The man lifted her limp body, placing her gently on her back. She saw him smile through a set of glassy eyes. Indeed, she was coherent enough to know what was going on around her, but she couldn't do a damn thing to stop it. He scraped his chin with a greasy hand and waited until she had become completely immobile.
"You've got enough of a sedative in your system to knock you flat on your ass, but not enough to where you won't feel pain if I decide to inflict any. You'll also understand every single word I say, so you better listen if you value your life…"
Keats stared at the man's shirt. It was filthy, but she could make out two initials on his breast: D.H.
Keats tried to memorize as much as she could of the man's appearance in order to identify him in a lineup. If only I should be so lucky.
"It seems you've sent my colleagues up the river in a leaky boat. Now it's your job to patch up all the holes. D'you understand what I'm telling you, Little Red? I want you to reverse the charges against them. If you don't…" To this, the man gave a low laugh from deep in his throat.
He pulled a knife from his leather belt and grabbed a lifeless arm. He propped it on his knee and lightly scraped over certain places, murmuring as he poked at her veins. He looked up for the briefest of seconds and she felt as though her arm was going to split in two. He had cut her with swift precision. The work of a skilled assassin.
Keats could do nothing but gasp as she felt the warm liquid erupt from her trembling arm. Salty tears rolled down her cheeks and she glowered at him with all her strength. The man used Keats' cheek to wipe the blood off his knife. She nearly retched from the bland, coppery smell of her own blood.
He appeared satisfied and he gave her a final nod of approval. He lifted the window in her bedroom and hiked a leg over one side.
"Don't worry, Red. The stuff is gonna wear off in a little bit. Just long enough for me to make my escape. Didn't I tell you if he left you alone that I was gonna get ya? Pass that on to your boyfriend." He waved and disappeared from her sight.
Keats groaned softly, more pained by the fact that she had to release Maria and Delacrosse in order to save her life than her actual wound. There's no question. I can't do it. He may kill me, but I can't let them get away with their crimes. Who is he, anyway? He mentioned that he was their colleague, but somehow nobody had revealed his existence in relation to the prostitution ring. There's more to this case than I thought.
Very soon her limbs began to gain their strength back and as soon as she found her voice, she let out a horrible cry of pain. She sat up rapidly, clutching her left arm to her chest. Ryan kicked down the door to her bedroom, coming to rest on his knees by her side.
"Where did he go?" Ryan spotted an old t-shirt on the floor and wrapped it around her arm to stop the blood.
"The window…" She gasped. Ryan closed and locked the window, returning to Keats' side.
Ryan stood by angrily as the emergency room technician put several stitches in Keats' arm. She was lost in thought and tried to come up with the rest of D.H.'s name. The name tag might have had a second H, she remembered after much deliberation. She had been so cloudy-headed, unfortunately, that anything she might have remembered was bound to be inaccurate.
"He said 'colleague,' right? Why didn't anyone tell us?" Ryan leaned his hand against the wall, flexing it out of sheer rage. Keats gave a sardonic smile.
"The dogcatcher knows that some dogs are on the loose. What he doesn't know is how many. If he catches half and he thinks he's got all of them, then he isn't expecting the renegade dog that eventually frees his friends when the dogcatcher isn't looking. What we have here is a renegade dog." Keats said, wincing as she glanced down at her terrible scar.
"Corny analogy, but nonetheless a true one. If we could set a trap for the renegade dog by letting him think we were releasing his friends…"
"You know, Ryan, I think there's hope for you after all."
Back in the Lab at Miami Dade, Keats and Ryan had filled everyone in about what had happened the previous night. The team's task now was to go back and question every witness again, trying to gain any insight on the strange man. Keats, however, was haunted by a name at the very edge of her lips that remained just out of reach.
She grabbed her cell-phone in a frenzied manner, chastising herself for not thinking of it before. She traced the number of the calls that the man had made to her and delivered it to Dan Cooper, hoping it would lead somewhere.
"I've got good news and bad news, Skeeter. Bad news is that the calls were made from a payphone. Good news is that I pinpointed the location of the payphone. It's suspiciously close to the house that Maria claimed belonged to her mother." Cooper handed her a printout of his findings and she squealed with delight, hugging his neck with cheerful abandon. She kissed his cheek and went off running to inform Ryan of the recent development.
Regrettably, Ryan had been standing in the doorway for quite sometime and fixed Keats with a stare that could freeze Hell.