The apartment door gave way at Lock’s third kick. It didn’t fly open. The frame splintered, but the door barely moved. Now he could hear whoever was on the other side.
“Help me,” said a woman’s voice.
Putting his shoulder to the door, with his legs braced at an angle, he slowly, inch by inch, eased it open until he could squeeze through the gap.
The woman on the other side must have crawled to the door, tried to open it so she could crawl out, and then collapsed with her back to it. She was young and African American and was sitting up in a pool of bloody gore.
Lock crouched down, and she looked at him, eyes open but barely able to focus. The blood wasn’t from her face, where he would have expected it to be. It was coming from below her waistline. With the amount of blood, it looked like some kind of hemorrhage, although he couldn’t be sure. She wasn’t so much sitting in a pool of her own blood as swimming in it.
He put his hand up to her neck, feeling for a pulse. It was faint, but it was there. Lock went into triage mode. Any thought of Kristin was pushed momentarily to one side.
“Listen to me, you’re going to be okay. I’m going to get you an ambulance.”
Yanking out his cell phone, he called Ty.
“Ty, we need an ambulance up here right now. Once you’ve called for one, you can call me back and I’ll bring you up to speed.”
He gave Ty the apartment number.
“Roger that,” said Ty.
Thankfully, there were no questions from Ty, only a response. It was one advantage of having a retired Marine for a partner. They could be trusted to do what was required.
Lock turned his attention back to the young woman. She reached her hand out and he took it in his, moving his thumb inside her palm and giving it a soft squeeze of reassurance. He wasn’t a doctor, but he’d seen enough traumatic injuries to know that if medical help different arrive quickly, he was going to lose her. Even if help did arrive, the outcome might be the same.
He needed to know if Kristin had been here, but he knew he couldn’t leave this woman, not for so much as a second. Whatever lay beyond the hallway would have to wait.
“Ambulance is on its way, okay?”
The most important thing he could do right now was keep her conscious and, if possible, talking. A lot of times in a situation like this survival came down to whether someone gave up and checked out or whether they somehow mustered the will to stay in the present for a fraction longer.
She was looking up at him.
“Stay with me, okay?”
She managed to move her head.
“What’s your name?”
The words were a struggle. “Soothe.”
Lock kept his face blank as she said it.
“What happened here?”
Her lips turned up in a bitter smile.
“I fell,” she whispered.
Lock smiled back. “That’s a pretty bad fall.”
“Yeah,” she said, as if they were both enjoying the same joke. “I fell on to that.”
She stared down the hallway. He looked where she was looking. It took him a moment to figure out what the blood-coated object lying discarded in the hallway was. When he did, something cold ran right through his body in a sickening snap of recognition that told him not only what had happened but who had done this.
He turned his attention away from the blood and gore slicked metal hanger and back to Soothe. Her eyelids fluttered. He pressed his thumbnail into her open palm.
“Stay with me, okay? Just a little while longer.”
Her eyes opened again.
“That’s good. I’m not going to leave you. You understand me?”
“Yeah,” she said, managing to squeeze out another wan smile.
“Soothe, where’s Kristin?” asked Lock. “I know she’s been with you. I don’t care about any of that. I just need to find her and make sure she’s safe.”
Her eyes scanned his face as if she was trying to work out some kind of puzzle.
“Please,” said Lock. “Her family needs to know she’s okay. That’s all.”
“It’s okay, she’s safe,” said Soothe, the words coming out slow and labored.
“Where is she? Is she in there?” he asked, looking down the hall, trying and failing not to look at the bloodied tendril of wiry metal on the floor, bent out of shape and twisted into a hook.
Soothe shook her head. Her eyelids closed. Lock jabbed his thumbnail into her palm again, a little more insistently this time.
“I couldn’t let it happen,” she whispered.
“Just tell me where I can find her.”
“She’s going home.”
“How? How is she going home?” asked Lock.
Her gaze began to drift. He could hear sirens down on the street below. Here eyelids fluttered again. Lock bent down so he was right next to her.
“How is she going home?” he asked again.
She made a low gurgling sound and her body seemed to loosen another notch.
“Tell me where I can find her.”
Soothe’s eyes opened again, but now they were completely without focus. She was looking off into the middle distance.
“I already told you, Hanger,” she said.