Brian Freeman - The Voice Inside

Tabby screamed. The bullet hit her, too. It went through Cutter’s arm and into the flesh of her chest below her right shoulder. Despite the pain, despite the blood, she escaped from Cutter’s grasp and ran to Frost. Her hands were tied at her back; she stumbled, trying to stay upright. Behind her, Cutter looked dazed. He backed away, his right arm hanging uselessly at his side.

Frost shouted over his shoulder at the police officers storming down the pier behind him. “Get a medical kit and an ambulance out here now, now, now! ”

He gathered up Tabby tightly with his left arm, and she leaned her weight into him. Her head bowed into his shoulder, her forehead against his cheek. He could feel her trembling with cold and shock. His gun was still in his other hand, pointed across the pier at Rudy Cutter.

“Get on your knees, Cutter,” he told him.

Cutter blinked rapidly. Blood ran down his arm and dripped to the pier, where it was washed away in the rain. He looked over his shoulder, but there was nowhere to run. All that was behind him was the bay. The rain sheeted across him; the wind looked as if it would blow him over. He took an unsteady step forward, toward Frost and Tabby. They were no more than ten feet apart.

“On your knees!” Frost repeated.

Cutter sank slowly and awkwardly to his knees. The knife was still on the concrete directly in front of him. He bent and reached out with his uninjured left hand, and his fingers curled around the handle. He raised it slowly in the air. His eyes and Frost’s eyes were locked on each other through the rain.

“Stop.” Frost aimed the gun at Cutter’s chest. “Drop it.”

The clatter of the boots from the other cops on the pier was close behind them, but not close enough.

“Drop it,” Frost repeated.

Cutter staggered back to his feet. First one leg. Then the other. He swayed.

“Take one more step, and I shoot,” Frost said.

Cutter stayed where he was. He brought the blade close to his face and rotated it forward and backward, as if he were studying a strange, foreign object in his hand. Then he turned the sharp edge sideways and laid it against the skin of his own neck. He knew exactly where to place it.

Frost shook his head. His voice was a low warning. “You don’t need to do this, Rudy.”

Cutter didn’t listen. He looked up at the sky and at the rain streaking from the clouds. He licked some of the water on his lips and swallowed. His mouth opened slightly, and he inhaled long and slow. With a curious smile, he shut his eyes and closed out the world.

“I wonder what it really feels like,” he said.

Then he slashed his throat.

It was late evening before Frost made it across the city to Tabby’s hospital room near Golden Gate Park. His entire family was there. Duane sat by her bedside, holding her hand. His parents hovered near the door. Tabby lay propped in bed, her shoulder bandaged and her arm in a sling, and she was hooked to a morphine drip. Even so, she looked alert, not groggy.

Seeing him, Duane leaped to his feet.

“There he is! There’s the hero!”

His brother, who was several inches shorter than Frost, grabbed him and practically lifted him off the ground. Frost reacted a little stiffly. He’d been getting a lot of attention all day from his colleagues in the police and from the San Francisco media, and he didn’t like it.

Duane whispered in his ear. His brother was the emotional one of the pair, and Frost could hear a catch in Duane’s voice. “You don’t know what this means to me, bro. You saved her. I can’t even tell you what I would have done if something had happened to that girl.”

Frost responded with a half smile. “I know.”

Duane steered him to Tabby’s bedside and shook his shoulders so hard that Frost felt dizzy. “Is this guy amazing?” Duane bellowed in what was definitely not a hospital voice. “Amazing!”

Tabby stared at him from behind those green eyes of hers. “Yes, he is.”

Her face had a postsurgery paleness. Her red hair was limp. When she shifted in bed, he could see a grimace of pain. It distressed him to see her that way and to know he’d put her there. Even if he’d had no choice.

“Cutter?” Tabby asked him softly.

“He died in the ambulance,” Frost said.

She blinked. She didn’t seem to know how to take the news. There was no happiness in her expression and not even any satisfaction that the horror was finally over. He knew how she felt, because he’d felt the same way all day. He took no joy in watching anyone else die. Too many others had already been lost, and they weren’t coming back. Cutter’s death didn’t repair what he’d done.

Frost’s mother didn’t share their reluctance to pass judgment. “Good riddance. I hope he’s in hell.”

“Janice, you’re still talking about another human being,” Ned Easton murmured. It was his father’s humanist streak, his willingness to allow mercy for evil, that had been a partial cause of his parents’ breakup. They had never seen eye to eye about that.

“Barely,” his mother snapped. “I’m not going to apologize. That piece of filth killed my daughter. If it hadn’t been for Frost, he would have killed Tabby, too. I’m glad he’s gone.”

Frost let his parents argue through their emotions. He stared down at Tabby, and Tabby stared uncomfortably back at him. Her attitude puzzled him, although he knew he’d put a bullet in her body. If he’d missed by even a little, she’d be dead. There was a lot he needed to say to her about the last few days, but this wasn’t the time or place.

Duane pulled a chair from the wall. His long black hair was loose. “Come on, bro, sit, stay with us a while.”

“Oh, no, thanks, I can’t. I should get home. I don’t want Shack freaking out because I’ve been gone so much. I just wanted to make sure Tabby was okay.”

“I’m going to be fine, Frost,” Tabby murmured. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Good.”

Duane winked at her. “Should I tell him the news? Or do you want to?”

Frost looked back and forth between them. “News?”

“Let’s not do this now, Duane,” Tabby suggested. “Please. Frost said he needs to go. It’s been a stressful day for everyone.”

“No, no, it’s the perfect time!” Duane replied. “Mom and Dad are here. It’s the whole family! We should be talking about good news for a change after everything that’s happened.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense,” Frost said.

Duane grabbed Tabby’s hand again. He looked as giddy as Frost had ever seen him. “We’re getting married!”

Frost felt speechless. It was a terrible time to be speechless. A flush rose in Tabby’s cheeks, and Duane bent over and kissed her forehead. Frost tried to come up with something to say and finally said, “Oh, wow.”

An exceptional comeback.

“When I thought about how close I came to losing her,” Duane went on, “it made everything so damn clear. I love this girl. So when Mom and Dad got here, I got down on one knee. I wanted them to see it, too. I know they never thought they’d see the day, but they brought us together. The whole thing is fate. I never much believed in fate, but I do now.”

Fate.

Yes, Frost knew exactly what he thought about fate.

“Isn’t it wonderful, Frost?” his mother asked from across the room.

“Wonderful,” he told both of them. “It’s great. Really.”

“Get a tux, best man,” his brother told him. “And get one for Shack, too.”

“Shack’s tux comes prefitted,” Frost reminded him.

Duane thought about it and laughed. “You’re right! Now, that’s funny. See? Fate.”

Frost tried to read Tabby’s face, but she made it difficult by looking out the window instead of at him.