Murder in the City: Blue Lights (6 page)

Crickets roared a loud chorus into the still street. The humid air swirled away the last effects of the air conditioning.

Moistness coated her skin, immediately.

She walked toward the cop car, stepping to the side of it but at a distance so as not to startle the officer.

There was no one inside. She turned around. Where was he?

“Hello,” she called.

A low, moaning keen came from her left, from a wooded overgrown lot. The sound begged her to help. Someone was desperately hurt and needed assistance.

Suddenly, she realized just how alone she was on the isolated street. Distantly, a car motor hummed as if to remind her how far she was from help.

This lonely pocket of overgrown lots existed as if designed for murder and dumping bodies.

She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed 911 as fast as her fingers would punch.

“911. What is your emergency?” a voice intoned calmly as if Lainey had called for a pizza.

They should answer yelling, “Where are you? What’s going on?” That would match the alarm in her blood.

She wanted to scream into the phone, “Help. I need help. I’m terrified and alone out here.”

Instead, as calmly as she could manage, she matched the woman’s tone. “This is Assistant District Attorney Lainey Thomas.” Her voice wavered on the last word, thin and almost unintelligible. She sucked in a breath and forced out as steadily as she could manage, “I was called out to the scene of a body just south of I-20.”

“Oh, yes ma’am. I’m sorry. Someone should have called you back and told you that was nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Yes, it was called in first as a body, then they realized it was an old sleeping bag left by some homeless dude. Sorry, Miss Thomas.”

Lainey’s blood surged into her ears. She was alone out here. Where was the police officer?

“I need help,” she said. “There’s a police officer’s car parked on the side of the road, but no police officer. And someone’s hurt in the woods.”

“Oh lord. I wonder what could have happened. The officer said he was leaving the scene.”

Lainey felt hands reaching for her neck. She twirled around quickly but no one was there. She backed up until she hit the police car. It would provide a hard surface that someone would have to run around in order to get to her.

She glanced all around but saw no sign of anyone on the street behind her. A moaning cry of pain came from the woods in front of her.

“Get someone out here right away, someone’s hurt and the police officer is nowhere to be seen. I think there could be an officer down.” She said the words as she knew they would be issued on the radio. Those words, O
fficer Down
, would turn on the blue lights of every cop that could get to the scene.

They’d blast here as fast as possible.

“I want you to stay on the line with me until someone gets there, Ms. Thomas.”

Lainey scanned the woods on the other side of the street, searching for sign of the person who needed help. The pulsing blue lights from the police car shot illumination across the area. But, it was more disorienting than helpful.

“Are you in your car?” the dispatch operator asked.

“No.” Was that someone standing behind a tree?

“Then, get back in your car and lock the doors,” the operator’s voice interfered with her ability to listen for crackling footsteps in the woods.

The painful cry echoed from the dark again.

“I need to go see who needs help. It could be the officer.”

“Ma’am, you need to get in your car and lock the door.”

“Just get someone out here.” She punched the disconnect number. That crying sound wrenched at her heart.

The time it took another cop to get out here might mean the difference between life and death.

She couldn’t let anyone lie on that lonely path and die alone, the way her parents had before rescue crews had arrived.

She ran to her car and took out the baby Glock she owned but rarely carried. Checking it, she grasped it between both hands and pointed it downward as she hurried toward the path.

“Hello.” She walked down the dirt ribbon.

Another soft moan pulled her forward.

She rounded a corner. The pulsing blue, police light bounced through the trees, illuminating the scene in a crazy jig jag pattern, off then on, off then on, like an old fashioned movie scene. She inched further down the path and then saw a body.

A uniformed officer lay on the dirt.

She ran forward, kneeling beside him. “It’s okay. Help is coming.”

His eyes were closed. She took his hand, grasping it reassuringly.

“Can you hear me?”

His eyes flickered open, full of fear.

“You’re okay.”

Blood covered the side of his head. She gripped his shoulder, reassuringly. Should she run back up the path to make sure the ambulance and other police officers knew where she was? But, she didn’t want to leave him alone. Had she asked for an ambulance? She reached into her pocket to retrieve her phone.

A slight brushing in the shrubbery behind her alerted her to movement. The police officer’s eyes fixed on something behind her, terror flooding his face.

She whirled around and as she did so, she lost her footing, falling backward. Her hand hit a branch as she fell and her gun flew out of her hands, off into the dark.

Someone was running toward her and she had no time to look for the weapon.

Instantly, she reacted, jumping up, moving so fast that she was headed down the path before the person could reach her.

But they were right behind her. A hand grasped for her shirt, clasping a handful. She swiveled and jerked to the side, causing them to lose their grip.

Blood surged though her, adrenaline giving her so much strength that she charged into the underbrush as if it weren’t there, running off the path, desperate to get away.

Her heartbeat pounded in her ears as Lainey ran, bushes slashing across her body, grabbing at her almost as if assisting the person who chased her.

Rabbiting through the woods like a wild animal fleeing from a predator, her heart beat faster than any scared beast’s could. The person chased her like a wolf hungry for blood. He preyed upon the unaware, first the cop, now her.

God, she wished for the baby Glock. She would love to turn and surprise this jerk. But for now, he was in control. She was certain it was a man by the sheer volume of the person she’d glimpsed behind her.

