Desolation Point (2 page)

“Jack?” The word was little more than a croak, her throat sore and parched. She had been screaming—why had she been screaming? The answer was provided by an ill-advised attempt to push herself upright.

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” She panted for air, the pain unanticipated and brutal.

“Whoa, lie still. Oh shit, just—please, don’t try to get up.” Jack’s voice bore an unfamiliar edge of stress and Alex obeyed it at once, forcing herself not to struggle as she tried to cope with the agony ripping across her lower back.

“Wh…happened?”

Tomas had cut her; she knew that. She could feel blood pooling beneath her and the draft of air on raw wounds, but she had no memory of anything else that he might have done.

“You’re going to be fine. They’re bringing the paramedics in now.”

She shook her head in frustration, which only made the throbbing in it more relentless. “Not what I asked, Jack.”

He sighed and she heard him shift uncomfortably. He knew her too well to try to placate her with platitudes and half-truths. “We could hear you, but we couldn’t find you, not straight away.” He spoke in a monotone, and Alex recognized it as a tactic that they both relied on at times, a way of recounting events while trying not to connect with them. “Manny had a semi-auto. He took two bullets, died instantly. Tomas was pulling at you, trying to use you as a shield. He was shot in the shoulder, but he’ll live. He, uh…” Jack ran his hand through his close-cropped hair. “He didn’t rape you.”

She let out a soft sob of relief, her shoulders beginning to shake with the effort it was taking not to fall completely apart in front of her colleagues.

“Did he…?” Her question trailed off as Jack put his hand out and touched her cheek.

“Yeah, he had enough time for that.”

The young girl whom the brothers had attacked had been found with the word
BITCH
carved into her back. Tomas had signed his mutilation with his gang tag.

“Shit,” Alex whispered. An unrealistic part of her wanted to grab something,
anything
, and cover herself up, cover the wounds so that no one would see them, but she knew it was already too late for that. It seemed as if half the division was crammed into the small room, and the other half would know within the hour. That was how it worked; that was how it had always worked. It had never bothered her before, but in the five years she had been on the force, nothing like this had ever happened to her. Nausea rolled over her in waves. She closed her eyes miserably and tried to shut it all out.

*

Manchester, England

It took less than a minute for Sarah Kent’s life to be smashed apart. Five seconds for the driver to succumb to the alcohol with which he had washed down his business lunch, ten for him to swerve from his own lane and into that of Sarah’s family. Ten seconds of tearing metal, screaming, and the impact that hurled her violently against the side window of the car. Twenty seconds of pain, obliterating everything else in a razor-sharp barrage. Three seconds for it all to fade to black.

*

The touch on Sarah’s throat was warm but not skin-to-skin, the sensation artificial and rubbery. It pressed and held, and then jerked away suddenly.

“Bloody hell! This one’s breathing. It’s okay, love. It’s okay. You’re okay. Shit.” Fainter then, as if the man had turned from her. “John, get the stretcher right up here. Spinal board, small collar. Pass me the oxygen before you go. Tell Control we have two Code One, one critical, one walking wounded. Make vehicles four.”

Another man answered, his voice wavering with stress. “Okay. Make vehicles four. Will do.”

“Oh-two, John.”

“Yeah. Shit. Sorry.”

Cold air flooded out from the mask as it was hurriedly fixed over Sarah’s nose and mouth. She tried to raise a hand to loosen it, but her effort amounted to little more than a twitch of her fingers. Something pressed heavily on her chest, making it almost impossible for her to pull in a breath, and she heard a panicked cry for assistance an instant before hands reached in and hauled her from the wreckage. There was a brief lucid moment in which she recognized that she was probably going to die, and then darkness claimed her again.

*

Overly bright strip lighting and an odd rocking motion made Sarah blink and squint in confusion. Incapable of processing complex thoughts, her mind gave precedence to the baser instincts telling her that she was cold and that every part of her hurt. She whimpered, her hands flexing against the restraints pinning them to her sides.

“Shh, try not to move, love.” A man’s voice that she vaguely remembered from some time earlier. “You’re in the ambulance. We’ll be at the hospital in just a few minutes. Can you tell me your name?”

He used a piece of gauze, already blood-soaked, to stop more blood from trickling into her eyes. She licked her lips, tasting something salty-sweet and coppery.

