Leave Me Breathless (22 page)

“How do you know it’s not a bad case of heartburn?” she asked, half in jest.

For the first time since she walked in, he smiled. “I want heartburn to go away. This, what I feel for you, I want to last.”

“Sweet talker.”

He treated her to a long kiss, one that chased away every fear and doubt. One that apologized and stole her soul. When he lifted his head, she tried to pull him back down to her.

“I’m not sure I’m a forever type of guy—”

Oh, he was so very wrong about that. “Yes, you are. Any man who is so adamant about fidelity is a long-haul sort.”

“I don’t know about that. I just know that you crave a home and stability.”

“So, you do listen.”

“To you? I wouldn’t dare not to.” He grew serious again. “You want a man who will believe in you and support you. Someone to fight with and name-call. I can be all of those things for you.”

He threw everything she wanted right at her feet. Only a stupid woman would walk away. And she was not dumb.

“I just want you to be yourself.” She threw her arms around his neck. “I love you.”

His face lit up. That stupid grin almost swallowed his entire head. “Never thought I’d hear that again.”

A giddiness took over her whole body. She wanted to laugh and giggle, and those girlie things were not her. With him, she felt free…and loved.

“Get used to it, Your Honor, because I plan to tell you every single day.”

He nuzzled her cheek. “Forever?”

“Forever for my forever man.”

Their lips met and the kiss quickly turned hot. Hands, tongue. They were about to break a sacred office rule.

Ben pointed at the camera in the far corner of the room. “Let’s get out of here.”

“I thought you liked to work.”

He winked at her. “With you, I much prefer to play.”

“I always said you were a smart man.”

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Somewhere near Stony Brook, Long Island, New York

“U
nit twelve,” the dispatcher’s voice crackled over the radio. Sarah perked up. That was her. She listened as the report rolled over the radio. A disturbance in a vacant building out on Wheeler Road, near the big medical center. Probably kids, she thought, responding to dispatch and turning her patrol car around.

Since the budget cuts, she rolled alone. She hadn’t had a partner in a long time, but she was good at her job and confident in her abilities. She could handle a couple of kids messing around in an empty building.

Sarah stepped into the gloomy concrete interior of the building. The metal door hung off the its hinges and old boards covered the windows. Broken glass littered the floor and graffiti decorated the walls.

The latest decorators had been junkies and kids looking for a secret place to either get high or drink beer where no one could see. There didn’t appear to be anyone home at the moment. They’d probably cleared out in a hurry when they’d seen Sarah’s cruiser pull up outside. Still, she had to check the place.

Nightstick in one hand, flashlight in the other, Sarah made her way into the gloom of the building. Electricity was a thing of the past in this place. Light fixtures dangled brokenly from the remnants of a dropped ceiling as Sarah advanced into the dark interior.

She heard a scurrying sound that could have been footsteps or could have been rodents. Either way, her heartbeat sped up.

“Police,” she identified herself in a loud, firm voice. “Show yourself.”

She directed the flashlight into the dark corners of the room as she crept inside. The place had a vast outer warehouse type area with halls and doors leading even farther inside the big structure. She didn’t really want to go in there, but saw no alternative. She decided to advance slowly at first, then zip through the rest of the building, hoping no one got behind her to cut off her retreat.

She had her sidearm, but she’d rather not have to shoot anyone today. Especially not some kids out for a lark. They liked to test their limits and hers. She’d been up against more than one teenage bully who thought because she was a woman, she’d be a pushover. They’d learned the hard way not to mess with Sarah Petit.

She heard that sort of brushing sound again. Her heart raced as adrenaline surged. She’d learned to channel fear into something more useful. Fear became strength if you knew how to use it.

“This is the police,” she repeated in a loud, carrying voice. “Step into the light and show yourself.”

More shuffling. It sounded from down the corridor on the left. Sarah approached, her nightstick at the ready. The flashlight illuminated the corner of the opening, not showing her much. The sounds were growing louder. There was definitely someone—or something—there. Perhaps waiting to ambush her, down that dark hallway.

