Chapter 14

'What'cha ready for Mister?' Danny looked curiously at the injured man. She thought he might have been good looking if he wasn't quite so beaten up. He looked like the cops she saw on the TV in the shows that her Mom didn't like her watching and for a second, she wondered if he had a gun. A gun would be way too cool.

'Huh?' For Starsky, talking was painful. His jaw had swollen and he could feel that several teeth were loose. But the very act of opening and closing his mouth was like torture and he knew the final blow of the heavy's foot against his head had broken his jaw.

'Ya said you were ready. What'cha ready for?'

Carefully the brunet cop tried to sit himself back up again. Maybe once he was upright, he'd be able to get his wits together. With his eye swollen shut and his ears still ringing, he could hardly think straight. So. This wasn't some angel come to take him away from his pain and misery. If not an angel, then, who? And what was she doing here?

'Dunno' he managed to force out from his smashed lips. The effort of levering himself up was too great and he gave it up, instead letting his head fall back to the hard concrete as he hissed softly.

'Are ya ok Mister?' Danny asked. He didn't look ok. In fact now she had chance to examine him properly, he looked a real mess. With bruises all over his face, arms, chest and back and with a weeks worth of growth of beard on his face, Starsky could almost be taken for a vagrant. Somehow though, the child recognised that this man wasn't an itinerant and that he needed some sort of help, even though his appearance was scary. She knelt forward so that her head was directly in front of his.

'Mister?'

'Ut….sh' Starsky managed to gasp, his eye opening again to regard the child. He'd been so sure that he was dying and now hope flooded his heart again at seeing someone else in the room with him. If only he could get the little girl to phone Hutch, everything would be fine. The pains wouldn't be so bad if he had his partner there. If Hutch was on the scene, he'd be satisfied because he'd know the blond wasn't hurting any more.

'I wasn't sayin' nothin' Danny said, a little taken aback that the man had told her to hush.

'Noooo…..Hu….ch.'

'Huh? I can't hear ya. Your mouth looks kinda sore. Did those men hurt you?'

'Uh huh…..'urts.'

'Can I get ya somethin' Mister?'

The injured cop tried to get his lips to form the words he needed. 'Dave.' The name came out as a croak, but it sounded reasonably clear. In any event, the little girl seemed to understand what he'd said this time.

'Dave? Is that your name? I like that name. It's kinda short an' nice. My name's Danielle, but everyone calls me Danny. Well, not everyone. My Mom don't call me Danny. She says that's a boys name an' if I'd have been a boy she'd have named me with a boy's name. But she didn't. But I don't like Danielle. It's too girly an' my Mom says I'm a tomboy. But that's only coz I like climbin' and fightin' and stuff. My Mom says……hey, mister? Um…. Dave?' Danny prodded him again softly with her finger his eye having drifted closed again.

Starsky forced his eye open. He was tired – no, more than tired. He was bone crushingly exhausted and yet the sound of another human's voice – even a child's – that wasn't yelling at him or threatening to cause him more pain was so comforting that he felt he could have led there and let her prattle on for ever. He felt cushioned by the presence of the little girl and wanted to lay and listen to her voice until he fell asleep. The sound took his mind away from his current situation and the depressing thought that Hutch thought he was dead. Sue said he was hurting and that she was making him suffer and that was the other thing keeping Starsky going. While there was breath left in his body, he'd struggle to get back to his blond partner. But now Danny had stopped and it was obvious that she expected him to respond to her in some way.

'Huh?' he managed to grunt.

'Are ya ok? My Mom says I talk too much. Do I? Do ya think I talk too much? I could shut up if ya want. Or I could just go.'

The thought filled Starsky with dread. He'd spent so long on his own, or at the mercy of Sue and her two heavies that the idea of being alone again made him panic and his heart started to beat faster in his chest.

'No…..don't go' he mumbled and made a grab for Danny's arm with his right hand. She squealed when she saw the open, festering burn on his palm and pushed him away, but remained where she was, fascinated and a little overawed by having a grown up man all to herself.

'Ok, ok, I won't go, if ya don't want me to. I should have been at school today, but they said I had to stay away coz I fought with John in the school yard. He said my Daddy was in jail, but he aint. He's gone on a long vacation an' he won't be back for a while. Have you ever been in jail Mister….I mean Dave. I guess not. Only bad men get sent to jail. Like those horrible men who beat up on ya. They should go to jail. If my Daddy were here, he'd have fought 'em off for ya. He's great, my Daddy. He's like one of those men on the TV, but he don't have a gun. Well, he does, but Mom don't know about it. I found it once when I was lookin' for Christmas presents, and Daddy got angry an' made me promise never to tell Mom about it. He bought me a watch, see?' Danny held out her arm importantly for Starsky to inspect. 'He said I could have it if I didn't tell Mom.'

