Intimate Relations, Rebecca Forster [best ereader for manga .txt] 📗

had barely positioned himself for the attack, when the big man fell to his knees, raised the knife above his head, brought it down, and gutted the woman on the floor.

A naked woman screamed and covered her mouth with her hands. Two more flung themselves into one another's arms.  Someone came out of a room in the back only to duck away again.  Finn saw everything and nothing as he launched himself over the couch, and hit the big man with the full force of his body.

Finn felt a jolt in his shoulder as sharp as if he had hit a rock wall. While the man had an advantage in height, Finn had the element of surprise and the leverage of a rational man. They rolled, grappling on the floor. Finn's advantage almost evaporated as the man fought back, but it was the detective who had the training and the will to bring this to a proper end. Finally Finn got him down, put his knee between the man's shoulder blades, yanked the man's right arm behind his back, took the knife, and threw it aside.  The man's head rose up as he tried to buck the detective off. Finn pushed the man's face hard onto the concrete floor even knowing that the man would look beaten after this was all over, and he might be called to account.

"Stay down. Down! Down," Finn cried.

"Back. Everybody back!" Cori ordered, stalking a half circle to herd the scattering people.

Satisfied their fear and the paralysis of shock would keep them in place. Cori holstered her weapon, and fell to her knees beside the victim. No one spoke; no one seemed to breathe. All eyes were on her. All ears were primed for a call for a doctor or a wail of pain, but there was only an eerie silence. Cori's shoulders slumped. Her head dropped, her long blonde hair fell over one shoulder shielding her face. With both hands, Cori rolled the woman over. Slowly her head waggled back and forth.

"Detective Anderson?" Finn said, and then louder: "Detective."

Cori started. She raised a hand to him, and it took Finn a moment to understand why she would do such a thing. Then he realized that Cori's hand was not bloody. Finn swung his eyes to the knife on the floor. The blade was clean. Cori shook back her hair and got to her feet. With a grunt, she dragged the woman up and plopped her on the couch. The body slumped sideways. Cori turned toward Finn and held up something that looked like a rib cage.

"It's plastic," she said and then patted the woman's head. "She's just a big doll."

4

It didn't matter to Finn that the man on the floor had his hands cuffed behind him. It didn't matter that Finn might have pressed a bit too hard on the man's head as he subdued him. He had no care for this person. Mutilating a doll was not a crime. Threatening people in the room was one easily dealt with. What mattered was that the man was bloodied. Finn flipped him over like a side of beef, and ran his hands over the man's chest and down his legs looking for weapons or wounds. He found neither.

"Whose blood is this?" Finn barked. "Whose blood?"

The man shook his head. Finn yanked him into a sitting position, threw him against the wall, splayed his own legs, leaned over, and put his face close to the man's. The vein on the detective's neck bulged, the color in his cheeks was high, and his right hand was on the butt of his gun. He gave the man one more chance.

"You're not hurt. Who is it that's hurt?"

The man said nothing. Finn took him by the collar, intending to shake the information out of him when he heard Cori snap.

"You stay put."

Finn looked over his shoulder and saw a fancy dressed man move a step closer to her.

"Do you know who I am?" he said.

Whatever Cori answered, the man was both surprised and cowed by it. He fell back, into the safety of the group. Finn got up and strode across the room to the front door. He called to the officers outside, telling them to bring the woman inside. Finn had only just returned to the prisoner when he heard:

"Enver! Enver."

The woman in the smock rushed across the room, flinging herself at her husband. She landed on her knees and threw her arms around his neck. She seemed not to care that he was covered in blood. The face she turned up to Finn was angry and accusatory.

"You have hurt him." Her accent was the same as her husband's, but her English was better.

Finn ignored her. He only had eyes for the big man with the grey hair, the one whose rampage had kept the people in this room hostage, the man whose big head lolled from side-to-side, and whose glassy eyes saw nothing. He could be drugged, drunk, a fine actor, mad, or guilty as hell of a viscious crime, but that would be for others to determine. Finn had only one job. To find this man's victim.

"I won't be asking again. Whose blood?" Finn's patience was gone. "You're a dead man unless you speak now."

"Enver," the wife begged.

Finn swung her way.

"There is trouble on both of you. Best you tell me what you know."

Finn, more than anyone else in this room, understood the desperation of the moment. There was evidence of violence. There seemed to be a clear perpetrator. Once he had been on the wrong side of such a situation, but understanding it did not mean he had sympathy.

"Listen to me." Finn said. "Mistakes can be made right, or they can destroy you. Which will it be?"

The woman let go of her husband. She slumped against the wall. Once again her hands were entwined in the fabric of her smock. This time she hung her head, unable to look at Finn.

"Missus." Finn snapped