Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(104)

“Will you look at this cabinet space?” Li said, moving around the room. “C’mon.” She ran her hand across the cabinets. “What I wouldn’t give for this kind of setup. You cook, Foster?”

“I microwave.”

Li studied her. “When we catch these assholes, you and I are going to have to talk.”

“No thanks.”

They spotted a door, and Li approached it. “Basement?”

“That’d be my guess,” Foster said. “We’re not going down there.”

“Of course not. That’d be foolhardy. No harm in taking a peek, though.” Li turned the knob, opened the door, and stopped to listen for any sounds from down below. “Smells like a basement. Hello?” Nothing came back but echo. “See? Nobody.”

Foster turned toward the dining room. “We’re either too late, too early, or completely wrong about everything. And I’m tired.”

She looked out the back windows at the long yard. It was large enough for a kiddie pool and swing set. If no one was here, why was the front door unlocked? “Anything?”

“A pantry,” Li called back.

Foster saw something out back, moved closer to the window, squinting to make it out.

“And another door,” Li said.

Beyond the yard, on the alley side of a short, weathered fence. The top of a forest green truck.

“Might be a storage . . .”

Foster reeled. “Li!”

Foster heard Li scream, the scream followed by the sound of something falling down a flight of stairs and the slamming of a door. She ran for the kitchen, even before the echo of both had a chance to die away.

“Li!” There was no response. “Vera!”

She rounded the corner, coming face to face with Amelia standing at the basement door, a bloody knife raised, a vacant look in her eyes. “She’s in the basement.” Amelia angled her head. “Want to join her?”





CHAPTER 76


Li lay at the bottom of the steps, the back of her head throbbing, burning, a ringing in her ears, a rush of blood coursing through her system. She was too stunned to move, even if she could manage it. Stars floated behind her eyelids, and her head felt like a lead block. Amelia Davies. She’d bolted out from the pantry door and shoved her. It had taken Li only a split second to see the woman was out of her mind. The madness was in her eyes.

Li’s entire body burned with a heat of a thousand suns, but her lower back and right ankle burned the most. She tried moving, but the pain knocked her back and stole her air. Taking a quick assessment, she could tell that her right knee was only jammed, not broken, but it was beginning to swell. Her ankle was another story. She could feel the break.

How the hell was she going to get out of here?

“Not good.” Li squeezed her eyes shut as pain bolted its way up her back. “Not. Freaking. Good.” Through narrowed eyes, she focused on the door at the top of the stairs. Had Amelia locked it? Why couldn’t she hear Foster or Amelia talking above her? She had to get up. She had a kid and a family. She had a partner. Gathering one giant inhale that rattled every rib in her chest, she bit her lip and went for it, pushing past her body’s protestations. Her screams, as loud as they seemed to her, were no match for her suffering. She could barely see through the tears.





CHAPTER 77


Foster moved back out of striking range of the knife, but Amelia charged, giving her no time to defend herself. The knife came at her fast, and Foster raised her arms to protect her face, the first strike slashing across her right forearm, cutting through her jacket sleeve, cutting into flesh. Amelia pushed in, knocking them both back against the wall, her frenzied face just inches from Foster’s. Amelia was deranged, Foster thought, and in another place.

Foster could feel blood streaming down her arm, feel the sting and ache of the gash. “Stop.” But Amelia didn’t. It didn’t even look like she had heard her. This wasn’t the same woman she had interviewed at the station, the one poised and confident and so, so sure of herself; that woman was gone.

“Get out,” Amelia growled. “It’s my house now.”

Amelia broke free from Foster’s grasp, and the knife came down again, this time slicing across Foster’s right hand. Foster yelled out like a wounded animal and tried backing away again, but Amelia barreled forward, and they both went down hard. Foster could smell her own blood as it colored her hand and began to pool beside her, a madwoman on top of her, intent, it seemed, on making another hole and then slitting her throat. Foster searched Amelia’s face for even a tiny glimpse of sanity, something she could reason with, but there was only madness.

Foster gripped Amelia’s wrists and held on to them, trying desperately to keep the knife away from her throat, but she could feel herself losing the struggle. Amelia was strong and bent on killing, and Foster’s bloody grip was slipping.

“You’re going to die today, Detective Harriet Foster,” Amelia said, her voice low, menacing, her knife inching closer to Foster’s throat.

For Foster, there was a flash of resignation, a moment in which she considered what dying here would mean. She could be with Reg. The pain of his loss would stop. She would no longer be a worry to her family. Good things. But as she held on to Amelia, struggled to fight her off, as she eyed the bloody knife as it got closer to her, wondering whose blood was already on the blade, she quickly dismissed the thoughts and her moment of weakness. She didn’t have just herself to think about. Her partner was in the basement. Li had a husband and a baby, a life. If Amelia got by her, Li would surely be next.