Afraid of the Dark - James Grippando [2]
He rang the bell and waited, catching his breath as he surveyed things with a cop’s eye. McKenna’s car was parked in the driveway. No others were in sight, except for Vince’s. Jamal’s could have been in the garage, he supposed, beside Chuck’s.
He rang the doorbell again, then stepped back for a broader view of the house. As best he could tell, no lights were on inside. But that didn’t mean anything. It was a two-story house, the biggest on the block. Plenty of bedrooms and back rooms.
FMLTWIA.
“McKenna!” he shouted, giving the solid mahogany door three firm knocks.
Again he waited, but with each passing second his pulse quickened. Vince had excellent cop instincts, and his gut was telling him that something was wrong, that inside the house it wasn’t just a couple of high-school sweethearts discovering themselves.
“I’m telling you, Vince: Shada is convinced that the son of a bitch is going to hurt McKenna.”
Vince dialed her cell one last time, gripping his phone tightly as it rang once, twice—and then the ringing stopped.
“McKenna?”
No answer. But someone had picked up, he was sure of it.
“McKenna, is that you?”
The voice on the line was weak, but the words were unmistakable.
“Help . . . me.”
Vince leaped into action, kicking the front door open and drawing his firearm as he burst into the foyer.
“Police!” he shouted. “McKenna! Where are you?”
He switched on the lights. The stairway brightened, and Vince immediately spotted drops of blood on the beige runner. He charged up the steps with his pistol drawn, the cell to his ear as he identified himself and called for backup.
“Possible sexual assault,” he told the dispatcher. “Ambulance needed!”
The upstairs hallway was dark, except at the very end. Outside the third bedroom on the left, the faint glow of a lamp shone through the open doorway and hovered like a ghost in the black corridor. Vince planted his back to the wall, eager to find McKenna but cautious of a possible confrontation with her attacker.
“Miami police!” he shouted again. “McKenna, are you up here?”
No response. Vince moved a few steps closer to the lighted bedroom and halted. More drops of blood in the hallway. They led like a crimson trail to the doorway. From this angle, he could see partially into the room. On the rug was a pool of blood.
Dear God.
Vince jumped into the open doorway, feet spread in the marksman’s crouch, pistol aimed at any possible perp.
“Freeze!” he shouted, but even that single word caught in his throat. McKenna was naked on the floor, her twisted body covered with her own blood.
“McKenna!”
Vince went to her, knelt at her side, and raised her head from the floor. He saw no weapon in the immediate area, but the defensive wounds on her hands—her left thumb was hanging by a thread—ruled out any possibility of self-inflicted injuries. The largest wound was to her rib cage, a gaping hole that was spewing bloody foam and almost certainly indicated a punctured lung—a sucking chest wound. The internal bleeding had to be massive, but most of the blood on the floor was from the slash across the left side of her neck. A direct hit to the carotid artery would have been fatal long before, but hers had at least been nicked. Blood everywhere, so much blood, more than any human being could lose and live to tell about. Vince checked for a pulse. Weak. Almost nonexistent.
“McKenna?” he said, his voice rising.
Her eyes blinked open.
“Hold on, baby,” he said.
McKenna’s body was going cold, so Vince pulled a blanket from the bed and covered her. He tore the top sheet into bandages. He wrapped a long strip around her chest, and he took it