Chapter 3/8
Loop 4A
Chloe was a police officer. Her duty was to serve and protect. Child or not, she couldn't ignore someone in danger. It went against every bone and fiber in her being. Whatever heaven and hell might mean for a nobody like Chloe Decker, she was accountable to herself and her conscience first.
She squeezed her eyes shut and counted backward from ten. So began attempt number four...
-x-x-x-
Following police procedure had not helped her the last three times. Waiting for the call to come in only slowed her down. Police investigations lived and died by protocol, which left Chloe with a choice both difficult and breathtakingly easy to make.
After dropping Trixie early at school, Chloe stopped by the station long enough to clock in, make an appearance for her ever-watchful lieutenant, and retrieve her case file. On her way out, she told Dan she was following up on a lead.
She didn't tell him what her lead was.
The early morning drive to Topanga was peaceful compared to its afternoon counterpart. But she clutched her steering wheel tighter at every glimpse of a black SUV with a California license plate, namely every other vehicle on the road. She arrived at the motel in one piece. Even at this hour, the "No Vacancy" hung on the front window. Did the desk clerk ever take it down? Or was it a shield against doing actual work?
She once again swept through the parking lot and around the motel's perimeter on the lookout for the gunman. Surely, he wasn't already here. Even though her search turned up nothing, she didn't let down her guard.
Inside the check-in office, she flashed her badge at the clerk before requesting access to Robin Yeats' room. She had no warrant, and she had neither the reason nor the time to get one. The clerk hemmed and hawed until Chloe broke out the photo of her murder victim. That combined with a pointed question asking about Robin Yeats' daughter finally convinced the clerk to act.
Together, they shuffled to Robin's room at the other end of the building. Apparently, Robin had requested it. In front of the faded blue door, Chloe brushed a hand against her holstered weapon. It hadn't helped her much in the last few loops, but she'd rather have it than not.
After opening the door, the clerk moved to one side, wringing hands nervously and not daring to peer inside. Chloe strolled in, cataloging the now-familiar interior. A small lump under the bed's comforter caught her attention. She approached it on light feet, hoping to not scare the young girl, but the lump quivered when she stopped at the bedside.
"Hi there, sweetie," she greeted while drawing deep from her experiences with a sick or frightened Trixie. "I'm Chloe. Nice to meet you."
No sound or further movement came from the lump. Chloe picked up one corner of the paisley duvet, then crouched down to peer underneath. The girl's eyes glinted like uncut emeralds in the dimness.
"I'm with the police. I'm here to help you," Chloe continued gently, reaching a hand under the covers and resting it palm up at the edge of the mattress.
Slowly, the girl traced the edge of Chloe's hands with her small fingers. Chloe held still, trying not to frighten her any further.
"I believe you," the girl said as she finally slipped her hand into Chloe's.
-x-x-x-
"You're sure this girl is related to your vic?" The new lieutenant cast a skeptical look across the bullpen and into the conference room where Chloe had left the girl with Ella.
Chloe nodded stiffly and willed the conversation to finish faster. She hadn't set foot into this office since Marcus was still alive and in charge. "The motel staff identified the woman who checked in with her as our Jane Doe. She checked in under Robin Yeats, but I found no official records under that name. It's most likely a fake name."
Lieutenant Grieve hummed softly and turned on his heels to scrutinize Chloe again. "And what led you to her?"
She swallowed thickly before replying, "A source. I'm not at liberty to save who for now."
She couldn't tell her boss about a time loop.
Grieve narrowed his eyes. "This source wouldn't be your civilian consultant, would it?" His every syllable was drenched in disapproval.
Chloe froze but her heart now hammered at the mention of her former partner. "No, sir. I promise it's not Lucifer."
"Good. If you can't get the girl's identity sorted out by three, she goes to CFS." Grieve turned his back in clear dismissal.
She nodded and made a swift escape, heading straight to the conference room. Ella and the girl sat facing each other with their hands hanging in the middle of a clap. They both looked up when Chloe entered. The conference table's surface was littered with the wrapper remains for a sandwich and a cookie, and a juice box. At Chloe's small smile, the girl returned a hesitant one and folded her hands in her lap. Chloe took it as permission to approach.
