Chapter Four

The next day, he and Sanchez were ordered to do a joint interview with Pamela Clayton. It would focus on how a male/female detective team functioned in the NYPD. It wasn’t the best timing, but they weren’t given any choice. The commissioner’s request took precious time away from their real work, but Elijah understood the value of positive public relations.

At least they liked Clayton, who, despite her fashion doll appearance, was a fair and responsible journalist. They laughed through the interview as they discussed the gritty realities of their job. It only took about an hour of their time, then they all headed out for a much-needed dinner break. Elijah left on foot after seeing them down to the garage in the elevator. Both women were parked on the same level so they continued on together.

He’d walked toward home for just a few minutes when his cellphone rang, the music signaling it was Sanchez. Pausing, he swiped the answer button. “Miss me already?”

“I got stabbed,” she gasped. “Hurry.”

He hit the emergency number on his cellphone and ran like the track star he’d been in college. “This is Detective Black. Officer down. Precinct garage.” He struggled for breath as he lunged for the door, yelling for nearby people to take cover.

He eased inside the door as he heard sirens begin to wail. Under the gloomy light of the garage, there was no one in sight. “Sanchez,” he yelled.

“Over here.” It wasn’t her voice, but Clayton’s. “Hurry!” He spied a pale hand waving about halfway down the far side.

“Stay down.” He ran to the far end of the cars, using others for cover. Just because a knife had been used didn’t mean there were no guns involved. Rounding the last corner, he spied them. His partner lay crumpled on the pavement, Clayton cradling her head and shoulders on her lap. As he crouched beside them, he heard the shouts of others coming to help. “How bad?”

Blood ran down her arm as she tried to point to the injury. “Just above the vest,” she whispered.

He tried not to worry that it was on the side of her heart, close to her armpit. Easing her arms out of the vest, he looked. Blood drenched the entire side of her blouse. He applied pressure to the wound, and she winced, cursing him under her breath.

“Let me take a look.” A male emergency medical technician materialized out of nowhere and pushed him to the side. He ripped her shirt open for a better view of the wound. “Just the one strike?”

“Ain’t that enough?” she muttered, sucking in a breath.

“You just keep being a smartass, Sanchez, and you’ll be fine.” Reaching into his case, he pulled out some large cotton squares and packed them around the wound, securing them with tape. He gestured to his partner who stood next to a gurney, behind the others. “We’re going to take you to the hospital now. You hangin’ in?”

“Hangin’ in,” she repeated, dredging up a weak smile. She peered up at Elijah, tears brimming in the corners of her eyes. “Call Ray. Tell him I’m sorry.”

“Tell him yourself.” He squeezed her hand. “I’ll be right behind you.”

He watched, feeling helpless, as they loaded her into the back of the ambulance, slamming the doors. The driver jumped in and gunned the engine. As the vehicle swerved onto the street, siren wailing, he turned to Clayton. “Tell me what happened.”

Her eyes looked glazed. He took off his jacket to place it around her shoulders. Without it, she could go into shock. “He came up behind me. I caught sight of him in the reflection of my car, his hand raised as he ran toward me, holding a knife. I screamed, turned around, and hit him with my briefcase.” She started to cry but continued to speak through gasps of air. “Sanchez came out of nowhere, like a ninja. She jumped on his back, and they fought. I didn’t know how to help her.”

“Did she have a weapon?”

“I think she reached for her knife, but he knocked it out of her hand.”

He paused to tell one of the others to look for it, then turned back to Clayton. “Which direction did he run toward?”

She pointed to the far corner exit, guilt creating lines on her face. “If I wasn’t in the way, she could have used her gun.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s a miracle he didn’t get you. What did he look like?”

“Tall, stocky. He had a black knit thing over his face. I could only see his eyes, nose and mouth.”

“Is there anything else that you noticed?”

“N-no. I don’t think so. It all happened so quickly.”

By this time, the place was swarming with cops of every description. Leaving the reporter with a beat cop, he glanced around. He located his lieutenant, conveying the description, and arranged to have Jones and Hadley take over the scene so he could follow Sanchez to the hospital. Both detectives had already arrived, winded from running. They could head up the search for the assailant and, according to the curses he heard, were already frustrated they’d missed him by mere minutes. Before Elijah left the parking lot, he called Ray at the hotel and told him where he could go to be with Sanchez.

He hadn’t suffered real fear in a while, but his pulse beat a tattoo in his chest. She was family. Not just NYPD family, but the only family he had. If anything happened to her, he would never forgive himself.

Why hadn’t he accompanied them to their cars as his manners dictated? Sanchez would have teased him unmercifully, but it would have prevented this mayhem. The painful reason he hadn’t was that he knew Clayton had an interest in him, but he thought of her only as a casual friend. It made his usual polite habits a little awkward because he didn’t want any misunderstandings between them.

Arriving at the hospital, he parked the car in the crowded emergency lot, his police tag in clear sight. He hurried through the automatic glass sliding doors. The busy female clerk at the front desk told him to sit tight, she would find out where Sanchez had been taken and her condition. Unable to sit, he paced back and forth. After a few moments, an older, bespectacled doctor came out to speak to him, pulling him to a quiet corner. “They are preparing your partner for the operating room. She has one deep stab wound in the vicinity of her heart. At this point, we think it missed everything vital, but we can’t guarantee that until we get into surgery and have a look.”

“How serious is her blood loss?”

“A bit of good news there at least. She’s getting a transfusion, but it’s more of a safeguard at this point.” He smiled. “She’s quite a character and a fighter. Don’t worry, we’ll take excellent care of her. She mentioned a boyfriend?”

