Danielle Steel - Malice

“Sam … why do you care?”

“I care.” And then she thought of what might have been her only salvation. “I'm a nun … I gave my life to God for people like you, Sam … I've been in prisons … I've been in a lot of places … it's not going to do anyone any good if you hurt me.”

“You a nun?” he practically shrieked at her. “Shit … nobody told me that … shit …” He kicked the door behind her hard, but no one came. No one saw. No one cared on Delancey. “Why you messin’ with my bizness? Why you tell her to go home?”

“So you can't hurt her anymore. You don't want to hurt her, Sam … you don't want to hurt anyone …”

“Shit.” He started to cry in earnest. “Fucking nun,” he spat at her, “think you can do anything you want, for God. Fuck God … and fuck you … fuck all of you, bitch …” He grabbed her by the throat then, and banged her head hard into the door, it felt like it was full of sand and everything went gray and blurry for an instant, and then as she started to fall, she felt him kick her hard in the stomach, and then again, and someone was pounding on her face and she couldn't stop him. She couldn't call out to him. She couldn't say his name. It was a hailstorm of fists pounding on her face, her head, her stomach, her back, and then it stopped. She heard him run, she heard him shouting at her again, and then he was gone, and she lay tasting her own blood in the doorway.

The police found her that night, on their late night rounds, slumped over in the doorway. They poked her with their nightsticks, like they did the drunks, and then one of them saw her blood on it, shining in the streetlights.

“Shit,” he said, and called out to his partner, “get an ambulance, quick!” The officer knelt down next to Grace and felt for a pulse. It was barely there, but she still had one. And as he turned her over slowly on her back, he could see how badly she'd been beaten. Her face was covered with blood, and her hair was matted to her head. He wasn't sure if there were any broken bones or internal injuries, but she was gasping for air even in her unconscious state, and his partner came up to him a minute later.

“Whatcha got?”

“A bad one … she's not dressed for this neighborhood. God only knows where she came from.” He opened her handbag and looked in her wallet as they waited for the ambulance to come from Bellevue. “She lives on Eighty-fourth, she's a long way from home. She should know better than to walk around down here.”

“There's a crisis center down the street,” the policeman who had called the ambulance said as the other one checked her pulse again and put her handbag under her head as they laid her gently on the street. “She might work there. I'll check it out after you hop the ambulance, if you want.” One of them had to ride with her to make the report, if she lived that long. She wasn't looking good to either of them, her pulse was getting weaker, and so was her breathing.

The ambulance came less than five minutes later, with shrieking sirens, and the paramedics were quick to put her on a backboard and give her oxygen as they slid the board into the ambulance.

“Any idea how bad it is?” one of the cops asked the senior paramedic. Grace was completely unconscious and had never stirred since they found her. All she'd done was gasp for air, and they were giving her oxygen with a bag and mask.

“It doesn't look good,” the paramedic said honestly. “She's got a head injury. That could mean anything.” From death to retardation to a permanent coma. There was no way for them to tell there. She looked terrible in the light as they raced uptown to Bellevue.

Her face was battered almost beyond recognition, her eyes were swollen shut, there was a knife wound on her neck, and when they pulled open her shirt and unzipped her jeans, they saw how bad the bruises were there. Her attacker had very nearly killed her. “It looks pretty bad,” the paramedic said to the cop in a whisper. “There's not much left of her. I wonder if the guy knew her. What's her name?”

The policeman opened her wallet again and read it aloud to one of the paramedics, as he nodded. They had work to do here. They had to try to keep her going till they got to Bellevue.

“Gome on, Grace … open your eyes for us … you're okay … we're not going to hurt you … we're taking you to the hospital, Grace … Grace … Grace … shit…” They had an IV going and a blood pressure cuff on her and it was dropping sharply. “We're losing her,” he said to his colleague. It was going down, down, down … and then it was gone, but the paramedics were quick to respond and one of them grabbed a defibrillator and literally yanked her bra off and put it on her.

“Stand back,” he told the cop as they pulled into the driveway, “got'er,” her body received a huge shock, and her heart started again, just as the driver yanked open the doors and two attendants from the emergency room rushed forward.

“She was in cardiac arrest a second ago,” the paramedic who had shocked her explained as he covered her bare chest with her jacket. “I think we're dealing with some internal bleeding … head injury …” He told them everything he knew and had seen as all five of them ran into the emergency room, running beside the gurney. Her blood pressure plummeted again as soon as they got inside, but this time her heart didn't stop. She already had an IV in her, and the chief resident came in with three nurses and started issuing orders, as the paramedics and the policeman disappeared, and went to the front desk to fill out papers.

“Christ, she's a mess,” one of the paramedics who'd come in with her said to the policeman. “Do you know what happened to her?”

“Just your average New York mugging,” the policeman said unhappily. He could see from her driver's license that she was twenty-two years old. It was too young to give your life to a mugger. Any age was, but especially a young kid like that. There was no way of telling if she'd been pretty, or ever would be, if she even lived, which seemed doubtful.

“Looks like more than a mugging,” the paramedic said, “nobody can beat up someone like that unless they've got a beef with them. Maybe it was her boyfriend.”

“In a doorway on Delancey? Not likely. She's wearing designer jeans, and she's got an Upper East Side address. She was mugged.”

But when his partner went to St. Andrew's, Father Tim suspected that it was more than bad luck that had felled Grace Adams. He'd had a visit from the police only the day before to tell him that a woman called Isella Jones had been murdered by her husband that day, he had killed both of his kids as well, and then disappeared. And the policeman had suggested that Father Tim warn his nurses and social workers that the man was violent and on the run. It was possible that he would never come to St. Andrew's at all. Or he might, if he blamed them for encouraging Isella to leave him and try to get home to Cleveland. But it never dawned on him to say anything to Grace. She had been in California when Isella had shown up, beaten and terrified, with her children. Father Tim had warned the others and told them to spread the word and watch out for a man called Sam Jones. They had been going to put a bulletin on the board to alert everyone, but they had had so much to do for the past two days that they never did it.

When Father Tim heard what had happened to Grace, he was sure that the incident was related, and they put out an APB on Sam Jones, with a mug shot and his description. He'd been in plenty of trouble before and he had a record an arm long, and a history of violence. If they ever found him, the murder of his wife and kids would put him away forever, not to mention what he had done to Grace in the doorway on Delancey.