"You guys are getting along without me," she joked.
"Nah, I was teaching her how to play Slides. By the way, you're a natural. Up top!" Ella extended one hand, palm forward.
After a second, the girl raised her hand to complete the high-five.
Ella beamed and jumped to her feet. "So what'd the lieutenant say?"
Some of her recovered mood slipped away. "He's aware of the situation. But we only have until three before contacting Children and Family Services."
"That's not a lot of time. You sure you don't want to tell us your name?" Ella winced, then asked the young girl directly.
She dropped her gaze in clear refusal. Chloe sighed. Her reticence to speak was an obstacle to the investigation, but not an unexpected one given her behavior in past loops. "Let's start with their luggage. I moved it all into the lab for better space."
The three of them moved into the forensics lab, where they planted the girl on a tall stool at the head of the lab's table. She and Ella both slipped on a pair of gloves before rummaging through the two suitcases under the girl's watchful eyes. Most of it was clothing: underwear, dresses, t-shirts, and jeans in Robin's and the girl's sizes. Nothing they found pointed to a third traveler, male or otherwise. After emptying one suitcase, Chloe felt around for a hidden pocket or ripped seam to no avail. By all appearances, this was the luggage of a mother/daughter pair on vacation.
But what she didn't find also gave her pause: namely Robin's missing identification. The police hadn't found a wallet on the body, and it wasn't in the luggage. The clerk insisted that Robin had shown a California driver's license at check-in. The clerk also couldn't recall if Robin had a car and every vehicle at the motel's parking lot was accounted for by their owners. Did that mean the killer had taken them from Robin after killing her? Was the killer trying to hide her identity or make the murder look like a strange robbery?
Chloe glanced across to Ella, who shook her head. "Nothing, huh?"
"Yeah..." Ella squinted at the pile of clothes before her. "But it's weird, don't you think?"
"What's weird?"
"There are no chargers or anything. Did you..." Ella cast a nervous look at the girl now occupied with her book, before lowering her voice and whispering, "Find a phone you know where?"
"No. You're right though. It's strange not to find an iPad or some other tablet. It's hard keeping a child entertained on the road." Chloe spoke from experience.
Ella shrugged. "I guess they could be one of those digital detox families."
Then remembering the tenacity with which the gunman came after them, Chloe added, "Or maybe they were afraid of being tracked."
With no new discoveries, they neatly repacked the suitcases and set them aside for when the girl would leave with a family member or, God forbid, CFS. Chloe said her goodbyes, thanked Ella for helping, and offered a wordless hand to the girl. The child stared for a second, before closing her book gently and taking the offered hand. Chloe helped her down from the stool and they retreated to the conference room.
-x-x-x-
Chloe closed the search window in disgust. One thousand, three hundred and sixty-six possible matches to the partial license on the black Chevy SUV from the last loop. Cross-referencing the results with the criminal database for prior offenses only narrowed the list to one hundred and eighty-three matches. Searching for her mysterious gunman was searching for a proverbial needle in a haystack.
As the day wore on, the tension lodged in the base of her spine unfurled bit by bit. Did she dare think she had broken the cycle? Well, even if that was true, she was still no closer to finding Robin Yeats' or her daughter's true identity.
With much cajoling, she convinced the motel to fax over recent records. Even though the staff was supposed to make copies, there was no record of the driver's license Robin checked in with. It didn't surprise Chloe. The staff did their work half-heartedly. She even found a random photocopy of a giant oval-shaped leaf in the pile.
Chloe stole several glances at the girl over the top of her shuffling papers. The more time she spent with the girl, the less her behavior made sense. She preferred to stick with Chloe above all others, although she allowed Ella and eventually Dan to approach her with some regularity. But she still refused to speak, answer questions, or more stunningly ask questions of her own. This was not Chloe's first time interacting with a child relative of a victim. Even drawing from her experience with Trixie and her friends, it was unnatural for a young child to be silent for so many hours at a time. It went beyond shyness.
