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My stomach froze, and then I was running.
So not a dead body.
A person, a woman, in trouble.
I could hear her screaming now.
The closer I got to the bend in the trail, the one that went two ways, one up toward a fitness center, and the other that took us toward the main part of the trail, I could hear even more screaming and scuffles.
My flashlight lit the area, and the first thing I saw was a pair of hot pink running shoes that were covered in mud.
The second thing I saw was a male, about two hundred pounds, trying to force that woman onto her stomach as he did something with his hands that I couldn’t see.
I don’t know what came over me.
One second, I was about ten feet away, and the next I was hitting that man like a linebacker.
We hit hard.
The sound of our bodies colliding startled the woman, and she cried out in surprise.
“No!” she cried.
I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me, or the asshole that’d been trying to rape her.
Whatever the reason for her crying out, I ignored it and subdued the asshole underneath me, easily apprehending him, cuffing him, and then ordering him to stay put or else in under twenty seconds.
Clockwork.
I may not be on the beat anymore, but I could still arrest an asshole with the best of them.
“Now, you can either sit there and play nice, or I’ll make you play nice. Understand?” I ordered as I moved to the woman that was quietly crying in a crumpled ball just a few feet away. I depressed the mic button on my shoulder and said, “Ambulance requested. And backup.”
She had her hands over her face, and she had her head tucked into her upraised knees as if that would help protect her.
Sadly, it wouldn’t.
“Ma’am,” I urged as I walked toward her.
She curled even further into herself.
“Ma’am,” I said, glancing back at the suspect that was glaring daggers at me. “Are you okay?”
The guy got up to leave, and I moved before he could even get to his knees.
I had him hugging the biggest damn tree I could find, face pressed into some sap that was leaking from it, and handcuffed to it in the next second.
Only when he was well and truly unable to take off anywhere did I go down onto the ground beside the woman.
“Ma’am,” I whispered. “I’m going to help you, okay?”
She sniffled, and the damn sound literally tore shreds into my heart. “Okay.”
Her lips were bleeding. Her teeth were stained with her blood. And I could barely make out the white of her eyes.
I placed the flashlight on the ground between us and said, “My name is Detective Taos Brady. Do you think that you can sit up? Or do you want to continue lying there until medical help arrives?”
She shivered. “Lie here.”
I didn’t urge her to do anything differently. Instead, I shrugged out of my sports coat and then laid it over the top of her.
Her shirt was ripped. There were contusions in places that I could make out. And there was quite a bit of bruising.
“I’m going to fucking kill you if you talk, bitch!” the would-be rapist yelled.
The woman squeezed her eyes closed tightly and whispered, “His name is Jackson Norris.”
Before I could get any more information out of her, her entire body went slack.
“That stupid bitch wanted it!” Mr. Jackson Norris, soon-to-be inmate Jackson Norris, hollered.
I pressed my fingers to her throat to ensure that she wasn’t dying, and found a strong pulse.
Then I turned my glare on the asshole. “I’m fairly sure that she didn’t. You know, you might not know this word all that well, but when they say ‘no’ that usually means that they don’t want you to do something. Just sayin’.”
• • •
“That morning, I was nearly raped and assaulted by a man that I’d seen on that trail a hundred times,” she whispered. “One that had asked me out six times, and I’d turned him down all six of those times.”
I instantly wanted to kill someone.
Preferably the asshole that I knew was locked up in a maximum-security prison for serial raping other women exactly like Fran.
“Fuck,” I whispered. “I…”
She looked over at me with those eyes the same color as my blue jeans and said, “You what?”
“I worked your case that night,” I murmured, almost too quietly to hear.
She tilted her head at my words. “What?”
“That night,” I said. “I was there that night. I… your case is why I quit.”
She blinked.
“I know.”
And before I could say another word, she was hauling ass out of the building.
“I gotta go.” She grabbed her stuff and started running, but she didn’t make it far.
In the time that it’d taken for her to talk, everyone but the two of us, Madden and Sophia had left.
