Chapter 2 #2
While she waited, she stayed sitting on the ground by the dog, who wasn’t hers, because standing seemed really optimistic, and she was a rabid realist right now.
She held the phone, breathed carefully, and went back over what happened.
The attack was too fast, controlled even.
He'd mapped her route … had to have. He knew exactly where the trail was in the dark and exactly where she'd be.
He was of average height from what she could remember.
Lean but damn strong. Brown hair … maybe.
It was hard to say in the low light, and he wore a black hoodie. His face—
She'd seen part of his face.
When she'd turned the second time, right before the branch.
Less than a second. But she was a cop, and cops looked at faces, and her brain had been doing what her brain did even when it was sixty percent functional.
It filed thoughts into categories that she could understand.
For her, it was work. Each feature was noted.
Average features. Forgettable. Pale eyes, gray or blue, she wasn't certain.
The kind of face that didn't give you anything to hold onto.
But … He'd looked at her hand.
She realized now, sifting back through it. He'd grabbed her wrist and turned it over. That was a distinct and deliberate motion. Like he was checking something. Like the answer mattered to him before he finished.
She looked at her own hand on the dog’s fur. No rings, no watch. Her remaining nails, chipped and scraped, were mostly intact on four fingers. She didn't know what it meant, but she noted it anyway.
The sirens were audible now, coming from the east. She could hear Maggie’s owner running back down the path.
She stood up. Took ten or twenty seconds to make sure her brain and legs were going to cooperate, then started to walk back toward the trail to meet them.
Slowly. But walking. On her own … with an occasional assist from a tree.
Maggie followed, and her owner, whose name was Ted, tried to help her, but she was so sore, she didn’t want him to touch her. Besides, the guy was so tall that if she lifted her arm that high, it would dislocate in about three places.
* * *
The hospital was the kind of busy that hospitals were at seven in the morning. Shift change was happening. The overnight's unfinished business was colliding with the morning's new emergencies. Everyone was moving fast in that controlled, frenzied way that life and death dictated.
After her trip to radiology, they put her in a bay that was way too bright. The fabric curtain that divided her from other people didn’t stop any of the noise, and both the light and the noise were making her headache worse.
Finally, a doctor with a ponytail longer than hers checked her pupils and asked her to follow his finger. He pressed on her ribs with a professional thoroughness that did not feel professional in any way she appreciated.
He concluded she had a concussion, which would make it the second one she’d had while on the force.
She'd had one in her twenties from a suspect who'd gotten lucky with a car door.
Her rib was cracked. The bone was damaged, but the fracture did not go all the way through.
Like that makes me feel any better. The cut on her temple needed four stitches.
The road rash on her palm was superficial.
“Unfortunately, you’re going to feel significantly worse tomorrow.” He smiled at her when he said it.
“I’m aware of that, thank you.” She didn’t smile. She should’ve tried, but her give-a-shit meter was pegged right now, and she had absolutely nothing to give.
Two Nashville PD uniforms came in, and she gave them everything she had.
She was a robbery detective, and she knew how to give a statement even when her head felt like something was loose and jumping around in the mosh pit behind her eyes.
It could have been an attempted robbery, she’d said, because that was the obvious read, and she wanted to see if anyone pushed back on it.
Neither uniform pushed back. They wrote it down. Attempted robbery. Unknown suspect.
She didn't correct them. Not yet. She needed to think.
“Did you pull your personal weapon?” one asked.
“No, I was too busy staying alive.” She glared at both of the men. Neither one was stupid enough to say a fucking thing.
Her sergeant showed up at 9:30 a.m. with a coffee from the place she actually liked. Which meant he'd called ahead to someone, which meant he felt bad, which meant this was about to go somewhere she wasn't going to enjoy. Her partner wasn’t with him. Not good.
“Admin leave,” he said. “Starting today.”
Shit. “Don’t make me stay home. Mike—”
“Doc says concussion, not a minor one either, plus a cracked rib and four stitches.” He held up a hand. “You know the protocol.”
She closed her eyes briefly, but the dizziness was worse, so she opened them almost immediately. “It could have been an attempted robbery—”
“I read your statement. I also looked at the camera feed for the parking area. The only thing we have is the dog owner—”
“Ted.”
“What?”
“His name is Ted. The dog owner.”
“Right, and definitely not our guy.”
“Way too tall.”
“Right, anyway, there’s no movement in the camera sweeps except Ted running out of the woods, grabbing a bottle of water, and heading back to you. We did see a sweep of headlights before Ted showed up for the water. That’s it.”