Karen Rose - Count to Ten

Brooke's eyes opened, and Mia saw wild fear and excruciating pain. " Ten ."

Mia lifted her hand, but there was no place to touch her. "Who did this, Brooke?"

"Count to ten," Brooke whispered. She moaned in agony and Mia's heart clenched.

"Brooke, tell me who did this. Was it someone at Hope Center? Was it Bixby?"

"Go to hell."

Mia flinched. The woman had been afraid to talk to them. They'd forced her to speak, she and Reed. I'll have to live with that . And though she knew this wasn't her fault, she understood Brooke's anger. "I'm so sorry, Brooke. But I need your help."

"Count to ten." She labored for a breath and machines started beeping.

"Pressure's dropping," the nurse said with grim urgency. "Oxygen levels dropping."

"Push one amp of epi," the doctor commanded, "and start an epinephrine drip. Get ready to intubate. Detective, you have to leave."

"No." Brooke struggled, pathetically. "Count to ten. Go to hell."

The nurse was injecting a syringe into Brooke's IV. "Get out, Detective."

"One more minute." Mia leaned closer. "Was it Bixby? Thompson? Secrest?"

The doctor leaned over Mia with a growl. "Detective, move ." Mia backed away, helpless, horrified, while the doctor and nurse battled for Brooke's life.

Thirty grueling, endless minutes later, the doctor stepped back. His shoulders sagged. "I'm calling it. Time of death oh-five-hundred twenty-five hours."

There had to be a word for what churned inside her. But that word wouldn't come. Mia lifted her eyes to the doctor's weary gaze. "I don't know what to say."

The doctor's mouth tightened. "Say you'll catch who did this."

Roger Burnette had demanded it for Caitlin. Dana had demanded it for Penny Hill. "We will. We have to. He's killed four women. Thank you, for doing what you could."

Grimly he nodded. "I'm sorry."

"So am I." She got to the door and stopped. Forced herself turn around and look at Brooke Adler one more time. Then crossed herself and backed out of the room.

Thursday, November 30, 5:45 a.m.

The child watched from his hiding place. He was outside again. He didn't know what the man buried, but he knew it had to be very, very bad. Because he was very bad. Doesn't anybody else know? Am I the only one that sees how bad he really is ?

He thought of his mother, tossing and turning in her bed and he was suddenly, fiercely angry. She had to know. She had to see. She knew he disappeared in the night. But she got up every morning and put on her best face. Made him bacon and eggs and smiled like they were normal. They weren't normal.

He wished he would just go. Leave them alone. He wished his mother would throw him out. Tell him to never come back. But she wouldn't, because she was scared. He knew that. He knew she had a right to be. So am I .

Thursday, November 30, 7:20 a.m.

"Daddy?"

Reed looked up from buttoning his shirt, buttonhook in one hand. "Yes, Beth?"

She stood in his doorway, her brows drawn together in worry. "Are you okay?"

No. He was sick at heart. Two more. "Just tired, honey. Just really tired."

She hesitated. "Dad, I need more lunch money."

Reed frowned. "I just gave you lunch money on Monday."

"I know." She made a face. "I owed some library fines. I'm sorry."

Feeling unsettled, he gave her another twenty. "Return the books on time, okay?"

"Thanks, Dad." She slipped the money into her jeans. "I'll go put your coffee on."

"I could sure use it." Wearily he sat on the edge of his bed. Mia had been right He was a wreck this morning. He wondered where she was, imagined her back in her apartment, alone. He should have held off, waited until they could establish the ground rules. No strings. But he hadn't been able to. His mind had been too full of her, his body at the edge of control. He had to stay in control because he didn't want to hurt her.

He looked around his bedroom. Everything here was as Christine left it, elegant and tasteful despite the passage of time. Mia's room was a hodgepodge of clashing colors, orange and vivid purples. Striped blankets and plaid curtains. All rummage sale stock.

But the bed had served its function quite well. Sex with Mia could become addicting if he allowed it. But he didn't allow addicting behaviors. He was stronger than that. Absently he rubbed his thumbs over his numb fingertips. He'd stopped himself from drinking when it got out of hand, something his biological mother had never done. A disease, she'd said. A choice, he knew. She'd loved the liquor more than she'd loved him, more than she'd loved anything.

He grimaced, pushing the thought of his mother out of his mind. He'd thought about her more this week than in years.

He had to stay in control. Not let this thing with Mia distract him from what was important. The life he'd built for Beth. For himself. He lifted the fine gold chain from his nightstand and put it around his neck. A talisman, perhaps. A reminder, most certainly.

He had to get moving or he'd be late for morning meeting.

Thursday, November 30, 8:10 a.m.

"Count to ten and go to hell?" Spinnelli sat at the head of the table, frowning. Jack was there, along with Sam and Westphalen. Spinnelli must have been shoring up the troops because Murphy and Aidan Reagan had joined them. Mia had taken the chair farthest away where she sat alone, eyes shuttered. But Reed knew her emotions churned. She'd called him when she'd left the hospital, her voice heavy with despair.

"Those were her dying words," she said, blandly now. "Literally."

Westphalen was watching her closely. "What do you think it means, Mia?"

"I dunno. I thought at first she was telling me to go to hell." She huffed once, sardonically. Painfully. "God knows she had the right."

"Mia," Spinnelli started and she held up her hand, straightening in her chair.

"I know. It's not our fault. I think it's what he said to her, Miles, right before he lit her on fire. I've ever seen anything like that before. I know I never want to again."

"Then let's get busy." Spinnelli went to the white board. "What do we know?"

"Well, Manny Rodriguez couldn't have done it," Mia said. "He was in holding."

"You were right about him," Spinnelli agreed. "Now it's even more important to find out what he knows and isn't telling. What else? What about the victims?"

"Brooke Adler and Roxanne Ledford," Mia said. "Both were schoolteachers. Brooke, English, Roxanne, music. Roxanne was twenty-six. Brooke just turned twenty-two."

Spinnelli's expression became one of grim resignation. "Cause of death?"

"Cause of death for Adler was cardiovascular collapse secondary to overwhelming burns," Sam said. "Cause for the second victim was the stab wound to her abdomen."

"The blade?" Mia asked tightly.

"About six inches long. Thin, Sharp. He plunged it into the abdominal cavity and"-he made a horizontal slicing motion-"cut her, approximately five inches across."

"The knife is consistent with his sexual assault on his victims," Westphalen said. "Many believe the knife is an extension of the penis."

"I'd like to take a knife to his extension," Mia muttered.

Reed cringed. He wasn't alone. "Smoke inhalation?" he asked.

"None. Ledford died within a few minutes at most. Well before the fire started."

Spinnelli wrote it on the whiteboard, then turned. "What else?"

"Adler's car is gone." Mia checked her notes. "We have an APB, but nothing so far."

"He repeated that part of MO," Spinnelli said thoughtfully. "What else is the same?"

"The device was the same," Reed said. "I found remnants in Brooke's bedroom and at the front entrance of the building."