Left To Die

Adele, foot over foot, in a shooter’s crouch, stepped through the living room. Her feet made small crunching sounds against a few pieces of glass that had made it further along the carpet. For a moment, all she could think was where her father kept the vacuum. She needed to clean up before he saw it, or he’d let her have it for a week.

She gritted her teeth, staving off the thoughts brought on by the influence of the Sergeant’s house. The crunching sound of her footsteps gave way to quiet padding as boots met carpet. The sharp pain in her ribs still pulsed, but ignoring it, Adele stepped from the living room, swinging her gun into the kitchen.

Nothing.

Except.

The water was running.

Adele frowned at the faucet. She reached out with a trembling hand, turning the knob, shutting off the stream of hot water, which had now gone cold.

Her father would never have left a faucet running.

She struggled, desperately wondering if she should call out again. For all her father knew, someone had just broken into his house, and he was now crouched with a shotgun upstairs waiting to blow her head off the moment she popped into view.

Or, someone else was in the house.

Someone else waiting for her to make a noise, lying in wait, preparing to jab her with a needle.

If she called out in the first case, it might save her life, and save her father the trauma of blasting his only daughter in two. In the second case, though, any noise might alert the predator to her presence.

Adele maintained her quiet, moving along the cupboards, her body turned, presenting as small a target as possible toward the doorway, just as they’d been trained to do. This was her least favorite part of an investigation, but she’d drilled with weapons the same as everyone else.

She checked the safety, then slid through the door, crouched low, hoping to throw off the aim of anyone expecting someone of normal height. She kept her gun close to her chest, careful not to lead with her weapon too far in front, lest she give away her position before she had eyes on.

Again, she wished John had come with her. Some of her anxiety around weapons, around making an arrest, had been eased while with him. Back in the hotel in France, she hadn’t felt the usual anxiety. Here in Germany, with the chemist, he’d known what to do.

Coffee and a donut. She shook her head in disbelief at the radio call, trying desperately to contain her emotions in the moment, to regain her composure.

She turned up the stairs.

No one.

The steps creaked as she stepped up the stairwell. Instead of facing forward, though, she backed up slowly, one at a time, gun raised toward the banisters above, keeping track toward the top of the stairs where someone might have been watching.

Again, nothing.

The carpeted hall was dark. Pictures framed the wall on either side in neat rows. Pictures of Adele and her mother. Pictures of a life long since lost. Yet pictures kept in positions of high esteem. The air smelled of detergent and lavender.

Adele stepped past her old room and glanced in.

Her father had lied.

He hadn’t converted it into an office. Rather, her bed was exactly as she remembered it. Pink covers with pillows pressed against the headboards. Her stuffed animals were there; he’d also kept the old desk covered in the trophies she’d won at track meets. She frowned, distracted for the faintest of seconds.

There were other pictures too—pictures of the competitions in France. A shrine to his daughter’s success. But also her stuffed animals.

Adele shook her head; her father was a hard man to read.

She heard a louder, muffled groan. Her attention shifted sharply back to the moment and she pointed her gun toward the large, closed chestnut door at the opposite end of the staircase. Her feet slipped along the thick, perfectly white carpet. It took a confident man to install white carpet. Yet, there had never been a stain in the near decade Adele had lived here.

Licking her dry lips, Adele shifted past the railing, moving past a bathroom and another guest room her mother had stayed in during the last couple years of their marriage.

She paused for a moment, standing in darkness in front of her parents’ old room. Joseph’s room. She’d never been allowed in the Sergeant’s room; he’d hated the idea of a child messing around in his private space.

She felt an inexplicable surge of guilt as she reached down, slowly twisting the doorknob.

It turned.

More groaning, more desperate now.

Her heart skipped a beat, and she pushed the door, sharply, but instead of bursting in, she stepped back and dropped to a knee, allowing herself a good long look at the room before rushing into potential danger.

The door settled with a dull thump against the wall, spread over the white carpet.

In the room, in front of the neatly made bed, her father sat bound to a spindly wooden chair. His hands were tied behind his back; duct tape sealed his mouth. He was bleeding from cuts in his forehead and along his cheek.

Adele could just make out the edge of his fingers, from the way he was positioned facing the door, but turned slightly toward a window. Droplets of blood trickled from his fingertips and tumbled to the pristine carpet, staining the white beneath his chair and joining a larger stain caused by the blood seeping down his pant leg and soaking into the carpet beneath his foot.

“Dad!” Adele said, her hear in her throat.

She pushed off her knee and surged forward, rushing toward her father.

But he began shaking his head wildly, bucking and thrashing, a desperate look in his eyes she’d never seen before. He was staring at her, and kicking as wildly as he could, sending droplets off blood flying around the room, further staining his white carpet in complete disregard.

Adele hesitated for a moment in the doorway, entranced by her desperate desire to obey her father in all things, but also a sheer sense of duty to help those in danger.

Especially her parents. She only had one left.

Adele ignored his thrashing and bullishly entered the room, rushing to her dad’s side and ripping the duct tape from his mouth as quickly as she could, like pulling a Band-Aid.

Her father’s eyes narrowed as he winced, his cheeks bunched, but once the duct tape left his lips, his groaning and mumbling ceased and, in a loud voice, he shouted, “Sharp—no! Run!”

Adele heard the faintest of creaks behind her, from where the bookcase levied against the doorframe. She whirled around, gun raised. Something whistled as she ducked again, like she’d done before, and a heavy, metallic object swished over her head, rushing through her hair.

Her dad shouted incoherently.

There was a loud curse as a hooded shape swung a metal crowbar a second time, trying to crush Adele’s upraised arm. Her gun went off, but she knew she’d missed before she lurched back, avoiding the attack.

At the same time, her father kicked out, trying to trip the assailant, but the man—though not particularly large—was clearly strong.

Adele raised her gun again and squeezed off a shot, blind, still reeling. She finally managed to reset, bracing her back against the window to her father’s room, and she aimed now.

The hooded man cursed and kicked out, scoring a strike against Adele’s wrist. She grunted in pain and her gun went flying. She tried to track it, but lost it as the killer surged at her, trying to overwhelm her. Still, she might not have enjoyed firearms, but she was a trained investigator; she knew how to find things.

And while she hadn’t seen where the gun landed, she heard a quiet tick, suggesting the weapon had brushed the glass window, followed by a dull thunk, suggesting it had ricocheted off the jutting windowsill, followed by nothing further. Which meant, instead of landing on the carpet, it had likely landed on the soft pillow in the empty chair facing the window.

She didn’t have time to check this theory, though, as the killer came at her like a bat out of a flooded cave. His hood obscured most his features, but now he had a scalpel in one hand and a crowbar in the other. Adele lurched beneath the swiping blade, but this time couldn’t avoid the crowbar.