She wouldn’t fall for that. Sarah approached from a good ten feet out, maneuvering so that her flashlight could penetrate farther down the black hall. With each step, more of the corridor became visible to her.

Squinting to see better, Sarah stepped fully in front of the opening to the long hallway. There. Near the end. There was a person standing.

“I’m a police officer. Come out of there immediately.” Her voice was firm and as loud as she could project it. The figure at the end of the hallway didn’t respond. She couldn’t even tell if it was male or female.

It sort of swayed as it tried to move. Maybe a junkie so high they were completely out of it? Sarah wasn’t sure. She edged closer.

“Are you all right?”

She heard a weird moaning sound. It didn’t sound human, but the shape at the end of the long hall was definitely standing on two feet with two arms braced against the wall as if for balance. The inhuman moan came again. It was coming from that shadowy person.

Sarah stepped cautiously closer to the mouth of the hallway. It was about four feet across. Not a lot of room to maneuver.

She didn’t like this setup, but she had to see if that person needed help. Sarah grabbed the radio mic clipped to her shoulder.

“This is Unit Twelve. I’m at the location. There appears to be a person in distress in the interior of the building.”

“What kind of distress, Unit Twelve?”

“Uncertain. Subject seems unable to speak. I’m going to get closer to see if I can give you more information.”

“Should we dispatch an ambulance?”

Sarah thought about it for a half a second. No matter what, this person would need a medical check. Worst-case scenario, it was a junkie in the throes of a really bad trip.

“Affirmative. Dispatch medical to this location. I’m going to see if I can get them to come out, but I may need some backup.”

“Dispatching paramedics and another unit to your location. ETA ten minutes on the backup, fifteen on the paramedics.”

“Roger that.”

With backup and medical help on the way, Sarah felt a little better about taking the next step. She walked closer to the corridor’s mouth. The person was still there, still mostly unrecognizable in the harsh light of the flashlight beam.

“Help is coming,” she called to the figure. From its height, she thought it was probably a male. He moved a little closer. Wild hair hung in limp hanks around his face. It was longer than most men’s, but junkies weren’t best known for their grooming and personal hygiene.

“That’s it,” she coaxed as the man shuffled forward on unsteady feet. “Come on out of there. Help is on the way. No one’s going to hurt you.”

Sarah stepped into the corridor, just a few feet, hoping to coax the man forward. He was definitely out of it. He made small noises. Sort of grunting, moaning sounds that weren’t intelligible. It gave her the creeps, as did the way the man moved. He shuffled like Frankenstein’s assistant in those old horror movies, keeping his head down, and his clothes were in tatters.

This dude had to be on one hell of a bender. Sarah lowered the flashlight beam off his head as he moved closer, trying to get a better look at the rest of him. His clothes were shredded like he’d been in a fight with a bear—or something else with sharp claws. His shirt hung off him in strips of fabric and his pants weren’t much better.

The dark brown of bloodstains could be seen all over his clothing. Sarah grew more concerned. He had to be in really bad shape from the look of the blood that had been spilled. She wondered if that was all his blood or if there was another victim lying around here somewhere in even worse shape.

His head was still down as he approached and Sarah backed up a step. His hair hung in what looked like greasy clumps. Only as he drew closer did he realize his hair wasn’t matted with oil and dirt. It was stuck together by dried blood.

Then he looked up.

Sarah stifled a scream. Half his face was…gone. Just gone.

It looked like something had gnawed on his flesh. Blank eyes stared out at her from a ruined face. The tip of his nose was gone, as were his lips and the flesh of one side of his jaw and cheek.

Sarah gasped and turned to run, but something came up behind her and tripped her. She fell backward with a resounding thud, cracking her skull on the hard cement floor.

