by Steven James
Positioning himself behind the wheel, he pulled onto the road and left for the apartment in southeast DC where he would be spending the night with his old friend Patrick Bowers’s lovely fiancée.
3
Lien-hua awoke lying on her left side.
She was dizzy, her head thrumming, and it took a few seconds to get her bearings. When she tried to move, she found that her legs were free, but her hands were somehow restrained behind her back. Not handcuffs, though. It felt like some type of packaging tape or duct tape.
For now, at least, whoever had taken her hadn’t removed her clothes—thank God.
Dim light in the room. A ball of twisted, discarded duct tape lay on the floor nearby, perhaps from her abductor binding her legs while he brought her here. She couldn’t think of many reasons he would free her legs, but she could think of a few.
Her heartbeat began to quicken.
She was on a wooden floor, and by the faint glimmer of neon lights outside the dark window, she knew it was night. No idea how late.
Her holster and gun were missing.
The walls of the living room were sooty—there’d been a fire in here at some point. A tattered couch sat in the corner facing an old television with a crooked floor lamp stationed beside it. A pile of bloody bandages and a spool of black thread lay on the cheap Formica end table.
Still somewhat groggy, she tried to collect her thoughts and remember exactly what had happened before she arrived here.
The picnic.
Saying good-bye to Patrick.
Getting into her car.
Then a strap around her neck, yes, a belt.
The terrible desperate feeling of struggling uselessly to breathe.
Then a calm male voice beside her ear. She hadn’t recognized it, and her vision had been blurry, so she hadn’t been able to identify whose face it was in the rearview mirror.
He’d called her Lien-hua, though—that, she remembered. So he knew her first name. And he’d had long hair for a man. It might have been a wig.
In those few moments she’d had before blacking out, she’d been transported back to the time last year in San Diego when she’d drowned and Patrick had brought her back to life—literally—with a defibrillator. Both that day and this, as she was losing consciousness, aware that she might never awaken again, she’d thought of him, only of him, and sensed an all-encompassing sadness that she would never be with him, never see him again.
Now, she noticed sounds coming from behind her and she tried to decide what to do. If she moved, if she rolled over, whoever was there might see her do it. On the other hand, she needed to know how many people she was dealing with here.
It sounded like someone was going through some pots and pans, and Lien-hua took the chance that there was only that one person and that, if he was going through the cupboards, he would be facing the other way. Slowly, she eased onto her back and tilted her head toward the sounds.
It was a man.
His back was to her.
The kitchen wasn’t separated from the living room, and she could see that he was rooting through a cabinet beside the gas stove.
His face was hidden, but his strongly muscled back and hefty build were evident even when he was kneeling down. With a deepening chill she thought she might know who it was. She couldn’t be certain, though, not from this angle.
Evidently, he found what he was looking for, because he stood, holding a frying pan. He laid it on the burner and dialed the gas on, then turned toward the refrigerator and opened the door. And when he did, she caught his profile.
Yes, it was him.
Richard Devin Basque.
He was the man Pat had arrested fourteen years before. He was the man who, during his criminal career, had kidnapped more than two dozen women, kept them alive for hours or even days on end as he slowly sliced out their intestines and lungs and ate them before finally ending their suffering and taking the women’s lives. He’d been freed last year after a retrial and had started killing again almost immediately upon his release.
Based on what he’d done to most of his past victims, Lien-hua knew he would be removing her jeans and panties before carving into her.
Get out. You have to—
He retrieved a small jar from the refrigerator. She couldn’t tell what was inside it, but she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know what it contained.
When he picked up a scalpel from the counter, she knew she’d never have enough time to get to her feet before he’d notice that she was awake. Quickly, quietly, she rolled back into the position he’d left her in, then closed her eyes and lay still.
As he walked toward her, she heard the sound of a slight hitch in each step. He was limping. Taking into account the bloody bandages on the end table, she decided she must have hit him after all when she fired her Glock behind her through the driver’s seat.
He’s vulnerable. Use that. Capitalize. Attack him where he’s weakest. Strike at the wound.
She’d been in situations before when her life was threatened, and she’d found that, rather than being filled with uncontrollable terror or desperation, she was able to think remarkably clearly. It’d happened on a case in Wisconsin a few months earlier, once in Florida, and then that time when she was drowning in San Diego.
That day she’d been able to use sign language to communicate to Pat a way to save her. And today, she hoped that the thing she’d done immediately before firing her gun would save her: tapping in 911 on her phone and tossing it beneath her seat so the call could be traced.
In DC there are a staggering number of hoax 911 calls, and Metro’s dispatch didn’t always send out a car when they received calls during which no one on the other end of the line spoke. However, she was confident that when her number came up on the system and they realized it was an FBI agent’s phone, they would dispatch officers. As long as her phone was still on, they should easily be able to track the GPS location. It might not lead them to this specific apartment, but it would get them close.
