The EMT nodded. “We have oxygen and a drip going. She’s lost a lot of blood. He was going for a major artery in her thigh, I think, but he didn’t hit the main. We have the bleeding stopped.”
“It’s incredibly important that I speak with her. May I? Gently, carefully?”
The young EMT nodded solemnly.
“Thank you. And the others?”
“Andy Dean is unconscious, and they just left with him. He’ll need surgery. His wife is unconscious, and until they can stabilize her, they’ll probably put her in medically induced coma. But Ashley rolled under the bed. She received two good whacks, but she’s conscious. She’s in pain, but we’re getting her to the hospital ASAP. Be brief, because we’ll be rushing her into Emergency.”
As if to verify his words, the ambulance revved into gear.
“How did she get help?” Dan asked the EMT.
“Smart kid—had her cell phone with her. We arrived about fifteen minutes before you. Once the call was received, it went out to every agency and to Special Agent Axel Tiger. As far as I know, he was in an interrogation with a suspect and another of his team took the call, but you guys got here almost as fast as we did.”
“We hurried,” Dan said. The ambulance swayed as it took a corner.
“So, I guess you didn’t get him,” the EMT said, looking at Dan sorrowfully.
“We got one. And it isn’t just a him, it’s a them,” Dan explained.
The EMT was shaking his head. He was young, about twenty-five, but had a dignified manner.
“I have a wife. And kids. A two-year-old son and an infant daughter. The Axeman killed a baby. You’ve gotta stop them.”
“We will,” Dan vowed. “And we need every bit of help. This isn’t an immortal being returned to earth. It’s a group of sick people. We will get them all.”
Still solemn, the EMT nodded. The ambulance hit a bump, bouncing Dan sideways a step. The EMT indicated Dan could take the little seat by Ashley Dean.
An IV dripped fluids into her.
Her eyes were closed. Dan gently took her hand. “Ashley, my name is Dan Oliver. Your courage is amazing. I know you’re in pain. And I know you’re worried about your brother and sister-in-law. But you were smart. You got help out here quickly and may have saved your own life and theirs. And I’m so sorry to bother you, but if there’s anything you can give me, we need to know.”
“The Axeman,” she said.
“Yes, a man came in with an axe—”
“He was big. My brother had opened the door to get the paper. He’s old fashioned and gets a physical copy delivered. He...he forgot to lock the door. But it was daytime. He walked back up to the bedroom with coffee and then... I guess the man came in behind him. I heard Jillian scream, and I rushed in, and my brother... Andy lying in a pool of blood. The man was going after Jillian. He saw me. He attacked me, but I fell, and he hit me again, and I rolled so he couldn’t get me... My phone was in my pocket. I dialed 9-1-1.”
“Tell me more about the man.”
Her eyes opened. They were enormous and green, with a dazed light in them. She earnestly told him, “It was the Axeman, exactly as the stories about him go. He was big, his hat was big and low, and he was dressed in a long trench coat of some kind. His face...was dark, as if shadowed, but the hat was so low... I thought I saw his eyes. They were red, and they blazed, and when he heard me talking...heard the emergency operator...he took off. He was just gone.”
“He ran back down the stairs?”
“I—I don’t know. He was gone.”
A big man. Tall and sturdy, and delighting in the fact he was taking on the persona of a long-dead killer. He’d had others do his killing before, but here...now...in New Orleans, he was embracing the legend himself.
Dan thanked her and tried to assure her that she and her family would be okay.
He didn’t want to be a liar. He had no idea if her brother and sister-in-law would make it.
But there, in the ambulance, encouragement seemed the best. The EMT nodded at him.
When they reached the hospital, Dan leaped out and called Axel immediately to tell him what he had learned. “Did you find anything?” Dan asked.
“Well, maybe,” Axel said.
She was a civilian. Katie understood that perfectly. Dan had gone off in the ambulance. Axel and Andre and Ryder were in the house with the crime-scene investigators.
She leaned against one of the patrol cars surveying the CSI, police, and federal vehicles drawn in on the lawn. Crime-scene tape had been set up around the house.
Officers were canvasing the crowd that had gathered and going door-to-door.
It was daytime. Someone had to have seen something.
She was restless. Everyone was busy, doing something.
No one thought she should be alone now; they thought she needed to be protected at all times. That wasn’t a bad thing.
In the middle of the crowd, she saw a woman.
No one else seemed to see her, though a few started as she went by, as if they’d felt a bug or something brush their skin.
It was Mabel. She was watching the scene, too.
Then she saw Katie.
With a grim expression, she made her way to the back of the patrol car where Katie was leaning.
“I know you can’t respond or talk to me with all these people around,” Mabel told her. “But I’ve been going through this crowd, listening. And there’s a little girl out there who saw him. She saw the man running out of the house. She said he looked like a giant Darkwing Duck. All in black, and he dropped something as he exited the house.”
Katie lowered her head and spoke softly. “The axe he used.