She fought against the hands that tried to grab her, but they were too strong, and her head spun from the concussion she’d no doubt just received. She felt sick to her stomach. The adrenaline of fear pushed her to keep going. Keep moving. Get away. Survive until her backup arrived.

Thank God she’d already called for backup.

Not one, but two men—if she could call them that—were holding her down. The one with the ruined face had her feet and the other had hold of her arms, even as she struggled against him.

She looked into the first one’s eyes and saw…nothing. They were blank. No emotion. No feeling. No nothing.

Just hunger.

Fear clutched her heart in its icy grip. The second man looked wild in the dim light from her flashlight. It had rolled to the side, but was still on and lancing into the darkness of the building’s interior nearby. Faint light shone on her two assailants.

They both looked like something out of a horror movie. The one from the hallway was, by far, the more gruesome of the two, but the one who wrestled with her arms was frightening, too. His skin was cold to the touch and it looked almost gray, though she couldn’t be sure in the uncertain light. Neither spoke, but both made those inhuman moaning sounds.

Even as she kicked and struggled, she felt teeth rip into her thigh. Sarah screamed for all she was worth as the first man broke through her skin and blood welled. The second man dove onto her prone form, knocking her flat and bashing her head on the concrete a second time. Stunned, she was still aware when his teeth sank into her shoulder.

She was going to die here. Eaten alive by these cannibals.

Something inside Sarah rebelled at the thought. No way in hell was she going down like this.

Help was on the way. All she had to do was hold on until her backup arrived. She could do that. She
had
to do that.

Channeling the adrenaline, Sarah ignored the pain and used every last bit of her strength to kick the man off her legs. She bucked like a crazy woman, dislodging the first man.

Once her legs were free, she used them to leverage her upper body at an angle, forcing the second man to move. The slight change in position freed one hand. She grasped around for anything on the floor next to her and came up with a hard, cylindrical object. Her nightstick.

Praise the Lord.

Putting all her remaining strength behind it, she aimed for the man’s head, raining blows on him with the stick. When that didn’t work, she changed targets, looking for anything that might hurt him. She whacked at his body with the hard wood of the stick. She heard a few of the bones in his hand crack at one point, but this guy was tough. Nothing seemed to faze him.

Finally, she used the pointy end of the stick to push at his neck. That seemed to get some results, as he shifted away. He moved enough for her to use the rest of her body for leverage, crawling out from under him.

His friend was up and coming back as she crabwalked away on her hands and feet, toward the door and the sunshine beyond. Her backup was coming. She just had to hold on until they could find her.

The two men followed her, moving as if they had all the time in the world. Their pace was steady and measured as she crawled as fast as she could toward the door. It didn’t make any sense. They could have easily overtaken her but they kept to their slow, walking pace.

Sarah hit the door and practically threw herself over the threshold. She had to get out in the open where her backup would see her right away. She was losing blood fast and her vision was dancing, tunneling down to a single dim spot. She was going to pass out any second. She had to do all she could to save herself before that happened.

Backup was coming. That thought kept her going. They’d be here any second. She just had to hold on.

She crawled into the sunlight, near her cruiser. Leaning against the side of her car, she tried for her radio, but the mic was long gone—probably a victim of the struggle with those two men. They were coming for her. They had to be.

But when she looked up, she saw them hesitate at the doorway to the building. The second man stepped through, but the first stayed behind, cowering in the darkness. The second man’s skin was gray in the outdoor light. He looked like some kind of walking corpse, with grisly brown stains of dried blood all around his mouth. Some of it was bright red. That was
her
blood. The sick bastard had bitten her.

The man walked calmly forward, under the trees that shaded the walkway to the old building. Sarah had parked on the street, out in the open. She watched in dread as the man walked steadily toward her, death in his flat gaze.

Then something odd happened. He stopped where the tree cover ended. He seemed reluctant to step into the sun.

Sarah blinked, but there wasn’t any other explanation she could think of. Then she heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. Her backup.

With salvation in sight, she finally passed out.