Unless Basque had switched cars, or unless he’d found the phone and destroyed it.
You need to buy some time.
By the sound of the footsteps, Basque was about halfway to her.
He was a large man, well trained, a fighter. She knew from the warden that during all of his years in prison Basque had never lost a fight, even when cornered by multiple assailants. They’d never been able to prove that he killed any other prisoners, but he had disabled four and put one gang leader into a coma.
The sound of footsteps grew closer.
Wait, Lien-hua, wait . . .
With her wrists restrained behind her, taking him down wasn’t going to be easy at all; her years of sparring and kickboxing needed to come into play. And they needed to do so now.
If she could buy a few seconds, she could jump and swing her arms forward beneath her feet to get her hands in front of her. Then things would be a little more evenly matched. Having her arms in front would at least help her to block any kicks or punches he might throw.
Attack him where he’s wounded or take out his knee, then slide backward, put some distance between the two of you, and get to your feet.
Get your hands to the front and go at him.
The footsteps stopped. Basque paused.
Wait . . .
He was right beside her.
Now. Do it.
Lien-hua snapped her eyes open as she rolled onto her back. A flash of surprise crossed Basque’s face, but he was too slow to get out of the way. She couldn’t immediately identify where he was wounded, so she planted her left foot against the floor for support, twisted her body to get the angle right, and drove a hard, controlled kick with her right foot toward his knee to take him down.
The placement wasn’t as ideal as she’d hoped, and at the last moment he pivoted so she
ended up kicking the back of his leg rather than the side. It brought him down, but didn’t break the knee. As she used her feet to push away from him, he dived at her with the scalpel and buried it into her right thigh just above her knee.
A hot streak of pain shot up her leg.
She tried to pull away, but he shoved the blade in deeper. Using the scalpel to hold her in place and keep her from sliding backward, he drew himself closer.
No, no, you have to—
“Well.” With his free hand he flicked out a butterfly knife. “Let’s get started then.”
The slightest movement hurt viciously, so it wasn’t possible to twist away, but she had no choice. She knew that if he brought that second knife down, it would all be over.
She yanked hard, trying to pull her leg free from the scalpel, but the blade was in too deep. When she failed to free herself, Basque drew the butterfly knife back. “This might be a little uncomfortable at first. But by this time tomorrow, you won’t feel a thing.”
He swung his arm violently forward and stabbed the blade deep into her chest, directly into her right lung, then drew it out again.
Everything splintered apart inside of her. She gasped for air and did her best to concentrate on something, anything, to keep from passing out, but found it nearly impossible to catch her breath.
She knew enough about knife wounds to know that one this deep in her chest wasn’t going to give her much time.
The lung will collapse. The blood will fill it. Especially if you’re on the floor.
“I’m not going to lie to you.” His voice was calm and even, but his tongue snaked out of his mouth and tapped expectantly at the side of his lip. “What happens next isn’t going to feel very pleasant.”
He still held her in place securely with the scalpel, but as he leaned closer to gaze into her eyes, she brought her left leg up and scissored it down across his neck, trapping it between her thighs. She squeezed as hard as she could and tried to roll to break his neck, but he punched her near where he’d stabbed her and the pain devastated her, her grip evaporated, and he wrestled free.
However, her move had taken him by surprise and bought her enough time to twist away and roll toward the couch, the scalpel torquing painfully out of her leg as she did.
She climbed unevenly to her feet. Her injured leg felt weak and unsteady, but that wasn’t her biggest concern—it was the debilitating stab wound in her chest. She didn’t know how many seconds she had before she would pass out, but she guessed it wouldn’t be long at all.
She saw her phone on the kitchen counter. The battery beside it.
So, he’d found it after all.
They’re not coming. No one is coming.
Her chest wasn’t bleeding much externally, but every breath was a struggle. It would hurt too much to try jumping over her arms to bring her hands forward to fight him or defend herself.
But she could use her feet.
Basque was pushing himself to his hands and knees. The smear of emerging blood on his shirt told her where her bullet had hit him earlier.
All he has to do is wait for you to collapse. He doesn’t have to fight you, all he has to do is stop you from getting out the door. He’ll kill you, Lien-hua. And he will eat you.
After a fraction-of-a-second debate about whether to go for his gunshot wound or his head, she went for both and delivered a fierce double sidekick—one to his wounded side and one to his right temple, sending him crashing against the end table and overturning it next to the couch.
But she was weak, her balance was off, and she almost went down herself.
A deep dizziness began to envelop her.
Do not fall. If you go down it’s all over.
If you pass out, you die. It’s that simple.
She rushed for the front door and, hands still restrained behind her, turned her back to the doorknob to open it. As she did, Basque rose to his feet holding a Smith & Wesson Sigma that he seemed to produce from nowhere.