Was it fear? Or worse, had she been abused in the past? A cursory study of her revealed none of the usual telltale signs of physical abuse, but Chloe didn't know what may be hidden under the girl's jewel-toned t-shirt and jean shorts. After all, what did it say about Robin Yeats to leave behind her daughter without supervision? Was Robin trying to protect the girl? Abandon her?
God, how was she going to break the news about her mother?
Chloe glanced at the clock on the wall, whose hands indicated it was half-past noon.
"Are you hungry?" she asked the girl. "What do you want for lunch?"
The girl only nodded.
"Another sandwich then," Chloe paused, mentally reviewing the menu for the deli down the block. "A grilled cheese sandwich and a cookie."
The girl held up two fingers.
"Okay, two cookies then."
She smiled in response then, flashing her perfect pearly whites. Lucky, this kid wouldn't need braces at all.
Chloe retrieved her wallet and blazer from her desk, asked Dan to watch the girl, and trekked to the deli. As expected, the lunch rush meant a sizable line. She recognized several detectives and officers in the line ahead of her. Chloe pulled out her phone and googled advice on getting a child to talk. Most of what she came across were fluff pieces or clickbait lists. Halfway through a promising blog post by a child psychologist, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on their end. She couldn't shake the sensation of eyes drilling into her back.
She took three measured breaths, pocketed her phone, and angled her body to her right to face the counter. Nothing suspicious so far, but the feeling she was being watched didn't go away. She pretended to study the menu boards overhead for another minute, growing more and more sure that her mind wasn't playing tricks on her. Was it?
She spun to face the shop's entrance, half-expecting to find the gunman that was rapidly becoming her personal wraith.
But she found no one. Not the gunman. Not even someone from the station.
"Ma'am."
Chloe startled, nearly falling into the person lined up in front of her.
"Your order?" the harried-looking employee behind the counter asked.
She placed her order, also picking up two chocolate-chip cookies as requested, and paid for her lunch. By the time she was handed her order in a paper bag, she had convinced herself she'd imagined it.
Mostly.
Yet as she hurried back to the station, her gaze kept darting everywhere in search of an unseen assailant. Had the gunman found them again? She sped up her walk, eager to get back to the safety of the bullpen. She couldn't breathe until she caught sight of the girl, now seated next to Dan's desk, again.
She deposited the bag on Dan's desk and prompted them to eat.
"Where are you going?" Dan asked with furrowed brows when she started to walk away.
She waved away his concern. "There's something I need to check."
Ella wasn't in her lab, probably went out for lunch. Chloe tore through both the suitcases a second time, dumping out the contents haphazardly across the lab table. Just because neither Robin nor the girl carried a phone that could be tracked didn't mean there wasn't a hidden device broadcasting their location. Was that how the gunman found them in the last loop? This was how Ella found her when she returned to the lab, half ready to tear into the suitcases' lining.
"What are you doing?" Ella asked, hovering in the doorway with an uncertain expression.
"Looking for a tracking device." Chloe flipped over the suitcase again and ran her fingers along the seams.
"Uh, why?"
"There's someone after her." Without looking up, Chloe pointed to the girl in the bullpen. "I have to make sure he can't find her. Do we have something that can detect tracking devices?"
"Yeah, lemme get it for you."
Ella soon came back with a signal detector she borrowed from Robbery's lab. They scanned the luggage and its various contents three times at Chloe's insistence, but nothing pinged.
"Are you sure? What if there's a GPS tracker or something else?" Chloe asked, desperation creeping into her words.
"I'm sure. If it's broadcasting location data, it's gotta emit a signal." Ella showed her the device's meter, which indicated it detected nothing out of the ordinary. "See? Nothing. Nada. Zilch."
"There's gotta be something. Wait, what about the pendant?!"
"Huh?"
Chloe grabbed Ella by the elbow and dragged the other woman to Dan's desk. Dan hovered silently in the background. Chloe ignored him when he tried to catch her eye. She pointed at the large pendant dangling around the girl's neck. "Check that."
"May I?" Ella bent over and asked.
The girl looked to Chloe first, then nodded slowly.
