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Say what you would about it, but the job was never just a job. It mattered. Oh, there were days when it was an utter slog of paperwork, procedures, and patience in the face of a never-ending sea of irritations. There were other days, where she could feel like she really did make a difference, where a joyful smile, or an admiring word, or a simple, heartfelt thank-you fed her soul, provided fuel for the fire that had set her feet on this career path. There were times when the constant weight of expectation, bias, and the sheer differentness of being a woman of color in what was still too often considered the province of white-men-only drove her to distraction. Her successes – and failures – always came freighted with that extra weight, a weight she didn’t truly expect to change before she hit menopause, much less ‘soon,’ no matter what the department HR flunkies said. Sometimes she had the satisfaction of knowing she was part of the best organization in the world, no matter what others might claim; sometimes she felt like she was building sandcastles for defense against an ever-incoming tide of violence and chaos. There were triumphs and stumbling-blocks, but it always mattered.
And then there were minutes like these, when the adrenaline shivered through her veins and fear left her mouth sour and sticky, when she desperately hoped that she was enough. Prayed, even, that she’d be good enough, and fast enough, and that the day wouldn’t end with bodies, ones with faces she knew.
Another branching of corridors. Sally gestured, silently directing three of the constables to move in that direction. Normal protocol would be splitting off in pairs, but there were too many doors and corridors, visibility was too poor, and the need for radio silence left them too vulnerable, so three was the bare minimum she could in conscience send off on their own. How and whether they split up further was up to them. That left her with only Pierce and Collins to watch her own back, but they were both solid. And they all knew the stakes.
A serial killer. Civilians. The Freak. And Lestrade, caught up in the middle, the killer’s next target, at least according to Watson’s urgent call. Sally wasn’t willing to gamble that he (or more precisely, the Freak) was wrong on that, not when it might mean the Inspector’s life.
She tried another door. This one, unlike the others, had something immediately behind it. She brought her department flashlight up, the powerful beam followed swiftly by two others. Fabric, black fabric. Concealing what? Sally took a deep breath, nodded at the two constables, and then ducked through the barrier, keeping low, hoping she wasn’t about to wind up a target.
Light – no, two lights. And standing there, illuminated like a stage actor, a looming figure turned to face her with an ominous shape held in one hand. Just beyond, a second figure, one she recognized instantly, bound to a chair.
Most days, Sally was glad that she didn’t carry a gun, that Britain wasn’t the shooter’s nightmare her American colleagues had to deal with. Today was not one of those days. If she’d had a gun, she’d have put a bullet into the masked madman threatening Lestrade without an instant’s regret. But she didn’t have a gun. Instead, she brought her torch up to full, blinding power and shone it directly into the masked figure’s eyes.
“Halt! Metropolitan Police!” she bellowed, imbuing her voice with as much menace as she could.
“Drop your weapon!” Pierce immediately echoed her, his baritone sounding twice as imposing as her shout.
Sally half expected their shouts to be met by gunfire. Instead, impossibly, the figure bolted into the darkness. One second it was there, the next gone as if it had dropped into a hole. The three of them played their lights frantically over the scene, but it didn’t come back into view.
Everything in her wanted to give chase to the fleeing suspect. But her first priority had to be helping Lestrade (please, please, let him still be in need of help, and not beyond help) and protecting him from further harm. She ran forward, Pierce and Collins right on her heels.
In her haste to get to Lestrade, she nearly tripped over a second body lying on the ground, one she couldn’t see in the glare of the lights and the depths of shadow until she was practically on top of it. She only spared it – him – a single glance, enough to see faint twitches, a hopeful sign that whoever it was still lived. Collins went to his knees beside the downed man to render aid, and Sally turned all her attention to Lestrade.
Who, thankfully, met her concerned eyes with a blown-pupiled, half-lidded, but living gaze of his own. “Sally?”
She would be relieved later. Right now she still had a job to do, an active scene to manage. “Yes. How badly are you hurt?”
“’m okay.” The slurred syllables gave the lie to his words as much as his dilated eyes and failure to track. Behind her, she heard Pierce activate his radio and call in the code that would let the others know Lestrade had been found, but the suspect was still at large. He was requesting medical assistance when Lestrade spoke again. “John?”
“What?” The non-sequitur interrupted her examination of the cuffs that held Lestrade to the chair.
Lestrade jerked his head up in a strange, uncontrolled way, his whole body trembling. “John,” he repeated with a gasp. “Okay?”
The penny dropped. Sally turned and stared at the body lying a few feet away. Collins had turned him over to lie on his back, and she recognized the grey-blond hair, if not the features, unnaturally slack in unconsciousness. “Collins, how is he?”
“Unresponsive. He’s been Tasered,” Collins held up the telltale darts with their tangled wires. “That’s probably what we saw the other guy holding, a Taser gun. But he ejected the cartridge, which stops the current, which means this man should be conscious. He isn't, though. I’m thinking possible concussion, maybe when he fell?”
Lestrade’s head slipped sideways. “Drugged.” His eyes closed, then jerked open again, fluttering.
“You, or Watson, or both?” Sally asked, not expecting an answer.
“Bloody hell, he’s right,” Collins swore. His hand plucked at something on the back side of Watson’s shoulder, something that glinted in the light. “He’s been tranq’d as well as Tasered.”
Sally wondered if the culprit had some kind of multi-weapon, one that shot a tranquillizer dart as well as current, or if Watson had been drugged after he’d gone down. It was an important question, but not the most urgent one. Because if Watson was here – which he indisputably was – then that meant that the Freak had to be here somewhere. Somewhere, alone, with a killer on the loose, one armed with a weapon that had already taken down an experienced Inspector and an Army veteran.
So the most urgent question was: what was she going to do about it?
“Collins, stay here with the Inspector and Watson, and direct at least one other unit to this location. Pierce, with me. We’ve got at least one other civilian in the building. We need to find him before the killer does.”
Pierce gave her a startled look, but nodded. “Yes ma’am.”
“Right then. Let’s do this. And stay sharp.”
Sally took a deep breath, raised her torch, and headed back out into the dark to do her job.