Heart-Stopper
"There's a ringing in my ears now
I remember how it was
The feeling we had last night
And it won't stop now because..."
3OH!3, "Back to Life"
One of the things Jamie had always admired about Vinny was his mind for details. He had an incredible instinct for it. Could remember at least a dozen license plates at the same time, rattle off the descriptions of the last six middle-aged bald guys who had passed them on the street. He also spit out some of the craziest Starbucks orders Jamie had ever heard.
"Yeah, gimmie a grande caffe mocha, no sugar, no whip, extra dry, with half-skim, half full milk. Nah, I don't want the two percent, just a mix of the skim and the full, yeah? And raspberry syrup. Extra hot too, honey."
"I don't even think that's coffee anymore, man."
"You wound me, Reagan."
Vinny had never thought of it as anything special. He'd always claimed it was just the way his mind worked. Jamie's mind worked that way sometimes, too, although the situations were markedly different. Vinny was his sharpest in everyday scenarios, while for Jamie, it was just the opposite.
The day he'd killed Gavin Bryant in Washington Square Park, for example.
He remembered the jolt in his wrists as the gun fired, and the contortion of the man's face as he collapsed in on himself. The scene had frozen, and the world plunged into silence around him. Colors had shifted, as though he were peering through a slice of cherry-colored stained glass in the windows at church. The details were sharp. The way Gavin Bryan's hand curled loosely against the spreading stain of blood on his dress shirt. The flutter of his dark blue tie in the breeze. His last breaths, rattling in his chest under Jamie's hands. A movie without sound.
Danny called it instinct of the best sort, when conscious thought winked out and action took over. Vinny called it good police work ("Why think when you can act, Reagan? They ain't paying us to think philosophically about this crap."). Renzulli called it training. Over scotch one night, grandpa had called it "the good ideas your blood whispers to you." Jamie called it a nightmare, because he had relied on logic and intellect his entire life, and those were the first things to go when the furious rush of adrenaline kicked into his veins.
Like right now.
Instinct, training, reflex. Whatever it was, it was scratching at Jamie, digging in with curved claws. Taking over.
It was probably for the best, though, as there was nothing but static in his head at the moment anyway.
Ten-thirteen from the officer. If there was anything good at all about this call from dispatch, that was it. The officer was alive, and he was aware enough to call in an officer down code on himself; on his own position. Injured, maybe, but alive.
There was a chance.
Jamie looked up, automatically scanning the squads and officers around him for movement, and was mildly surprised to meet Eddie's startled expression. Right, Eddie. She was going to need his help. God, a rookie meeting her partner for the very first time, and look what her first call was turning out to be.
He found his voice. "That's us. So much for starting slow."
Eddie had already shaken off her shock and was in motion, jogging around the side of the patrol car. Her movements were calm; self-assured. "You mind if I drive?"
"Well - I don't think-"
But she was in the driver's seat by that point, turning over the engine. Jamie hesitated, then dove in shotgun, barely closing the door before she was peeling out. "Hey, hey, whoa!" he shouted as a guy on the street dove out of the way. "Try not to run down any pedestrians, huh?"
"I got it." Eddie threw the car into a sharp left, barely breaking for oncoming traffic. "I know this location. I've been studying the street grid in Chinatown ever since I learned I was getting assigned to the 12th."
Jamie grabbed the door frame to keep his shoulder from crashing into the side of the car, casting a quick glance at a black sedan that slammed hard on its brakes to avoid them, the driver leaning just as hard on his horn. "That's not going to matter if we get killed on the way to the scene."
She snorted. "I ranked top of class in high-speed pursuit training. Besides, this is a ten-thirteen, right? The faster, the better." Jamie felt their speed increase marginally even as she spoke, the siren shredding the darkness above and around them. He looked over and saw her hands clenching and unclenching on the steering wheel.
"Okay, easy," he said aloud, forcing a calmness he didn't feel into his voice. "Easy, understand? Are you listening?"
Her eyes didn't leave the road, but she nodded. "Yeah."
Jamie reached forward to brace himself against the dashboard. "When we get on scene - take the next right, yes, right up here - I want you to stay with me. Got it? Stay behind me. Follow my lead."
"Got it." Her words were right, but her body language was wrong. She was tense, practically vibrating with energy and adrenaline.
"Listen to me, Eddie. Nothing matters once you get out of this squad except where I am, because you're going to be right beside me. Tell me you understand."
"I understand." Her eyes remained bright, glittering in the sweeps of white light from passing headlights.
Jamie's throat was dry. He managed a swallow; kept speaking. "I don't know what we're walking into, so you let me walk into it first. This isn't an episode of Cops, got it? Your first priority is not getting yourself killed. Tell me you understand."