Starsky focused on what he needed to do. He was drifting in and out of consciousness now and it was taking him all his will to keep thinking about what he needed to do. The sheer presence of another human being, albeit a very young one left him feeling so pitifully cosseted that thoughts of rescue drifted away from him. This was rescue of a sort; rescue from loneliness; rescue from more beatings and suffering. The pains in his head and the throbbing ache in his jaw beat at his consciousness, threatening to drive him once again into oblivion. Panicked that if he slept the little girl would leave him, Starsky made a determined effort to make her understand.

'Helllllp me' he moaned, the words guttural and harsh as he forced them from his injured lips.

'Help ya? Yeah, I can do that. Mom says I'm good at helping people. She says I should be a nurse or somethin' when I'm grown up. She says I'd be good at that and it's good honest work' Danny said as though she'd heard the sentiment several times. How can I help ya?'

Starsky breathed past the pains and concentrated on trying to get the words out. 'Dunno.'

'Oh um…..' Danny looked around, her eyes falling onto the cup that Sue's heavies had left in their haste to get away. Her Mom always said that when she was sick, she should drink plenty of water. The man who called himself Dave was definitely sick and in her childlike simplistic way, Danny believed that if her Mom had said water would make her better, then a drink would help Dave too. Shuffling over, she grabbed the cup and then crawled carefully back to the injured cop, her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth in concentration. Gently she placed the cup of water in front of Starsky's lips.

'Here Mister. Mom says ya should drink plenty when you're sick an' it always makes me feel better. Have a drink of this huh?' the little girl urged.

Starsky opened his eye and blinked at Danny before his gaze fell on the tin cup. The reaction he had to the cup was not the one that the little girl had anticipated and she yelped as the brunet batted her hand away, a startled, pained look on his face.

'Noooo' he yelled huskily. 'NOOOO.' The thoughts of the tainted, poisoned water and the memories of Mutt and Jeff holding him down and forcing his mouth open so that he choked on and then swallowed the fluid was too raw. The pains he felt in his stomach after he'd consumed the water were too much, and he knew that if he were to suffer even more of them, he'd pass out for sure. The reaction was pure survival instinct and with a sudden surge of strength, Starsky managed to push the child away.

The cup clattered to the floor, its poisoned contents spilling over the concrete as Danny yelped and got to her feet. Her face crumpled and a single bright tear ran down the side of her nose as she looked at the man. Danny didn't understand what was going on. She was trying to help this curly haired man and he'd seemed to like her. He talked to her and he needed her. To the little girl, that was important. It made her feel grown up and she enjoyed that he talked to her and let her prattle on about herself.

Things had changed however and Danny didn't understand why. She looked at the cup and the spilled water and then back at the man. He was mad at her and she didn't know why, but that made her feel sad too and with a final strangled sob, she turned and ran from the room.

Starsky watched her go, panic setting in as he watched her heels leaving. He struggled to sit up, determined that he wouldn't allow her to go without making her understand that he needed to get a message to Hutch, but he was too injured and way too slow.

The curly haired cop collapsed forwards onto the floor and with his one good arm, clawed at the floor, trying to snake himself forward along the ground to go after the child.

'Danny!' he shouted, the name ending in a scream as the words caused him to jolt his jaw open. His right arm stretched out as though it was long enough to catch a hold of her and bring her back, but Danny was long gone and with a sob of frustration, Starsky's head sank back onto the cold unforgiving concrete.

'Danny…..Hutch…..hellllp me' he moaned softly as the pains redoubled their efforts to plunge him into unconsciousness. The feeling of loss at the girl's absence was almost palpable. With Danny gone, Starsky had the unhappy impression that his last chance at escape had gone with her. If only he'd been able to make her understand that he needed to get in touch with Hutch. But if the girl was really only 10, what hope did he have of making her understand just how urgent this was.

With a low groan, the cop rested his head on the floor, feeling his skin hot and dry against the cold concrete. A shiver ran through his body, jangling his nerves and exacerbating the pains in his arm and shoulder. Coupled with the pains and the fever he was running, Starsky also felt a new need impact on his senses. In the past few days, because he'd tried not to drink too much of the water and because he never knew whether it would be tainted, he hadn't had to relieve himself much. When he had, he'd been worried at the amount of blood in his urine. Now a cramping pain grabbed at his lower back and caused him to writhe for a moment on the floor, gritting his teeth against the sensation. With it came the urgent need to go and the brunet managed to roll over onto his back, unbuttoning his jeans and dropping the zipper with his right hand.

Without the energy to get up to stagger to the pail in the corner of the room, it was all Starsky could manage to roll back over onto his side and let the steam of almost pure blood run away from him. He managed to pull up the zip with a sigh, startled at the colour of his water and as the fever started to take a proper hold, he rested his head back against the floor and slipped into a turbulent sleep.