“Sar…” Her head ached horribly when she tried to shake it, though a hard collar and two rubber blocks prevented the movement from being anything more than a gesture. “Sarah.”

“Sarah what?”

“Molly…”

“Is that your surname, love?” The paramedic’s brow wrinkled in confusion, his pen poised above his clipboard. He moved toward the gurney and pulled Sarah’s mask up slightly, straining to hear her.

She tried again, each word punctuated by a gasp as her breathing faltered. “In the car, my sister. My mum. They okay?”

He lowered the mask again and leaned back in his seat. He didn’t give her an answer, but then he didn’t need to. The bleak expression on his face told Sarah everything that she needed to know.

*

Sarah’s gurney came to an abrupt stop at the side of a hospital bed. Faces loomed above her, their expressions intent, some more overtly worried than others. Several hands fumbled in their rush to release the safety belts, and she heard the paramedic tell the medical team that he and his colleague would deal with the straps. In a voice strained by tension, he began his handover as a series of jolts raised the gurney to the level of the bed.

“This is Sarah. Twenty-five years of age. Rear seat passenger in a rollover, two-vehicle collision. Seat belt worn, air bags deployed. Main impact to the driver’s side, but severe widespread damage to the car. Unconscious at scene. Rapid extrication when her resps dropped off.”

He paused while a disembodied voice counted to three. Without further warning, the board to which Sarah was strapped was lifted across to the hospital bed. Even though it landed with only the slightest impact, she cried out at the pain that ricocheted through her. The paramedic resumed his handover and she tried to listen, but she only half-understood the medical terminology in the rapid-fire list of her injuries.

“Right femur’s gone, left tib-fib. Reduced breath sounds on her left side. Complained of left upper abdominal tenderness. BP initially unrecordable, she’s had a liter of saline and it’s hovering around seventy systolic now. She’s got a scalp lac that was bleeding heavily, but I couldn’t find any other head injury.”

She choked back a sob as someone began to cut her clothes off and a needle was slid into her arm with only the most perfunctory of warnings. The paramedic drew a blanket up to cover her and then deliberately stepped into her line of sight.

“Hey there. You’re in the hospital and they’re going to take really good care of you, all right?” He squeezed her hand, the one without the IV line, and she caught her breath at the pain his gesture unintentionally caused. He looked horrified and placed her hand carefully back down on the board. “Her left wrist is broken,” he said quietly.

He stepped away then, toward a young nurse who didn’t seem to have a role in the team and was watching the proceedings with wide eyes.

“What happened to her?” the nurse asked, eager for details. They hadn’t moved far enough from the bed; even through the wail of monitors and the babble of voices, Sarah could hear their conversation.

“Drunk driver took out a car of three. Double-fatal on scene.” The paramedic nodded toward Sarah. “She’s a real mess.”

“Damn. The drunk?”

“Busted nose, minor lacerations. Bloody typical. The bastards always seem to walk away from it. The police arrested him.”

The nurse nodded and patted him sympathetically on his back. “Go get yourself a cup of tea, mate.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I might just do that.” After one final glance toward the bed, he pushed through the door of the trauma room. Sarah stared at the doors as they closed behind him, and then she squeezed her eyes tightly shut and did her best not to scream.

*

“Are you sure you’re okay to continue, Officer Pascal?”

Alex set the plastic cup back down on the table, all too aware that the tremor in her hand must have been noted by the detective sitting beside her.

“I’m fine.” She really wasn’t fine. Her lower back burned constantly, the pain exacerbated by the infection that had taken hold over the past twenty-four hours; apparently, weapon cleanliness was not something that gangbangers considered a priority. The IV antibiotics were strong enough to upset her stomach. She had gone cold turkey on the morphine in preparation for giving her statement, and—to add insult to not inconsiderable injury—the detective investigating the case looked as if she had just walked out of a fashion shoot.

The detective raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow, but finally nodded and un-clicked the pause button on the small tape recorder.

“So, just to confirm, it was Tomas Alvarez who had the knife and Manuel Alvarez, his brother, who was holding you down on the floor.”

