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Still, she couldn't waste any time. Screaming through the pain, she nailed him right between the shoulder blades with her elbow. When he yelled out in pain, Rachel reached out for the knife. Her left side once again roared in pain, and she was now fairly certain she'd cracked a rib when he'd pulled her down to the floor. She managed to grab his wrist with both hands and twisted hard, twisting his wrist back. He cried out, his hand instantly dropping the knife. But at the same time, with both of Rachel's hands centered on his wrists, he attacked in a desperate sort of frenzy, trying to get out from under her. his head rocked back, the back of his skull slamming into her chin.
She heard her teeth clink together, and little flares of light went spiraling across her vision. Stunned for a moment, she rolled away as Webber clamored for the knife. He grabbed it and tried staggering to his feet while Rachel did her best to clear the fuzz out of her had from Webber's haphazard headbutt. She knew she was in danger—that if she couldn't clear the cobwebs, he was going to plant that knife right into her. When he came at her, he looked like a ghost, wavering in and out, blurry one moment and then startlingly clear the next. She had to time her attack right, had to look past the pain in her ribs and—
A third figure came sailing through the door. It slammed hard into Webber, and both figures went to the ground in a hard heap. Blinking back the last of the shock, Rachel saw that it was Sullivan; he'd tackled Webber in a brutal fashion, currently pinning him to the floor with a forearm across Webber's neck and a knee in his gut. Webber screamed defiantly, but there wasn't much fight left in him. The knife he'd brandished was on the floor several feet away from him, dropped in the scuffle.
Sullivan looked back to Rachel with alarm and worry in his eyes. “You’re bleeding like crazy.”
“I know,” Rachel said.
But she was already walking over to the woman on legs that she didn’t quite trust yet. And with every step, her left side flared up. She removed the gag from the woman’s mouth and noticed that this poor woman had taken quite a beating. Her nose was broken, her upper lip was busted open, and there were cut marks all along her arms. It appeared as if Webber had been torturing her.
“What’s your name?” Rachel asked.
“S…Sophia Ross…” she said in deep, hitching breaths.
She’s the one they had trouble getting in touch with, Rachel thought. “I can see some of the things he’s done to you, but is there anything else? Anything internal?”
“No…no, he…”
"It's okay, Ms. Ross," Rachel said, digging her phone out of her pocket. "I'm going to get you some help." As she dialed 9-1-1, she said: "Do you know who this man is?"
"He said he used to work with stem cells. Webber…something Webber. No…I didn't know him before today, and I…I…"
She was going to hyperventilate if she didn't calm down, so Rachel simply shook her head and rested her right arm on the woman's knee. "It's okay. You just focus on your breathing for right now, okay?"
As the 9-1-1 operator picked up, Rachel used the gag that had been around Sophia’s mouth to stem the flow of blood from her own arm. And as she gave the operator her badge number and location, she looked over to see Sullivan slapping a set of handcuffs on Webber.
“We got the bastard,” Sullivan said with a timid smile on his face.
Rachel nodded, and couldn’t help but think of poor Molly Stevens…a woman who might still be alive if they’d not dismissed Carl Webber earlier.
The four of them remained in the room until help arrived. Rachel unbound Sophia’s arms from behind her back and, with a first aid kit in the back of Sullivan’s car, tended to Sophia’s wounds before then focusing on her own. By the time she’d managed to wipe the blood off of her arm and get the cut to stop bleeding, the sound of ambulance sirens filled the business park. Looking around the room, Rachel found herself nearly on the brink of tears, not quite sure how she was going to explain her wounds to Jack. Because even with a captured killer on the floor in front of her, she couldn’t help but feel that she’d been very irresponsible.
Oh yeah, she thought. Even after all of this, I have another appointment tomorrow. It was almost funny enough to draw a laugh out of her, but she swallowed it down and sat there, grimacing at the pain in her side, as paramedics began to come in through the back of the building.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
She waited until after she'd received her stitches before calling Jack. The cut to her right arm had not nicked at the artery as she'd feared, but it had still been quite deep. Thirteen stitches and a wrap had taken care of it. As for her ribs, X-rays revealed that she had in fact cracked one. The doctor had warned her to expect a very uncomfortable flight back home the following day, but she was fine with that. As selfish as it made her feel, with the case now closed and Carl Webber in custody, she couldn't wait to get back home.
She was in the hospital for a grand total of four hours, receiving updates through several texts and calls from Sullivan. He'd also informed her that Sophia Ross was going to come out of it all with just a broken nose, a fractured wrist, and a few bandages. None of the cuts to her arms had been major. According to what she'd told police, he'd simply cut enough to make her bleed, yelling anther about her work with stem cells with each slice into her flesh.
It was 8:02 when she got the all-clear to leave the hospital. She booked an Uber to take her back to the hotel, as Sullivan had already had someone on the force retrieve her car from the old research center; it was currently waiting at the precinct. When she stepped out of the Uber and walked toward the hotel, Rachel found herself in a strange little whirlwind of emotion. She dreaded letting Jack know what she’d done today—how dangerous the situation had become. But on the other hand, she badly wanted to speak to him. And she wants to speak with Paige even more. If she could keep it together and Paige would allow it, she even thought she’d volunteer to read something over the phone in a way they’d done in the past—where she would find a poem or funny story online and read it to Paige as she settled in for bed.
First, though, a shower and some dinner. It was taking some time to get accustomed to the three-hour difference for the phone call schedule, so she didn’t realize she still had about two hours before Paige’s bedtime. She was so wrapped up in all of this while also still processing the events of the day that she didn’t see the familiar face waiting for her in the hotel lobby until they called after her.
“Agent Gift!”
She stopped on her way to the elevators and saw Detective Sullivan walking over to her from a chair near the lounge. Despite the smile on his face, he looked tired and just about as ready for a shower and bed as she was.
“Hello, detective. Shouldn’t you be interrogating a certain someone right about now?”
“Already done. He confessed to everything. That’s why I thought I’d come down. I thought you’d want to know. And I figured it was the sort of thing you should hear in person. But when I called to ask the hospital about visiting hours, they said you’d already left anyway. So…here I am.”
“So he confessed?”
“Yeah. Because he’s proud of what he’d done. He’s hoping the headlines will open people’s eyes to what he stands for. Of course, after half an hour or so, he wants to go back on it. But he’s given us enough evidence and information to nail it down. He’s guilty as hell and is going to go to jail for a very long time.”
“That’s good to know.”