She glanced over at him for the first time, brows drawn in and lips quirked in vague amusement. "Setting the bar pretty high there, huh, Reagan?"
Jamie's jaw tightened. "This is real," he snapped, a little sharper than he intended. "Tell me you understand."
"...I understand," she replied after a beat, although her pinched expression suggested otherwise.
"One more right," he added dryly, and they were gliding onto a small, deserted side street moments later. The store signs around them pushed cheap eateries and electronics stores in both English and Chinese to the empty sidewalks. Rusted security grills were pulled down and padlocked over the doorways, brightened here and there with taggers' spray paint.
A squad car was idling half a block away, its front wheels parked awkwardly on the curb. Its lights painted the crumbling brick facades of the buildings around them in sweeps of white and red. Jamie saw a cop rushing up, a big guy with his weapon drawn and held stiffly down at his side. Jamie climbed out of the squad, his own hand going to the security of his gun at his hip. "Hey, what've we got?"
"Responded to a 10-30 in progress," the cop replied. His nameplate read Salazar. He was gasping for breath, his round face flushed from exertion. He waved his free hand vaguely over his shoulder. "That jewelry store. Two perps. We took shots when we came through the door." Salazar turned, now gesturing at the park behind Jamie as Eddie came up beside him, blond hair wisping out in wild strands from the bun at the nape of her neck. "One of them flew out the back. I chased him, he got away; my partner went after the other guy."
Jamie barely had time to process that before two gunshots split the silence of the damp night - pop-pop, rattlesnake quick - and Eddie flinched and twisted so fast she nearly spun right out of her skin. Jamie risked a quick glance at her. She looked startled and suddenly very young, but she was holding together so far. He turned his eyes toward the park and bordering street, prowling the darkness. He saw nothing, but he heard voices in the distance, somewhere deep inside Columbus Park.
His gun was in his hand without conscious thought. He was moving across Mulberry towards the wrought iron park gates a moment later, body instinctively curving low as he led the way through the night. Salazar fell in at his left, puffing a little, and Eddie was behind him, as close as a slim shadow and tight enough to almost touch his back as they moved past the twisted and strange silhouettes of playground equipment.
Danny called it the best sort of instincts. Renzulli called it training.
Jamie's eyes, fierce and focused and missing nothing, found the fallen officer first. He was sprawled awkwardly on the ground, lying face up on the sidewalk like a bird that had gone head-first into a window. His gun was resting unsecured next to his limp hand.
Jamie twisted around only to see his partner sprawled on his back, blood pooling in the latch of his throat. His eyes were glazed and looked dead already.
Jamie tore himself free of the memory before it could root, cold and painful, in his soul. "We got a body," he said breathlessly, and they were beside him a second later - only it was a woman, Jamie realized with surprise as he drew close. He knelt quickly at her side, relieved by the wet, if frantic, breaths he could hear. He ignored her youth; her pretty face, twisted in pain.
"Collins," Salazar gasped, and fell to the ground heavily beside her. "Where are you hit?"
She didn't speak - perhaps couldn't - but strained to look down her own body. She was pressing weakly, uselessly at her stomach, and Jamie eased back her bloodied hands to see the wound at her waistline, soaking her white undershirt with blood.
Instinct. The good ideas your blood whispers to you.
Don't think too much, Reagan. Why ya always gotta think so much? Sometimes you just gotta act, y'know?
And so he did. "Put pressure on it," Jamie ordered, as Salazar scrambled to obey. "Put pressure on it."
Salazar brought both of his large hands to bear over the wound, and the officer choked in pain. "Lori," he pleaded. "Lori, where'd he go?"
She rolled her head back and forth against the pavement, mouth hanging open. She was fighting for every breath. "He took off... through the park..."
Salazar bent over her protectively as the sirens of their backup wailed in the night, growing stronger. "Hang in there, Collins," he said, his eyes wide and earnest as they held hers. "You're gonna be all right."
"Twelve-David, we have an officer shot," a smooth voice said, and when Jamie recognized it as Eddie's, he tore his eyes from the two partners huddled together on the ground to squint up at her. She was standing above the three of them, composed and calm. The streetlamp behind her was lighting the fuzz of her escaping hair like a wild halo around her head. "Location inside Lenox Avenue, Mulberry Street at Columbus Park..."
Jamie looked back down at Officer Lori Collins, struggling for air. He was no doctor, but there was a growing paleness in her face that Salazar seemed to be missing but that Jamie knew all too well. He saw the rusty stains of blood growing on Salazar's hands; saw the desperation dawning on his soft features. Fear would soon follow. Jamie knew all too well how it went.
His hand tightened on the gun in his right hand, and suddenly, he knew what he had to do.
Jamie squeezed Salazar's arm with his free hand. "Stay here," he ordered. "Stay with her."
And he stood and plunged, alone, into the darkness.