“I called him. He’s on his way.”

“Good. I’ll be back as soon as we’re out of surgery.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

The spacious waiting room began to fill up with cops, their lieutenant among them. Some with the same blood type as Sanchez donated to the blood bank while they waited. After a while, Clayton showed up with her crew and parked quietly in one corner. Other people waiting stared at the crowd with curiosity as discussion caused the noise level to rise. A short while later, Ray shoved through the crowd, searching for him. He stood, lifting a hand to catch his attention.

His frantic friend dodged through the crowd on his way over, his face pale. “How bad is it?”

“It’s serious, but she seems to be holding her own.” He told him what had happened and what the doctor said.

“Is it this same asshole you’re looking for?”

“We don’t know for sure. A team is searching for the assailant right now. We’ll look into that possibility.”

“She just had to be the friggin’ hero.” Distraught, he put his face in his hands.

Elijah patted his arm in an attempt to console him. “It’s who she is. But she’s tough, and she stayed conscious the entire time. Fighters always make the best recoveries in situations like this.”

“I asked her to marry me.” He spoke the words like an admission of guilt as if that had caused her bad luck.

“Yes, she told me.” Elijah tried to find the words to reassure him. “She loves you very much, you know. She’s just scared. With her background, she questions everything about family life. She never had anyone around to show her just how good it can be.”

“Honest to God, I would never hurt her. Swear on a stack of Bibles.” Making the figure of a cross, he raised his head and struggled to smile. “She’s the spicy meatball to my spaghetti.”

He thought about Ray’s big Italian family and realized he couldn’t have put it any better. “It’s going to work out fine. You’ll see.” He willed his prayers into fact.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand. Why didn’t she just shoot him?”

“He attacked the other woman first. She couldn’t get a safe angle with her in the way.”

The expected two-hour operation took almost three. When the doctor finally came through the doors, the whole crowd of her friends rushed him in the bid for information. He put out his hands to slow them down and raised his voice to be heard above the racket of the crowd. “Who’s Ray?”

He stepped forward as they cleared the way for them to connect. “That’s me.”

The doctor nodded, his fatigue evident in the dark shadows under his eyes. “She’s in recovery, doing well. She asked for you as soon as she opened her eyes. The wound is deep, but it missed her heart. Barring complications, she’s going to be fine.”

He brushed away tears of relief with the back of one hand. “Thanks, Doc. How soon can I see her?”

“As soon as we move her out of the intensive care unit to a regular bed, I’ll send someone to come and get you. To be honest, I planned to leave her there overnight, but since the injury didn’t affect any major organs, she can move on and free up the bed. We’ve got an overflow crowd tonight.”

The encouraging news worked its way through the crowd, and eventually most of the cops went back to work or home to get some much-needed rest. His lieutenant called him away for a quiet word. “The security cameras caught a few frames of the assailant, but he got away. Dressed all in black with a mask covering his face, so that’s not much help. Clayton said something interesting when we interviewed her, though.”

“What’s that?”

“She said when the attacker cursed at Sanchez, his voice seemed familiar, but she couldn’t place it. We have no way of knowing if that’s just her imagination, but she’s quite observant.”

“Pretty reckless of him to try and grab her right here in our precinct building. What the hell was he thinking?”

“Stupid, really, but he did manage to escape. If it’s the same guy, I think getting away with the first murder so far made him over-confident.” He sighed. “I’m heading home. It’s been a long day. You staying?”

“For now.”

“Let me know if anything changes. I’ll have my assistant send some flowers from all of us.”

“With all due respect, sir, she might appreciate a snack basket more.”

A glimmer of a smile crossed his face. “Good point. Thanks.”

“Yes, sir.”

A short while later, a nurse came and took Ray to Sanchez’s room. Thirty minutes after that, he came back out, smiling. “They’re gonna let me stay overnight on a cot next to her. She wants to see you for a minute.” They walked down the hall together. “She said yes.”

“Good for you. I knew she’d come around. Congratulations.”

Ray waited in the hall outside to give them some privacy. Elijah entered the room and moved to sit beside the bed. She looked so defenseless, her cheek resting against the white sheets of the bed, her hair a messy tumble. Her exhausted eyes inched open, struggling to focus. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself.” Reaching down, he squeezed her hand. “I hear you took the plunge. Congratulations.”

“Yeah.” She sucked in a breath, wincing. “I told God if he just let me live through this, I was gonna stop bein’ such a dope and marry that man.”

Her words made him chuckle. “So, where’s that fancy ring you were talking about?”

“He’s got it on a chain around his neck, next to his cross.” She rolled her eyes. “He was gonna put it on me, and I told him he was nuts. I’ll get mugged while I’m sleeping for sure. That’d be my luck.”

“Good idea. Just make sure to put it on as soon as you get home.”

“Yeah.” She squinted up at him, then raised a hand to shield against the glaring light. “The guys didn’t catch him, did they?”

He shook his head. “Clayton said she thought his voice sounded familiar, though.”

“He didn’t talk much, other than some bullshit.” She smiled. “I was too busy kickin’ him in the nuts to hear it anyway.”

“Good for you.”

“The bastard called me a spic whore.” Shrugging, she continued, “I been called worse.”

“Well, Clayton compared you to a ninja. That’s more your style. She’s signing up to be your new best friend.”

“Yeah, ’cause we got so much in common.” She went through the details of the attack again, but he could tell she’d pushed herself far enough.

When Ray rejoined them, Elijah left and went home so she could get some rest. The sight of them, their hands clasped together, gave him hope for the future.

He would figure out who attacked Clayton and Sanchez if it took his last breath.