Alex gave a small nod before realizing that wouldn’t be enough for the tape. “That’s right. I tried to fight them, but I didn’t have any strength left.” She cleared her throat and reached for the water again, shame at the admission of her own weakness making her cheeks hot. “I couldn’t do anything to stop them…”

*

The door to Alex’s hospital room had opened almost soundlessly, but the low whistle from her visitor was a good deal less subtle.

“Well, you look like hammered shit.” Jack was standing in the doorway with his arms full of flowers. He grinned toothily and made his way to the bedside.

“Thanks, partner, I love you too.” She smiled as he planted a wet kiss on her cheek.

“Still a little warm, Officer Pascal.” His hand rested on her cheek and then her forehead, the pleasant coolness of his palm the only reason that she made no attempt to swat him away.

“Doc said the fever’s on its way out. I actually felt like eating something earlier.”

Jack set the flowers down and pulled up a chair. “I swear, you losing your appetite was like the first sign of the fucking apocalypse. I told Burke and Toledo, and they were both genuinely freaked out.”

Alex laughed. “Idiot,” she said without malice, her fingers tracing the edge of a petal. “These are beautiful.”

“Guys had passed the hat, and I think”—he lifted the larger bouquet and pulled out a spray of roses—“these are from the paramedics who came out that night. They’re glad you’re doing okay.”

“They didn’t need to do that.” She closed her eyes before they could tear up and took a breath of the sweet scent. “Tell them thanks, if you run into them.”

“Of course.”

“So, you coping without me?”

He gave her a look that set her off laughing. “You know they paired me with Rookie Road.”

“I know.” She was trying to keep a straight face, but she wasn’t trying all that hard.

“He’s a
rook
, Alex.”

“I know.”

“He eats ice cream. Constantly.”

“I know.” Her shoulders were shaking. “Hence the nickname.”

“I hate you,” he growled, not at all convincingly. “Please come back soon.”

*

Awareness returned to Sarah in a series of fractured images. Lights blinked on monitors, numbers flashing, their values never static but constantly fluctuating in response to the slightest change in her condition. Her right leg was suspended in traction, weights keeping the shattered bone in alignment. A plaster cast prevented her left ankle from moving no matter how hard she tried. Intravenous drips and blood transfusions hung in a line alongside syringes in pumps that bleeped shrilly whenever the tubing became kinked, like infants demanding attention.

Gradually, as she managed to stay awake for longer periods, she began to recognize the faces of the medical staff: nurses with singsong voices and gentle hands, doctors who peeled back her eyelids and spoke in terms too convoluted for her to understand. As soon as someone deemed her strong enough, and with a nurse standing solicitously by the cubicle door, a police officer confirmed what Sarah already remembered even through the haze of drugs, the condolences he offered, professional but utterly sincere. She nodded and thanked him politely for taking the time to visit. The nurse hovered, waiting for Sarah’s inevitable breakdown, but it never came. She hurt too much to move. Crying would have been unbearable.

After another week of fading in and out, she turned her aching head to see her stepfather sitting at her bedside. Caught unawares, he dropped his gaze from her face, and then looked up a few seconds later with a relieved smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Even doped up on morphine, still half-anesthetized from whatever surgery her doctors had deemed necessary the day before, Sarah had been able to decipher his initial expression. He left soon afterward, the question still unvoiced but lingering in his eyes: why had she survived, when his wife and his little girl had died?

*

The gentle drift of oxygen from the tubing beneath Alex’s nose wasn’t enough to hide the scent now wafting through the room. Heady and expensive, it might have been pleasant in lesser quantities, but its wearer was more concerned with announcing her wealth than with the subtle effect that a more judicious application might have achieved. Only hours out of surgery, Alex was still nauseated from the anesthetic, and the smell was enough to tip her over the edge. She reached for the bowl that had been positioned strategically near her by the nurse who had cared for her after her first two surgeries, and had barely managed to tuck it beneath her chin before she began to vomit. Through a fresh onslaught of pain, she dimly heard an exclamation of distaste from the person at her bedside. An urgent buzzer sounded, followed by a series of sharp clacks as her visitor rapidly exited the room in a pair of designer heels. Shortly afterward came the welcome approach of someone wearing shoes that were far more appropriate. Alex nodded gratefully as gloved hands kept the bowl in place for her and then wiped her face and her mouth clean.