Page 86 of Girl, Sought

Then it sharpened, resolved, and became the rhythmic slap of feet on metal. Running feet. Pounding across the walkway beside her.

‘I’ll kill you!’ a voice screamed. Not just any voice.Hisvoice. The thought pierced the fog like a flare through night clouds.

Luca was here.

Winters howled, high and shrill. ‘YOU! You can't - this isn't how-’

His words choked off in a gurgle. Luca snarled something too low to make out, but the intent was clear. Punishing. Promising. Ella cracked an eye open, because if this was her last day on earth, the sight of Luca pummeling a serial killer was the best final sight she could ask for.

More blows. The crunch of bone, the splatter of blood. Winters wailing like the damned. Luca was moving in a blur of fists, pushing Winters back along the walkway. The wannabe-collector was staggering backward, spitting blood, looking like he was one punch away from collapsing for good.

‘That’s for Eleanor,’ Luca yelled with a knee to the ribs. Two more blows followed. ‘And Alfred and Joe.’

Ella rose to her hands and knees. It was just a concussion, she told herself. Nothing a good sleep wouldn’t fix. She used the railing to haul herself up, just in time to catch Luca picking up Winters by his shirt.

She predicted the next few seconds before they happened.

A part of her wanted to call out and tell him not to do it, but this was Luca’s case. She was just here for the ride.

‘And this is for putting your hands on my woman.’

Luca hauled up Lawrence Winters and threw him over the railing.

For a suspended moment, Winters just hung there, but then gravity did its job.

His arms pinwheeled, hands clawing at empty air as if he could pull salvation from the ether. Eyes wide, mouth gaping in a silent scream - the face of a man who knew that he wouldn’t be standing up of his own accord any time soon.

Ella tracked his plummet with a strange detachment. She could count the individual beats of her stuttering heart as Winters dropped, ten feet, twenty feet.

CRASH.

Below, the specimen table exploded into a maelstrom of wood, glass, specimens, bones and medical fluid. Jars shattered. Shards erupted in a glittering tsunami. And there, at the center of it all – was the motionless body of Lawrence Winters.

Ella gripped the railing and peered down into the abattoir below. She could taste blood, feel the hot thrum of it pounding behind her eyes as concussion and bald shock warred for control of her nervous system.

Dead,she thought.

She wondered idly what he'd thought in those final, flailing moments. If he'd had time to regret, to rail against a fate so prosaic after his delusions of murder-grandeur.

Probably not. Men like Lawrence Winters never truly believed the bill would come due.

‘Ell!’ a voice cut through. ‘Talk to me!’

She turned and realized that Luca had been standing next to her while she ogled Lawrence’s dead body. She threw her arms around his neck.

‘He’s moving,’ Luca said.

‘He’s not going far.’ Ella et her eyes flutter shut and her forehead fall to Luca’s collarbone with a dull thunk. Everything hurt. Everything. From the crown of her head to the soles of her feet. But Luca was solid against her. She let him take her weight as the world reeled and spun, as the blue-black dream of unconsciousness pulled like a riptide at the edges of her mind.

He pulled back. Cupped her face in his big hands. ‘Don’t you dare die on me.’

‘Pfft,’ Ella grinned. ‘If I’m dead, you’ve been dead for months.’

And then he was kissing her. Crushing her to him, blood and spit and desperate relief pouring into her mouth as he made herhiswith the bruising press of lips on lips.

Ella made a sound too raw to be a whimper. She kissed him back. It was messy, graceless and featured way too much blood and sweat to ever be romantic, but it was the best kiss of her life.

And it ended too soon, because the real world crashed back in as the blare of sirens cut through the bubble of their embrace.

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