He was seconds behind her, crashing along in her wake. She sensed his hands as if at any instant he might latch onto her—grab her by the neck and squeeze the life out of her.

A burst of siren and a second blue light blared out into the night like an emergency beacon offering help and she spurted toward it.

The crashing in the bushes behind her stopped and changed directions, running away. Thank God.

She slashed through the final bushes that separated her from the road, stepping onto the warm asphalt.

“Lainey,” a voice called. Registering that it was Brice, she ran toward it. His powerful frame stood out in the night and she’d never been so happy to see such a big man.

As he ran toward her, he held his gun in both hands, pointed away toward the ground.

He stepped around her, putting himself between her and danger.

He pointed the gun toward the dense underbrush, at the same time backing away, pushing her with him. Finally, when they’d reached his car, he took her by the arm, walking around to put the car between them and the brushy darkness.

He turned, his expression on high alert but calm, reassuring, his gun still directed at the woods.

“What happened?”

She could barely hear his words over the blood pounding in her ears. “Someone was chasing me,” she gasped out between strangled breaths. She looked all around, registering every blade of grass and every tree branch, emblazoning them into the registry of her senses, noting anywhere that a man could hide.

“Why were you in the woods?” He grasped her by the shoulder, to get her attention.

She almost couldn’t understand his words, so intent was she on everything around them, all senses focused on danger and possible threats.

“What happened?” he said loudly and clearly, his voice becoming even deeper as if to impress itself into her mind.

“A cop’s hurt.” She pointed down the path, remembering what had originally taken her into the dark woods. “Then, a man came out of nowhere. He chased me.”

Brice immediately pulled a radio from his belt, and called for backup. “Officer down, officer down,” he said distinctly into the device.

Lainey knew from experience that nothing got police moving faster than those two words.

“What’s your exact location?” dispatch answered back.

Brice described the location and asked for an ambulance, though that was a given in his initial call. As well as Lainey’s call.

“We have to go help the officer,” she said.

Brice nodded. She’d never seen him so intent, so dangerous. Masculinity oozed out of him, with a sense of purpose that had insured the survival of the species for thousands of years.

“Get in your car and go home,” he said, turning his eyes on her for just one second. But in that second, those eyes speared into her soul with a commanding and forceful gaze, his cop expression. A man used to ordering people around.

But it wasn’t gonna work this time. She wasn’t leaving him alone out here. There wouldn’t be a second cop lying on that dirty path, the blood oozing out of him.

“Do you have a second gun?” she said clearly.

“Get outta here,” he said.

She shook her head. “Do you have a second gun?”

He mumbled a curse but leaned down to his ankle and pulled out a gun. “Do you know how to use it?”

She glanced at it. “Yep. And I’m fully motivated to use it, too.”

A dark grin crossed his face. “Just don’t shoot me.” Then, a blue light rounded the corner, siren blazing, and another flew around the opposite corner.

“Back up. The most wonderful words in the police lexicon,” he said.

The police cars bathed the street in blue light, painting the block with safety. “Big men with guns,” she said.

“Big, little, man, woman. I don’t care. Just so they’re on our side of the badge.”

More sirens could be heard getting closer. Within minutes, the area was awash with cops. Lainey’s heart rate struggled to stabilize.

But, the memory of the injured cop and the terror in his eyes combined with her own fear as she was chased through the woods said it would be a long time until she felt normal again.

* * *

Hours later, the police had just about wrapped up the initial investigation. Other detectives had arrived, interrogating Lainey as well as walking the path and the surrounding area.

Police had searched the woods and dogs were scheduled to arrive soon to look for trails out of the woods. But the chance of the dogs hitting on a scent had slimmed down as cops had poured into the woods in the initial heat of the search and investigation.

There was nothing like one of their own being injured to get cops’ blood going. A frenzied pack mentality surged through them and they pulsed through the woods looking for the guy who’d clubbed their colleague and threatened an assistant district attorney.

There was a reason people became cops. A driving sense of justice sent these men and women in blue out onto the streets where they faced danger every day.

As the lead detective walked away from Lainey, after telling her she could go home and shower and get on with her day, Brice walked toward her.

Thank God, he’d shown up when he did.

She’d always known she would die one day but that concept had never seemed more real than when a man was chasing her through the woods. If Brice hadn’t shown up…

“Thank you,” she said.

His eyes flashed with such intensity that she knew he got the immense sentiment behind her words. “You’re welcome.”

Thank you
, such simple words. Thank you for saving my life, for keeping that monster from dragging me into the woods and raping or killing me.

Thank you. It wasn’t big enough.

She extended her hand. He took it and pulled her forward. She turned it into a professional half hug, with their hands clasped in a shake in front of them and her hand coming up to pat him on the back.

But it felt anything but professional as her whole body ached to push up against him, to be pulled into a full body contact embrace.

But professional was all it could be. Their paths were so entwined on the job, in the Simone investigation, in a million other ways professionally that she couldn’t risk screwing up the relationship.

She pulled back, not meeting his eyes, yet feeling his gaze on her.

She slid her hand away and slowly he released it.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket, and then a trilling ring followed. Thankful for the distraction, she pulled it out.