Chapter 2 #2
Whether he heard me or not, there was no answering shout back or muffled footsteps heading my way.
The house remained eerily silent outside of the radio’s chattering and beyond the dark void that stretched past the hall’s overhead light.
Without knowing the actual layout of this place, that made it impossible for me to know if there was a backdoor he could potentially escape out of or how many rooms were upstairs to check.
Leaving TJ behind long enough to go look left him too vulnerable for my taste.
There were too many things that could happen while he was still prone on the floor and without a gun in his hand, too many opportunities for Thomas to take him out while I was thirty feet away, looking through closets upstairs.
Two minutes until the ambulance arrived and probably another four until an actual patrol unit rolled up. Edgewood was small but without its own precinct, it heavily relied on how fast ours over in Palmerston could respond.
Priority first: get TJ out to the ambulance and then look for Thomas.
Holstering my gun, I pivoted back into the living room and hauled him up off the floor by the back of his jacket.
As a man much taller and bulkier than me, the sudden weight distribution nearly had me doubling over in the split second it took me to get his arm looped over my shoulder, draping him against my side.
He grunted, the shadow of a bruise already forming on his jaw and cheek was becoming more prominent by the second.
“Clocked you, too, huh.” We’d have to leave his gun behind.
Our captain was going to have a fucking fit but it was either I took the time to fish it out from where it might be hiding under the couch and give Thomas the precious seconds to try and attack again, or I got us the hell out of this place until backup arrived.
I had a feeling the latter was going to be the more accepted answer in the end. Even if it came up in my quarterly review.
“He’s strung out. Freaked the second I tried shaking him awake.”
I dragged him through the living room and into the hallway, no signs of a skulking drunk hopped up on molly and coke lurking anywhere from what I could see. “Girlfriend said the friend was a dealer.”
“Well, fuck.”
Tell me about it.
With a tight hold on his utility belt, I began walking him toward the front door, still wide open and reflecting the blue and red from our cruiser’s lights on the window. Not even ten steps in, the sound of something whooshing by my head caught me by surprise, sending us stumbling into the wall.
Crushing TJ against it, I had hardly enough time to react to the silver glint of something arching toward me, caught in the light from the hallway just enough to force me into turning my body out of the way and shoving TJ down onto the ground at my feet.
A knife thunked into the side of the wall right by my shoulder, missing me by a mere two inches. Attached to the handle was a white-knuckled hand that strained to pull it out, the soft grunting of someone close to me sending chills racing down my spine.
Holy shit—
I brought my arm up to block the fist thrown at me, surprisingly with a good amount of force behind the swing. The knife was dislodged a single second later and swiped at my face, a breeze ghosting over my cheek and narrowly missed me for a second time.
Less than twelve fucking steps from the door and this jackass decided to attack us now.
Another tone chimed in my ear, muffled by my heart hammering in my chest, a familiar voice coming over the radio—dispatch? Another unit arriving? I couldn’t tell. Not with my focus pinpointing directly on the man trying to stab me.
I caught him by the shoulder before he could swing back around again, shoving him hard in the opposite direction and toward the wall on the other side of the hallway.
Thomas’s body snapped back the second he hit it, his head slamming hard enough to force a wince out of me.
To my surprise, he didn’t crumble to the ground like I was expecting, keeping himself upright with one hand splayed out next to him and the other with the knife still clutched tight between his fingers.
His long hair obscured his features, stringy from sweat and slightly curling at the ends. He swayed slightly on his feet.
I reached for my gun again. “Don’t.”
If this fucker even thought about—
He lunged forward, slamming his entire body weight into me and taking us both down to the floor.
My shoulder connected with the ground first, pain radiating up my entire spine and shooting right to the base of my skull from the force, leaving me with little room to breathe through the pain while his weight shifted on top of me.
Pinned at an awkward angle like this made it fucking impossible to reach for my gun strapped to my right hip. Mere seconds into this fight and I was already losing, getting my ass handed to me by a goddamn junkie.
One of his hands fisted in my hair and held me down while the other rose above us, metal glinting out of the corner of my eye.
Oh, fuck.
The snap decision to ram my fist into his side and knock him sideways was the only thing that saved that knife from connecting directly with my skull at the last second.
His pained grunt telling me when to twist and flip us both over, upending things in my favor for once.
The moment his head thumped against the floor, I reached for my handcuffs, fisting my free hand against his shirt to pin him down.
“You’re under arrest.”
The one thing I neglected to remember, was securing the weapon above anything else. A training module from my first weeks at the academy flashing in my mind mere milliseconds before I felt the dull sensation of something colliding with my stomach.
There were a million things to remember on this job, ranging from reading off rights to making sure a crime scene was properly taped off in the event of a crisis.
So many, in fact, that they often had me waking up in cold sweats at night, the recited words from those practice exams still lingering on my tongue.
How ironic that of all times, this is when I forgot the most important step.
My body froze out of sheer shock, my gaze flicking down to where Thomas’s fist was pressed up against my stomach, the knife buried deep enough into my body that only the hilt was still visible.
Gruesome and yet impressive. The kind of strength it took to actually force your way through clothing and skin like that was actually a lot harder than many people knew. Our bodies were made to survive the worst conditions, sharp knives included.
“Terran!”
My vision swam the second I registered TJ’s voice.
Blood coated Thomas’s hand, thick trickles that grew worse the second he twisted the handle and then forced it out of me, taking my entire lung capacity with him.
There wasn’t much that scared me these days when I was constantly putting myself into dangerous situations for a job. Dealing with people that could suddenly turn on you in an instant was always a risk and one I’d whole-heartedly signed up for the moment I graduated from the academy.
Plenty of times in the past, I’d come face to face with a situation that had the potential to result in death, but somehow with my luck, it’d never seemed to come to pass.
Until now, apparently.
Blood spurted out of me in gushes, wetting my uniform along with the blade that had been used to do so. Another blow came a few inches to the left of the first one, this time closer to where my appendix was.
All at once, my body caught up with time and soon, the agony of a knife being ripped out of me for a second time sent me doubling over and landing on the floor by Thomas’s side.
“Shit. Terran! Get away from him, you son of a bitch!”
“Units 5, 7, and 9 arriving. Unit 12, what’s your status?”
Dying before I could say goodbye to my sister was one of the only things I was truly scared of. Leaving her behind, leaving my niece behind, was the last thing I ever wanted.
We’d moved to this area because it was safer than the city and had the opportunities my sister needed to raise her daughter without the fear of some opportunist coming along and taking away one of the only things that truly mattered to her.
Who knew people like this lived here of all places?
Wasn’t this a working community?
Shots rang out a ways from me—one, two, three, and a forth, all in rapid succession, connecting with a solid form close to me. My eyes were already starting to close when the body dropped to the ground next to me, the sounds of the death rattle chilling me to my core.
“Unit 12, what’s your status?”
It was a fun run. Normally, this should be the part where I regretted the life choices that led me down this road, cursed and bitched and moaned at whatever all-powerful deity cursed me to suffer a fate like this. But for some reason, I couldn’t find it in me to actually care.
My life insurance payout would take care of my sister for at least the next couple of years, maybe even a few more than that if she pinched her pennies carefully. Long enough until Ainsley was in school and she could get a job that paid well.
I hoped my sister stayed happy. She deserved it after everything she’d been forced to go through as a kid. After everything our stepdad put us through.
In the end, we’d escaped him and were better off for it.
As my body began to hemorrhage, a sense of morbid humor struck me.
How funny that I’d die in the way I hated most: cold.