our address is-’
– her fingers were loose over the hole, though the stream had stopped, and then he had his hands, wet with blood to the wrists, back on her and-
Annabel rested a hand against his cheek. He was, he realized, choking back sobs, his breath seizing in his throat. With a groan she tilted her head to take in the blood slick that had robbed the carpet of its texture. ‘Oh, Jesus. This isn’t gonna… work.’ The words leaked out of her, breathy, hoarse. Her legs cycled against the floor, one sandal loose at the heel, the other kicked off.
‘Where’s Kat? Is she-’
‘She’s fine she’s okay I have her in the truck.’
‘I got your message. Sorry I… didn’t listen and keep her… home.’
‘It’s not your fault didn’t mean what I said not your fault.’
Jesus, she’d listened to his message blaming her, the last words she’d heard before-
‘… said he was a cop,’ she murmured. ‘I thought he had news about Kat. Opened to check his badge-’
‘None of that matters you didn’t do anything wrong.’
If he hadn’t left the message, she wouldn’t have been worried enough to open the door to someone who said he was-
‘Where’s my baby?’
‘The garage she’s in the garage.’
‘I don’t want her to see… to remember me like…’
‘It’s okay you’ll be okay don’t talk like-’
‘Get her away from… all of… Leave… with her… now. Promise me.’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll get you to the hospital and-’
She grabbed his face in both hands, a burst of strength. ‘
‘I promise.’
Her hands fell away from his face.
She said, ‘I’m scared.’
He was breathing hard, pressing uselessly. ‘It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay.’
‘But I
He stilled. Looked at her. Held that gaze, those eyes. ‘I know,’ he said.
She lay back, shuddered, and was motionless.
Her lips were bluing already, or was it just a trick of the eye? His vision dotted; he reminded himself to breathe.
Wrist. No pulse.
Neck. No pulse.
Chest. No pulse.
His own heart seemed to halt in stunned sympathy. He heard a low, frustrated bellow – from his own mouth? – and then leaned over and vomited on the rug.
He squeezed her cheeks, her lips opening with a faint pop. Was it
The cheery three-note chime of the doorbell.
He shoved himself up, sneakers losing their purchase on the bloody carpet, and sprinted around the corner to the entryway. Shards of glass gleamed on the floor tile; it took him a moment to piece them together as the empty vase that used to sit on the accent table. Ripped from the front door, the slide catch dangled from the end of the security chain. Both dead bolts remained unfastened. Annabel must have opened to the length of the chain – no peephole – and the man had kicked in the door, knocking down the table. She’d fled into the house, turned, and gotten off a shot. And then he’d stabbed her. Flying over the glass, Mike reconstructed the event with one part of his brain while the rest hummed with senseless panic.
He flung open the front door. A man with thick black hair and stubble so dense it looked as if his skin changed shade around his mouth and cheeks. Average height, compact build crammed into a rumpled suit. Deep wrinkles split his forehead like cracks. In the midst of the nightmarish chaos, those wrinkles were something Mike could fasten onto; they said this was all real.
The man wiggled a badge in front of Mike’s nose. ‘Rick Graham.’
‘You’re not the ambulance where’s the ambulance?’
‘Dispatch sent a request. I was the closest responder-’
Mike grabbed him, pulled him inside. ‘Help her in here do you know CPR?’
Graham jogged back, keys jingling in his pants pocket. He came around the corner and drew up, grimacing at the dead man’s head, twisted around on his neck at that impossible angle. ‘Jesus, Mary, and-’
Mike steered him down to a knee. ‘Here she needs… she needs-’
As Graham checked her vitals, Mike glanced at the door to the garage. Kat out there, plugged into her TV show. He could see the light of the screen flashing on the windshield. He had to get this on some kind of footing before she-
‘I’m sorry.’ Graham stood, rubbing his hands together in what seemed a misplaced show of humility. A new network of lines knit that empathetic forehead. He was older than he’d appeared at first glance, maybe early fifties, with some gray threaded through his black hair and puckers at the edges of his lips. ‘She’s dead.’
