Page 22 of Chaos
But deep down, if I’m honest, I didn’t—couldn’t—believe any of it.
Not really.
Because she’sFrankie.
Who could hurt her?
She exists in my head under a cloudless forget-me-not sky, surrounded by summer berries and unpoppable bubbles. Nothing can touch that. It would be like hurting the sun.
Deep down, I’ve told myself she’s waiting for me, safe and unharmed, in a stream of winter sunbeams, hair up in that bun the size of a coconut, long neck stretched as she listens for me, knowing I’d come.
In my imaginary dream, I’d have killed Ben and his people in an appropriately heroic way, broken down the door with my bare shoulders.
She’d have run to me, smiling, bouncy, effervescent in her Frankie joy.
One whiff of this cellar makes it clear that’s not what this is.
Sunshine hasn’t touched this place. It is anathema to Frankie. So much so, I can’t quite believe this wraith with hair like squid ink pasta is her.
I can’t shake myself loose.
A man lies at the bottom of the stairs below her feet, releasing routine gurgles and whimpers, and the stench of unwashed bodies and blood is so heavy it feels hot.
My flashlight finds a pool of spreading darkness beneath the man’s head.
“Back away from him,” I say in case he’s still alert.
But she doesn’t move, she just stands above him, her ragged breaths echoing off the walls and swelling their way up the stairs, gusting sharply from her throat.
Her hair falls in a tangle to obscure her face. Her shirt’s torn, barely closing over her breasts, filthy with stains that can only be blood. Her jeans are torn unartfully.
She looks wild.
Unpredictable.
And clearly, she’s been hurt, often, badly, kept in filth, maybe starved.
Tomorrow, I’m sure I’ll feel the anger, but for now, I focus on the relief.
She’s alive.
I pull my light away so it won’t blind her, my gun shifting for a second.
The man beneath her lurches, his hand swiping out to her kneecap, knocking her over before I can squeeze off a round.
She falls on top of him, blocking me from getting a clear shot, and her head hits a stair so loud it echoes off the walls.
Jesus.
I bolt down, calling for backup and get a kick to his solar plexus, and then a second that sends him slumping a few feet away, out of strike zone, but I can’t shake the feeling that she wouldn’t have attacked him if he didn’t earn it.
I shift my gun.
“Don’t kill him,” Jacquetta says urgently. “We need him for questioning.” She jogs down the stairs to zip tie him, while I roll Frankie over.
She’s unconscious, but breathing, her eyelids fluttering.
I find her pulse. It’s steady, but fast. Her skin is clammy and feverishly hot to the touch.