Ella leaned in to get a better look at the pendant and tapped the inscribed image lightly. "Is that a cast-iron pot or something?"
"It's not a pot," the girl protested. "It's the Cauldron of the Dagda."
Chloe was momentarily stunned. Of all the things she expected the girl to open up about, her necklace didn't rank at the top of the list.
Ella brightened in response. "Huh, cool! Where's it—"
Chloe clenched her hands into fists, digging her blunt nails into her palm. "Ella," she barked. If she didn't head off Ella's curiosity first, they could lose valuable time to address the situation.
"Right, right."
As soon as Ella waved the device over the pendant, its screen went dark.
"Huh, give me a sec. This thing's on the fritz." She slapped the sides several times before its screen flickered back to life. "Alright, go caveman IT support!"
Nothing registered on screen. The girl's necklace wasn't the answer. Chloe spun on her heels and marched into the lab again. She stared at the overturned luggage and its contents piled high on the lab table. Nothing here was the answer.
When Ella returned, it was to the scene of Chloe haphazardly shoving clothing back into the suitcases. Ella hovered by the door briefly before approaching to help. "Why are you so sure someone's tracking the kid?" she asked.
"I just know," snapped Chloe.
Resting a hand on her forearm, Ella gave it a gentle squeeze. "Seriously, what's eating you, Decker? Talk to me."
Chloe gulped, swallowed what would be a crazy-sounding diatribe about the same man killing her repeatedly. "I felt someone following me when I went to pick up lunch. They have to be after the girl. If there's no tracking device, how the hell did they find us then?"
Something flashed across Ella's face. "You sure you weren't imagining it? Sometimes I get that eyes crawling across my back kinda feel. But you know, it's all in my head. I can check again, but the results won't change."
Shame crept over Chloe. She was acting ridiculous. Just because she experienced... things... didn't mean she should abdicate all her good sense when the evidence showed otherwise. She wouldn't be able to help anyone like this. "You're right. Thanks for checking, Ella."
"No prob, what are coworkers-slash-friends for?" Ella winked and put down the scanner.
Chloe nodded gratefully to her friend and rounded the table toward the lab door. As she pulled on the handle, Ella spoke again behind her.
"Have you talked to Lucifer recently?"
Chloe gripped the door handle tighter. The metal dug into her palm. "No, why do you ask?" She internally congratulated herself on how steady she kept her voice.
Ella laughed. The sound was strangely high-pitched and wobbly. "Nothing. I was just wondering. I miss the big guy. Wonder when he's coming back."
Chloe's heart lurched at the pang of longing in Ella's voice. "That's not up to me."
"Oh, Chloe..."
-x-x-x-
"No, absolutely not." Chloe widened her stance, jutting her chin out. She shouldn't challenge her boss, but what did she have to lose anymore?
Lieutenant Grieve leveled an unimpressed look at her. "I made myself perfectly clear before Decker. She goes to CFS if we can't contact any relatives."
"But she's not going to CFS, you're putting her in a shelter!" she protested.
"CFS can't arrange a spot for her in the foster system until tomorrow. She can't spend the night here."
The foster system wasn't much better, but at least she would have been around other children her age. She would have been under the supervision of an adult meant to watch over children. A homeless shelter was no place for a girl with no adult supervision. Best-case scenario, she'd be neglected. At worst, she'd have a painted target on her back for the gunman or anyone else looking to harm her or take advantage of her. The mere thought of letting the girl out of her sight made Chloe unbelievably anxious.
"What if I take her home for the night?" Chloe put forth.
Grieve stared back. "That's highly unusual."
"You said CFS can place her tomorrow. She can stay with me tonight. Please, Lieutenant, if I can use this as a chance to build a rapport with her, it may solve this case."
Grieve wavered visibly, enticed by the possibility of solving the case sooner.
"Also, we're both parents, Lieutenant. How would you feel if someone did this to your son if God forbid, something happened to you?" added Chloe.
Grieve sighed and unfolded his arms from across his chest. "Fine, Decker. But only for tonight. She goes to CFS in the morning."
