and he stumbled a bit. After that, Keri knew that pretending she didn’t notice them at this point would seem more suspicious than turning around, so she stopped abruptly and spun quickly, taking them by surprise.
“How’s it going, guys?” she asked sweetly, as if discovering two hulking dudes right behind her was the most natural thing in the world. They both took another couple of steps before awkwardly pulling up five feet from her.
The younger guy appeared to be at a loss. The older guy started to open his mouth to speak. Keri’s senses were tingling. For some reason, she noticed he had missed a patch of hair on the left side of his neck the last time he’d shaved. Almost without thinking, she pushed the alarm button on her car remote. Both men glanced involuntarily in that direction. That’s when she moved.
She lunged forward quickly, swinging her right fist, the one with the exposed keys, at the left side of his face. Everything began to move in slow motion. He saw her too late and by the time he started to raise his left arm to try to block the punch, she had made contact.
Keri knew it was a direct hit because at least one of the keys went pretty deep before hitting resistance. The screaming started almost immediately as blood gushed from his eye. She didn’t pause to admire her handiwork. Instead, she used her forward momentum to dive forward, slamming her right shoulder into his left knee even as he was already crumpling to the ground.
She heard a sickening pop and knew that his knee ligaments were being torn violently apart as he fell to the ground. She forced the sound from her brain as she tried to roll smoothly back up to a standing position.
Unfortunately, throwing herself against such a massive person had rattled her body from head to toe, re-aggravating the pain of the injuries she suffered only days earlier. Her chest felt like it had been whacked with a frying pan. She was pretty sure she’d slammed her injured knee on the concrete parking structure floor as she dived and the collision had left her right shoulder throbbing.
More immediately troubling than any of that was that smashing into the guy had slowed her movement enough for the younger, fitter guy to regain his senses. As Keri came out of her roll and tried to recover her balance, he was already moving toward her, his eyes blazing with an intense mix of fury and fear, the nightstick in his right hand starting its downward swing.
She realized that she wasn’t going to be able to avoid it completely and turned her body so that the blow landed on her left side rather than her head. She felt the brutal smash against the ribs on her left torso just below the shoulder, followed by a stinging pain that radiated outward from the point of impact.
The air left her body as she collapsed to her knees in front of him. Her eyes had gone watery immediately upon being hit but she still managed to make out an ominous sight directly in front of her. The younger guy’s feet had started to rise onto his toes, his heels leaving the ground.
It took less than a fraction of a second for Keri to process what that meant. He was rising up, lifting the nightstick over his head so that he would be able to bring its full force down on hers for a knockout blow. She saw his left foot start to come forward and knew that meant he was starting the downward motion.
Ignoring everything – her inability to breathe, the pain ricocheting from her chest to her shoulder to her ribs to her knee, her blurry vision – she dove forward, directly at him. She knew she didn’t have much momentum pushing off from her knees but she hoped it was enough to prevent a direct hit on the top of her skull. As she did, she thrust her right hand, the one still clutching the keys, in the general direction of the guy’s crotch, hoping to make any kind of contact.
It all happened at once. She felt the stick hit her upper back at the same time she heard the grunt. The whack stung her but only for a second as she realized the man had lost his grip on the stick almost immediately after making contact. She heard it hit the concrete and roll off into the distance as she collapsed to the floor.
Glancing up, she saw the man doubled over, both hands clutching at his groin area. He was cursing loudly and without end. At least for the moment, he seemed oblivious to her. Keri looked over at the fat man, who was several feet away, still rolling on the ground, screaming in agony, both hands covering his left eye, seemingly unaware of his knee, which was bent in an inhuman direction.
Keri gulped in a deep breath of air, the first in what felt like forever, and forced herself into action.
Get up and move. This is your chance. It may be your only one.
Ignoring the pain she felt everywhere, she pushed herself up off the hard ground and half-ran, half-limped to her car. The younger guy glanced up from his crotch and made a token attempt to reach out and grab her. But she steered well clear of him and stumbled toward her car, got in, locked, it, started it, and pulled out without even looking in the rearview mirror. Part of her hoped the young guy was back there and that she’d hear a thud as she slammed into him.
She hit the gas and tore around the corner of the second floor and down to the first. As she approached the exit booth, she was amazed to see the younger guy stumbling down the stairs and shuffling in the direction of her car.
She could see the horror on the face of the booth attendant, who was looking back and forth between the hunched over man shambling in his direction and the tire-screeching car careening to the same spot. She almost felt bad for him. But it wasn’t enough to prevent her from speeding through the exit, slamming into the wooden gate, and sending chunks of it flying off into the night.
She spent the night at Ray’s place. For one thing, it didn’t seem safe to go back to hers. She didn’t know who had come after her. But if they were willing to attack her in a camera-filled parking lot across from the jail, her apartment didn’t seem like such a heavy lift. Besides, the way she felt, Keri wasn’t in any condition to fend off additional attackers tonight.
Ray had drawn a bath for her. She’d called him on the way over so he knew the basics of the situation and mercifully wasn’t peppering her with questions while she tried to regroup. As she lay in the water, letting its warmth ease her aching bones, he sat in a chair beside the tub, intermittently coaxing her to sip spoonfuls of broth.
Eventually, after drying off and putting on a pair of his pajamas, she felt well enough to do a postmortem. They sat on his couch in the living room, lit only by a half dozen candles. Neither of them commented on the fact that both their weapons rested on the coffee table in front of them.
“It just seems so brazen,” Ray said, referring to the boldness of the parking structure attack, “and kind of desperate.”
“I agree,” Keri said. “Assuming these were Cave’s flunkies, it makes me think he was really concerned that Anderson spilled all the beans in that interrogation room. But what I don’t get is, if he was willing to go that far, why didn’t he just have those guys shoot me in the back and get it over with? What was with the Taser and the nightstick?”
“Maybe he wanted to find out what you know, see who else knows it, before getting rid of you. Or maybe it’s not Cave at all. You said Anderson told you there’s a mole in the unit, right? Maybe someone else didn’t want that information getting out.”
“I guess that’s possible,” Kari admitted, “although he was so quiet when he said that part that I almost couldn’t hear him. It’s hard to imagine that even in a bugged room, anyone caught it. To be honest, I’m still having trouble even processing that bit of information.”
“Yeah, me too,” Ray agreed. “So where do we go from here, Keri? I stayed in that conference room with Mags for another couple of hours but we didn’t learn anything really new. I’m not sure how to proceed.”
“I
