I yanked open my car door and was halfway through it when I felt the moist breath against my neck, then the viselike grip on my shoulder, yanking me out of the car. I yelped as fire roared from my shoulder to my chest and I was pulled, my forehead crashing against the hard metal door frame, the skin above my left eye splitting and immediately starting to ooze blood. I couldn’t make out the face in the darkness, but I knew that it was coming toward me, teeth bared, fingers gripping. Blood stung my eye and so I clenched my eyes shut, ready for the toothpicklike snapping of my bones. I opened my mouth to scream, but my voice was gone, strangled, lost in my own throat.
And that was the last thing I remembered.
Chapter Eight
When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Opie’s face hovering above me, his watery eyes studying my forehead. His big nostrils flared, and I heard him say, “She’s coming around, sir.”
I tried to sit up, but my head and shoulders protested, the searing pain roaring through my body. My head throbbed, felt raw and cold above my eye, and my stomach seemed to curl over on itself. I blinked twice, trying to avoid the angry fluorescent glare above my head.
“Where am I?” I finally muttered, my lips sticky and stiff.
“She’s talking!” Opie said, his small hazel eyes not leaving mine. “What should I do?”
Police Chief Oliver looked down on me next, the dark brown of his eyes highlighting the huge purple bags underneath them. He was an enormous walrus of a man with a heaving chest puffed out and decorated with police paraphernalia, and a fine trail of drying marinara sauce on his navy blue tie. He crouched so that he was eye level with me.
“Are you okay, Miss Lawson?” he asked slowly, enunciating every word.
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to take in the scene. “What happened?”
The chief stepped back and clapped Opie on the back. He said, “She’s going to be okay, Franks. Let’s just give her some room,” and both men stepped away from me.
I rolled my head, my skull filling with a new needling, angry pain. I tried to blink it away and then focused on the wall in front of me until I realized that I was stretched out on a sticky pleather sofa in an office that smelled of feet and corn chips and was stacked with bargain basement office furniture. “Where am I?” I repeated.
“It’s okay, Sophie. You’re fine. You’re in my office,” the police chief answered, and I felt his warm hand closing over my wrist, felt his finger find my pulse point and pause. “Don’t try to move,” he said when I attempted to sit up again. “You had quite a scare out there tonight.”
I struggled to a sitting position despite Chief Oliver’s warning, and yelped at the dull ache that blossomed from my shoulder and inched across my chest. I gently touched the cool spot above my eyebrow and winced, pulling my fingers away and examining the sticky traces of drying blood on them. “Am I dead?” I asked mournfully.
Opie grinned stupidly, and Chief Oliver set my wrist down, patting my hand gingerly.
“No, honey, you’re just fine. It seems you ran into”—I watched his eyes shift uncomfortably—“a bad element. What were you doing all alone in the middle of the night anyway?”
I thought of UDA, of Mr. Sampson and the broken chains. “Looking for my kitty,” I answered finally.
“Well, you should do that in the daylight hours and in a better part of town. You’ve got a pretty nasty bump on your head and you’re a little bruised up, but I think you’re going to be just fine. Officer Franks can drive you home.”
“No,” I said, planting my feet firmly on the floor. “I ran into a bad element? What does that mean? What happened to me? What, exactly, happened?”
I might have been paranoid, but I would almost swear that Officer Opie and Chief Oliver shared a look. I considered that it could have been the “nutty cat lady is getting hysterical” look, but I thought there was more to it. “Please,” I said. “I need to know.”
“Gangbangers, likely,” the chief said, nodding officially.
“Gangbangers?” I asked skeptically.
Though I didn’t remember much of the night and admittedly, my experience with gangs could be summed up by the toe-tapping musical brawl from
The chief raised one challenging eyebrow, and Opie nodded his head wildly, his strawberry-blond hair bobbing against his forehead. “Gangbangers, definitely. We didn’t see ‘em, but that’s what they were. Definitely,” he said.
The chief stepped away from me and eyed Officer Opie. “Franks, why don’t you help Miss Lawson to her feet?”
“I think I’m good.” My legs were a little shaky, but I opted to steady myself against a cold metal file cabinet rather than risk my chances with Opie’s awkwardly outstretched stick arms.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” I said, “but I’m feeling much better now. I just need to get home and rest.”
“I’ll drive you,” Opie said, dangling a chain full of keys in front of me. “We can take my squad car.”
I looked from Opie to the chief and realized that I’d be lucky to walk out of this station under my own volition (rather than be thrown over the shoulder and carried out by Opie), let alone be allowed to drive my own car home, so I agreed to let Opie drive me.
“But I need to stop by my car first,” I said quickly, “just to grab a few things.”
The chief nodded, and Opie led me out of the office and into the cold night air. We walked in awkward silence across the parking lot, and I sucked in a tortured breath when I saw my car in its space on the street.
My car, my little green baby, my first big-girl purchase, was a complete mess of crumpled steel and scratched-up paint. The driver’s side door was smashed in like a tin can, and the cut on my forehead throbbed when I examined the forehead-sized crack in the passenger-side window. The driver’s seat was shredded, and cotton stuffing bloomed from tears in the passenger seat, too.
“Those gangbangers,” Opie said, clucking his tongue, “they can really do some damage.”
I nodded solemnly and stuck my head into the car, feeling around on the carpet for my keys. I remembered the sound they made as they fell onto the floor, right before I felt the wind get knocked out of me. I shuddered, then closed my fingers around the keys.
“Okay,” I said to Opie. “I’m ready.” I cocked my head, swallowing over the lump that rose in my throat when I took a last look at my shredded interior. I blinked.
“Wait.” I slid back into the cab of the car and leaned down to where a long, jagged gash had been made in the center console. There was a spray of cotton from the shredded seat, a sprinkling of broken glass, and a tuft of dark fur.
I picked up the fur and stuffed it in my pocket.
After an uneventful—and quiet—drive home in the squad car, Opie pulled up to my apartment building. I plastered a smile on my face and turned toward him, wincing softly as the new bruises on my shoulder and rib cage protested.
“Thanks for the ride, Officer Franks. I can make it from here.”
He looked skeptically at the clean, well-lit sidewalk in front of my Nob Hill building and wagged his head, his eyes wide and ominous.
“I don’t think so, Sophie. There’s a bad element out there.”
I squinted out the window at the deserted street, fairly certain a lone tumbleweed would roll by at any minute.
“Gangbangers?” I asked, unable to keep the annoyance out of my voice.
Opie didn’t answer, and before he could go for the door handle, I rested my hand on top of his.
“Officer Franks, what really happened tonight?”
Opie stared out the windshield, and I watched as he gnawed on his bottom lip, deep in thought.