Outside the lieutenant's office, the girl sat in a chair by the door, swinging her legs back and forth while waiting. She wore a resigned expression she shouldn't have to use at her age and spoke, "You're leaving me."
Chloe crouched down to the girl's eye level and smiled softly. "Nope, you're stuck with me. At least for tonight."
The girl returned the smile with watery eyes.
-x-x-x-
"Come on in."
Eyes bright with curiosity, the girl peered around the house. While she explored, Chloe set the bag of toiletries and change of clothes, which they pulled from the girl's suitcase, on top of the kitchen island. They left the rest of the luggage at the station. Chloe wasn't comfortable moving it all back to her house, and the luggage needed to follow the girl to CFS tomorrow. The girl had even waved goodbye to both Ella and Dan, which Chloe counted as a positive development.
"Make yourself comfortable, sweetie. I'll be right back," she said before hurrying to her bedroom.
Once upstairs, she stowed her firearm in the gun safe in her closet. It was the first thing she did anytime she came home. In fact, Dan's failure to do the same resulted in many arguments during their marriage. She left her badge on top of her nightstand. She would have also liked to change out of her work clothes, but Chloe hesitated to leave the girl alone for too long.
When she returned downstairs, the girl stood in front of the wall next to Trixie's door. Chloe came to a stop at her side, eyes tracing across the rows and rows of colorful drawings, which Maze had used to paper over the knife marks in the wall. With a sudden pang of regret, Chloe wondered where her former roommate was. Had she returned to Lucifer's side? Goosebumps crept across her arm. No, Maze was a demon.
A tug on her sleeve wrenched Chloe from her reverie. The girl released the fabric and pointed to the pictures in a silent question.
"My daughter drew those," explained Chloe.
The girl cast another look around the house, then a pointed look at Trixie's bedroom door.
Chloe shook her head. "No, she's not here right now. She's over at her best friend's house. But you'll meet her later tonight if you like."
A thoughtful light filled the girl's verdant eyes. She nodded.
Chloe took the engagement, though non-verbal, as encouragement and continued, "Her name is Beatrice, but everyone calls her Trixie. She's a year younger than you but I'm sure you two will get on like a house on fire."
The girl stared up with furrowed brows and a scrunched nose.
It took several seconds before Chloe realized her mistake. "Haha, well, I'm guessing you're both similar in age. How can I know how old you are when I don't even know your name?" she laughed nervously. Chloe had no chance of convincing an adult with her act, but a child might buy it? If she hadn't even explained the situation with the girl's mother, she could hardly start with time loops.
"Morgan." Her voice was just as Chloe remembered: high and sweet, with no trace of hoarseness usually associated with not speaking for long periods.
She didn't know what shocked her more: the speaking or her volunteering her name. "Your name is Morgan?"
The girl nodded in response.
Crouched before Morgan, Chloe smiled at her. "It's very nice to meet you, Morgan. You have a beautiful name."
A dash of pink splashed across Morgan's cheeks. "I think Chloe is very pretty."
The sound of her name filled Chloe with an indescribable lightness. The sweet tones soothed the ragged edges of her psyche, drawing numbing dispassion to the surface. The rest of the world—all its worries and dangers—fell away. Morgan's eyes widened before she averted her gaze and broke the moment.
Chloe blinked sluggishly, struggling to gather her cottony thoughts. She stood and absently shaking out her numb hands, trying to restore feeling to her fingertips. "How about I put something on? You can pick something to watch while I make dinner."
Even now, Morgan refused to meet Chloe's eyes. Was she embarrassed? But she shuffled obediently to the couch while Chloe turned on the TV and brought up the "Kids" profile on her Netflix account. She spent several moments going over the controls with Morgan before leaving the girl to her own devices. Satisfied that Morgan was suitably entertained, Chloe turned her attention to her fridge and kitchen cabinets. Besides the bread and lunch meat from last week's groceries, she had several boxes of mac and cheese, a half-finished bag of frozen chicken nuggets, and leftovers from last night's Chinese takeout. The options hardly made for a feast. But children were often satisfied with a warm bowl of cheese and pasta and a plateful of nuggets.
