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Chapter 1
When she turned onto the street of the crime, Detective Teagan Smith took a long pull from her coffee and tried to steel herself before she reached the scene. Dispatch had said that the officers who arrived at the scene of the domestic disturbance found a barely conscious woman who had been attacked by her husband, with three small children in the house. The husband was still at the scene.
The sound of the helicopter overhead sped up the rate of Teagan's beating heart. "Don't let it be Pegasus; don't let it be Pegasus," she chanted over and over. Catching the dark blue of the helicopter as it landed on the street ahead of her, Teagan cursed. It was Pegasus. The life flight meant that the victim had taken a turn for the worse.
She arrived as a woman was being whisked by on a stretcher to the helicopter and scanned the scene. Her eyes were drawn to the little girl sitting in the corner of the porch, her knees drawn to her chest, trembling. Nodding to her partner, Detective Joey Covington, she headed toward the little victim.
Squatting next to the girl, she started talking. "Hey there, my name is Teagan; what's your name?" she asked, placing her hand on the girl's back.
The child, who couldn't be more than eight, looked up at her, her eyes red and swollen from crying. "Elizabeth," she whispered.
"How old are you, Elizabeth?"
"Seven and a half," she answered.
Teagan nodded. As part of her training to become a Special Victims Detective, she had taken several classes on how to speak to children. Trauma informed care was extremely important, and looking around her at the scene, Teagan knew the girl was traumatized. She sat, silently, next to the girl, her arm draped around her shoulders for a few seconds, simply comforting her with her presence. Feeling the coolness of her skin, she studied her. Her hair had been braided in two very pretty French braids down each side of her head, and she was wearing clean red and black ladybug pajamas. She was clean and well fed, cared for.
"Are you cold?" Teagan removed her coat and draped it over her, the girl's lightweight pajamas no match for the bitter late November wind.
"Okay, Elizabeth, it's time to go," a woman said as she approached them on the porch. Teagan recognized Maria, one of her favorite state caseworkers.
"Maria."
"Teagan."
"Where are you headed?" There were a multitude of places Maria could be taking the girl.
"Hospital. Family local, trying to reach Grandma."
"Ah. Siblings?"
"Two, already in the car. Elizabeth is the oldest, aren't you, sweetheart?" Maria knelt next to them.
"Elizabeth, can you go with my friend now? She is going to take you to be with your mom," Teagan said gently to the girl. Elizabeth nodded her head.
"I'm the oldest. Mom says it is my job to take care of them, keep them safe." Teagan saw the familiar glint of determination in the girl's eyes. She watched her rise, press her shoulders back and, taking Maria's hand, walked toward her car. She was much too young to be dealing with this amount of trauma.
Pushing herself to standing, Teagan looked around once more. Joey was talking to a woman with a small dog on a leash who must be a witness. Her sight fell on a concerning scene. Two young patrolmen had the perpetrator standing between them. They were talking to him as if they were old friends. What in the ever-living hell was going on? Why wasn't he in cuffs? Teagan stomped toward them, knowing her face would dress them down before she opened her mouth. It always did. Two steps away from reaching them, and the suspect took off.
"Where do you think you are going, asshole?" Teagan yelled at the six foot, two-hundred-pound man running down the sidewalk, before taking off after him.
"Fuck!" Joey yelled as he joined the chase.
Teagan got to him first, diving for his knees and taking him down with one textbook tackle. She struggled with him on the ground for a moment, dodging punches until his elbow hit her right in the eye. Adrenaline pulsing through her veins, Teagan let out a growl of frustration, twisted from underneath him, and pushing her knee into the small of his back, she pulled her Taser and pressed it between his shoulder blades.
"Resist, and I will shoot." She knew he wouldn't be able to differentiate between the Taser and her weapon.
"I didn't do anything," he said. Teagan laughed.
"Do you know how many times I've heard that?"
"Fuck you, bitch," the large man growled under her much smaller frame.
"I bet you are itching to hit me, like you did your wife, aren't you? You want to slam your fist right into my face and hear the bones crush under it, just like you did to her."
"Fuck right, I do!" His face turned red, a thick vein becoming visible across his forehead.
"You don't like being bested by a woman, do you? You can't stand it." He started to struggle under her. "Stop struggling, or I will shoot!"