Door open, she swiveled backward into the hall as a bullet whizzed past her shoulder and blistered apart the wood across the hallway.
Do not pass out, Lien-hua. Do not fall down!
Her chest and thigh were screaming at her, but she ran as fast as she could for the stairs. Every step sent a fresh burst of pain through her leg, through her chest, but Basque must have made it to the hallway, because another bullet ricocheted off the wall beside her.
She arrived at the stairwell and saw that, fortunately, she was only on the second level. The exit door lay just one flight below her.
Awkwardly, she stumbled down the steps, lost her footing at the bottom, and went reeling against the wall. She coughed up a mouthful of foamy blood.
Behind her she could hear Basque pursuing her, his quick but uneven gait nearing the top of the stairs.
She lunged for the exit door, threw her hip against the pressure bar to open it, and found herself in an alley layered in deep, oppressive shadows.
She staggered toward the street.
Go, Lien-hua. Keep going. You can make it!
A car was rounding the corner in front of her.
Swarms of dark dots crossed her vision and she knew she was about to pass out. The driver wasn’t slowing down. She couldn’t use her hands to signal to him, and she was too weak to cry out for help.
If he passed her by she would collapse and it would be over. Basque would get her.
There was nothing left to do.
Except one thing.
She rushed toward the car, positioned herself directly in front of it, faced the driver, and time seemed to slow to a crawl.
She saw the reflected glimmer of the streetlights slide across the car’s roof.
Heard the squeal of brakes.
Felt the impact that sent her sliding up violently across the hood.
Then time caught up with itself and her shoulder smashed against the windshield, the world went whipping around her in a blur of colors and sounds and bright, consuming pain, and she rolled off the hood and slammed heavily onto the asphalt.
She was vaguely aware of a man approaching her and leaning over her.
And she was aware of spitting out blood and gasping. “Down the alley, second floor, room 212. Tell the police it’s . . .” She tried to say “Basque,” but nothing came out. The world became a vast, hungry darkness that swallowed everything around her.
And then Special Agent Lien-hua Jiang was aware of nothing at all.
4
11:34 p.m.
I got the call when I was at home on my computer doing some research for my Monday-morning lecture at the Academy.
Lien-hua had been attacked, stabbed in the chest, hit by a car.
Even as I asked the question, I knew it was an absurd one: “Is she okay?”
Of course she wasn’t okay, but the words came out just like they do for so many people when they’re reeling from news that’s too devastating to process.
There was a pause that went on too long, then the officer on the other end of the line said quietly, “From what we know she’s in pretty rough shape, Agent Bowers. She’s in surgery now.”
Ice twisted around my heart.
This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.
“How long has she been in surgery?”
“From what I hear, a little over two hours.”
“What!”
“She didn’t have any ID on her, so they couldn’t identify her right away. There was a 911 call earlier that dispatch identified as coming from her phone. Eventually, that, taken with the inscription on her engagement ring, led us to you.”
I snatched my keys off the kitchen counter. “Where is she? Which hospital?”
“St. Mary’s.”
Tessa was in the living room rewatching the movie The Dead Girl. As I
hurried past her on my way to the garage, I signaled that I was heading out. She must have seen the concern on my face and guessed that something serious had happened, because she gave me a worried look and asked softly, “What is it?”
“We’re sending a car to pick you up,” the officer told me over the phone.
“I don’t need one,” I informed him, while quietly trying to wave off Tessa’s concern. “I’m on my way.”
“What happened?” she pressed me.
I turned from the phone and told her, “Just a sec, Tessa.”
He finished by telling me that Lieutenant Doehring would meet me at the hospital.
I knew Doehring. He was a good cop; however, I wasn’t about to wait until I got to the hospital before finding out more, so as soon as the officer ended the call, I found Doehring’s number on my phone’s contact list and called it.
While I waited for him to answer, I hurried to the garage and punched the door opener. As the door rattled upward, Tessa appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. This time palpable fear ran through her words. “It’s something bad, isn’t it?”
For a second I was tempted to downplay what’d happened, to reassure her that everything was fine, but as she and I had talked about earlier, Lien-hua was about to become part of our family and, in a very real sense, already was.
“It’s Lien-hua,” I said. “There was an accident.” This wasn’t the time to get into the specifics of the attack, so I left out the rest, especially the part about her being stabbed.
“What kind of accident?”
“She was hit by a car.”
A terrible look fell across her face. “Is she . . . ?”
“It sounds like she’s hurt pretty badly.” Doehring still hadn’t picked up. “She’s in surgery.”
Tessa must have set her purse just out of sight before coming to the doorway, because now she reached to the side and grabbed it, then joined me in the garage. “I’m coming.”