Then again, Chloe didn't know if Morgan had any food allergies. The lack of any EpiPens in the luggage or on Morgan's person suggested nothing life-threatening.
Chloe pulled open a drawer and retrieved a stack of takeout menus, including the gluten-free vegan one she kept for whenever Trixie's friend, Klaire, came around. She carefully reviewed each menu, tuning out the auto-play trailer looping in the background. When she finally narrowed it down to several relatively healthy and hopefully delicious choices, she turned toward the living room to get Morgan's opinion.
But the child was no longer seated on the sofa.
Chloe's heart lunged into her throat. She dropped the menus, swinging wildly in a circle to find the girl. "Morgan, where are you?"
When she turned toward the front door, she spotted Morgan pressed against the front window. Chloe pressed a hand to her hammering heart and took several deep breaths. Morgan didn't respond to her name, but she tilted her head back to look at Chloe in acknowledgment. Chloe crossed the room in five long strides to reach her. She bit back the desire to scold Morgan for scaring her, and instead asked, "What are you looking at?"
Morgan pressed her nose flat against the glass, fogging it with her breath, and squinted at something in the distance. "A man."
Chloe quickly peeled back the curtains and swept her gaze up and down the street. There was nobody in sight, but unrest settled once again in her bones. She forced her voice level and casual while asking, "What did he look like?"
"I couldn't see his face. He was too bright."
Chloe gaped. "What?"
"He glowed. Like you, but brighter," Morgan stated calmly.
Come to think of it, Morgan said Chloe glowed when they first met. Maybe it was her imagination? Was she playing pretend to cope with her situation? Chloe glanced out the window and froze when she registered the black SUV parked across the street. A Chevy based on the emblem. Chloe couldn't make out the numbers on the license, but it was a California plate. Nobody on the block owned a black Chevy, and street parking in the area required a residential permit.
She told herself she wasn't being paranoid when she reached for her cell phone. First, she would request a squad car to do a quick drive-pass and check the license plate. Both leaving Morgan alone and taking her out into the open to check on the SUV were out of the question. As she finished her call with dispatch, something thumped on the second floor. Chloe's tension climbed several notches at the noise.
"Stay here," she commanded.
At the foot of the stairs, she doubled back and extracted a kitchen knife from the knife block. With the blade lowered at her side and hidden out of immediate sight, she climbed the stairs on tip-toes.
Chloe paused at the landing. The second-floor hallway stretched before her, long and foreboding; the fading light of early twilight painting unsettling shadows across the walls. The knobby knife handle dug into her sweaty palm. She readjusted her grip before stepping off the landing.
Her bedroom waited at the other end of the corridor, past the bathroom and the second bedroom. With her back planted flat against the wall, she turned the doorknob slowly and let the door fall open. She peeked around the corner and breathed a sigh of relief. The shower curtain was already drawn open to reveal an empty tub.
She moved on to the next door. But the moment she nudged the door, it creaked as it swung open. The noise made Chloe wince, simultaneously sending her pulse racing. She couldn't even recall the last time she'd entered Maze's old room. The door had remained firmly closed since the day she moved out.
Chloe glanced down the length of the hall, weighing her chances of reaching her bedroom and retrieving her gun.
She held the knife up in a stance she'd seen Maze take up before and slipped into the deserted bedroom. Maze's old furniture remained, but the mattress had long been stripped of its bed sheets and the dresser drawers emptied of their contents. She even left behind her blackout curtains, which were now pulled open to frame the open window. Maze often used it in lieu of the front door when keys proved too much of a hassle in the middle of the night...
"Maze?" she asked, half hoping and half dreading being right.
The black shape that rushed Chloe from the closet wasn't Maze though. She registered the baseball cap and dark clothes for a millisecond before he threw her back into the wall. The force of his tackle knocked down a hanging poster frame and stunned Chloe. He followed up by grabbing her hair and slamming her face-first into the dresser's edge. Pain erupted across every nerve ending and stars exploded behind her eyes. She swung her knife blindly, ignoring the wetness trickling from her nose and down the side of her face.
