Obsession (48 page)

Her breathing suspended. Her gut clenched.

There was a man between her and Leah and the car. An older man, stocky and gray-haired, in what looked like a blue uniform. He was on his knees with his back to them. Leah flew past him without giving him so much as a glance. As Kat ran up behind him, he groaned and kind of toppled over on his side, then rolled onto his back. She saw that he was clutching his chest—and then she saw why and stopped in her tracks.

Bright blood bubbled up between his fingers, which were pale and pudgy, spilling over them, pouring on the black asphalt that glistened faintly in the store’s reflected light. In a single lightning glance, she saw that there was a badge on his chest, gleaming silver, with a cheap plastic nametag below it. She wasn’t close enough to read the name.

He’s been shot.
She remembered the gun in Mario’s hands, and a chill ran through her.

He saw her. She could tell he did, because his eyes flickered.

“Help . . . me.”

Oh, God
. She dropped to her knees beside him, bent over him, looking at him in horror, frantic to do something, anything, moving his hands aside so that she could see the wound. Then her hands came down one on top of the other as she pressed desperately against the hole, trying to stem the flow of blood. It was warm. And slimy. There was a smell. A sickening, raw-meat kind of smell.

“Hurts,” he muttered. And closed his eyes.

"Kat, come on!” The voice—Leah’s—shrieked out at her as the Camaro screamed to a stop just a few feet away.

“Come on! Come on!” They were all shouting at her, but she couldn’t move. Couldn’t have gone to them if she had wanted to. She could feel the man’s—his name was David Brady, she could read his name tag now—life slipping away, feel the energy leaving him as if his soul were rising around her. All she could do was stare at the car and feel the dying man’s life ebbing, and her own heart thudding, and then the Camaro sped off with a squeal of rubber and she was left alone.

Really alone, because David Brady was dead now. His life force was gone.

She stayed beside him until she heard the sirens. Then she jumped to her feet and fled into the darkness, with David Brady’s blood still dripping from her hands.