He howled in pain and released his death grip, dropping Chloe gracelessly to the floor. Her vision darkened dangerously. A wave of nausea swept over her. She forcibly swallowed a mouthful of bile. When she lifted her heavy head, he was gone; his heavy footfalls stomping down the hallway.
"Morgan! Run!" she screamed.
Every muscle in her body protested as she pushed herself off the ground. Every step she took made her want to vomit but she lurched determinedly toward the stairs. On the third step down, dizzy from pain, she slipped and almost tumbled the rest of the way if she hadn't caught the banister first.
"Chloe!"
Morgan stood frozen on the far side of the kitchen. The only obstacle between her and the assailant was the island counter.
Chloe launched in a flying tackle from midway up the stairs. She and the assailant crashed into the floor in a tangle of flailing limbs.
"Go out the back door. Now!" she ordered. God, it hurt to speak.
The French doors leading to the courtyard slammed open, then shut. She reached up, knocked off his cap, and ripped off his mask. A conventionally handsome man in his mid-thirties, dark brown hair and eyes, snarled at her.
Minutes; Chloe only needed to hold him off for several more minutes. Dispatch had sent a patrol car her way.
"You bitch." He paired his cursing with a knee to Chloe's abdomen.
The blow knocked out her breath, but it barely registered on top of the torturous cacophony of pain strumming through her every cell. She answered his kick with a headbutt at his chin. His teeth clicked, and the back of his head bounced off her hardwood floor with a clunk. Blood and sweat clumped her eyelashes, making it difficult to keep her eyes open and her vision focused. But through her lashes, she saw him blink furiously as blood trickled from his broken lip, down the side of his square jaw.
She aimed for his groin next. He twisted away, so she only caught his left thigh. He kept rolling, grabbing her shoulder to drag her down and under him. If she got pinned, she was as good as dead. Dropping her knife, she trapped his arm to her chest, hooked a foot around his ankle, and flipped them. By tucking her knees and shoulder into the roll, she landed straight into a kneeling position.
They both shook when they clamored to their feet. When he drew his gun from his waistband, she was prepared. She was trained in close quarter combat. He wasn't.
She threw her elbow in his face as she closed in, earning her a satisfying crunch. With both hands, she grabbed his weapon and swept her leg 180 degrees. The momentum forced his arm to lock straight and his hand to go slack with the palm facing the ceiling. His gun clattered to the floor next to her knife.
"FUCK!" he screamed again.
She jabbed the heel of her boot into the back of his knee, forcing him to kneel. "You're not hurting her. Not this time," she hissed. Then with a touch of vindictiveness, she doubled the pressure to his wrist, feeling his joints strain near a breaking point. His jacket sleeve slid down to reveal the underside of his arm covered in tattoos.
"I'll kill you!" he howled.
Before she could examine the marks on his arm, her front door burst open, splintering at the seams. But even that wasn't as shocking at the new arrival darkening her doorway. Chloe slackened her grip. "What? Luc—"
The assailant broke free, diving for something on the floor. No!
"Get ba—"
He surged to his feet and swung at Chloe, silver flashing through the air. A stinging pain bloomed across her neck, cutting her short. Over his shoulders, she watched as the color drained from Lucifer's face and a strangled "Detective!" clawed through the air. The assailant pushed Chloe aside and bolted out the back door.
She sank to her knees. A warm dampness drenched the front of her shirt. The smell of iron flooded her nostrils. She pressed one hand to her neck, coating it in slick blood.
Oh...
"No, no, no, Detective." Lucifer appeared at her side, embracing her with arms she was too weak to fight off.
She tried to speak. Save Morgan, she wanted to say. But all she managed was a wet gurgle. Her chest was unbearably tight. Her lungs burned like it contained a miniature star. She gasped and wheezed, clawing at his sleeve.
Air. She needed air.
"Detective, stay with me. You can't leave."
His scorching hands pressed against her neck wound, but he couldn't cauterize it with touch alone. The last thing Chloe saw before dying was the Devil's scarlet visage and her terror reflected in his blood-red eyes.
