“Right.” She’d infused as much insult in that statement as she could. Luther glowered. “So you have to know that I can’t condone willful acts of violence.”
“Didn’t ask you to condone it.”
Throttle her or kiss her—it was a toss-up which one Luther wanted to do the most. “Now that you’ve told me, I can’t sit here twiddling my thumbs while you . . . you . . .” He trailed off, unsure how to phrase what she might have planned, when she was so capricious he couldn’t guess what she’d do.
He only knew it wouldn’t be good.
“What?” Gaby prodded, half-turning toward him, her skirt still hiked too high, her antagonism a live thing. “What did you think I was talking about doing?”
Her posture finally proved more than Luther could take. Curving his hand around her slender upper thigh, he said, “That’s just it, honey. With you, I never know.”
Gaby looked at his hand on the inside of her thigh, covered his fingers with her own, and—a shock of pain punctured her burgeoning concupiscence.
Luther felt the withdrawal, a commutation of combative-ness over sexual awareness. Gaby stiffened on a gasp of breath and her light blue eyes went first unseeing, then sharp with an insight that was strangely empyreal.
“Gaby?”
Clumsy with pain, she hurried to her feet and stared at nothingness as her chest heaved in an effort to draw in breath.
Luther tried to clasp her arms, but she brushed him off as easily as she’d shoo a fly. She took a step forward, then another.
“Damn it, Gabrielle Cody, don’t you dare—”
In the next instant, a bloodcurdling cry erupted from deep inside her, a shout of purest agony and harshest denial.
The fine hairs on Luther’s nape stood on end. He whispered, “Gaby?”
And she was off, running full out, her muscles fluid with grace and speed. Luther gave chase, shouting her name, giving it his all but oddly unable to catch her.
Arms pumping and legs churning, she rounded a corner, then another.
Where the hell was she going? The hard, full-out run left Luther’s lungs laboring, and sweat glued his shirt to his back. Lagging several feet behind Gaby, they charged past a drug deal turned battle, past a drunken trio who shouted obscenities at them, and past a homeless woman who almost tripped him up with her cart of discarded wares.
Finally, they hit a long, dark street and Gaby paused, posed in combat mode.
But not for long.
Her first step was tentative, her second long and sure. “Bliss.”
Luther saw beyond Gaby to where she was headed.
There in the middle of the road, clothes torn, neck bleeding, staggering with her eyes closed and her arms out, was poor, young, too helpless Bliss.
Oh no, Luther thought. Not again.
Gaby reached Bliss just as she went limply into her arms; Gaby didn’t stagger as she held Bliss mostly upright.
Even as he hurried forward to help, Luther surveyed the area. He saw a group of thugs hanging out, and knew he’d have to question them before they scattered. Across the street, an old white woman, hunched over from age and depression, scurried off.
Luther narrowed his eyes, but couldn’t make out the license plate on the dark sedan screeching away.
“Son of a bitch.” It needed only this. He loped up to the two women and relieved Gaby of Bliss’s deadweight. “Is she okay?”
Grim, furious, Gaby smoothed back Bliss’s hair. “No. She’s not.”
Supporting Bliss with one arm, Luther retrieved his radio and made an authoritative call for assistance and an ambulance. “I’ve got her,” he said to Gaby, and gently lifted Bliss into his arms. Her head lolled against his chest. Her hair hung over his arm. She was soft, warm, but so still it scared him half to death.
He headed to the curb.
Without moving, Gaby shouted, “Where are you taking her?”
Knowing she needed his control right now, Luther tried for a calm and even tone. “I’m just moving her out of the street, that’s all. An ambulance is on the way. We’ll get her to a hospital and have her checked over.” He looked up, caught Gaby’s stark, taciturn countenance. “It’s okay, Gaby. The paramedics will know what to do.”
Bliss roused herself to mumble, “No. Please. No hospitals.” Vomit clung to her hair and the corners of her mouth. Her pupils were wildly dilated, unseeing. “No, please.”
“Shh, Bliss. It’s all right. I promise.” Luther looked back at Gaby. Still, she hadn’t moved. She stood there in the middle of the street, heaving in impotence and paralyzing rage. Somehow, he had to reach her. “Come over here, Gaby. I need your help.”
She took a step forward, then halted again. Her hands fisted. Her face contorted.
Oh no. She couldn’t transform in that special way of hers. She couldn’t run off to do God knew what. He did need her. Here, and now.
More sternly, Luther repeated, “Come here, Gaby.” Bliss hung boneless in his arms until he lowered her to a bus-stop bench. Her arms flopped over the sides. Her loose blouse, now torn, nearly exposed a breast.
A raised, circular welt shone bright red on her throat. Hypodermic? Given the force of the needle’s puncture, not self-inflicted.
Bliss moaned, and Gaby was suddenly there, beside the bench, her knees on the rough concrete.
Luther waited for her to comfort Bliss.
Gaby caught Bliss’s face in her hands. “Who did this to you?” Her harsh, raised voice startled Luther. “Give me a name, Bliss.”
There was no answer.
Luther touched her shoulder. “Gaby, this isn’t the time.”
She didn’t relent. “Tell me, Bliss. Describe him.”
“Not . . . not a him,” Bliss said.
“A woman?”
Bliss’s fair brows pulled down and her face scrunched in pain. “I don’t know. A boy . . .”
“A boy?”
Bliss moaned. “No. I don’t know.”
Gaby gently shook her. “You’re not making any sense. Give me a target, Bliss. Man, woman, kid—you tell me, and I’ll do the rest.”
After another moan, Bliss’s head lolled to the side, as if she’d again lost consciousness.
“Let her rest.” Luther squeezed Gaby’s shoulder. “She’s been drugged.”
“I can see that,” Gaby snapped. “Someone tried to take her. Someone tried to—” Excess emotion strangled the words. She swallowed convulsively.
Bliss moaned again, tried to lurch away, and both Luther and Gaby went on alert.
“It’s okay, Bliss,” Luther told her. “Everything will be okay now.”
“I only wanted to help,” she murmured. “He . . . he said he needed help. Then he . . . she . . . oh God.”
Nudging Gaby to the side, Luther pulled out a hanky and wiped the vomit from Bliss’s face, tried to dab it from her hair. “You’re safe now, Bliss. You’re with me, and with Gaby. You’re safe.”
“I’m sick.” Pitifully weak, she curled her arms about her stomach and gagged again, but nothing more came up. “He stabbed me with something.”
“So it was a guy?”
“I don’t know . . .” She touched a hand to her head. “He seemed so nice, but then she was going to do awful things to me. She said it, but I already knew it. I felt it.” Bliss’s faint voice broke on a sob. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”
“Two of them,” Gaby decided aloud. “There were two of them. A woman and a man.”
Bliss continued to sob. “No. Somehow he . . . he was a she. Or . . . I don’t know. I’m sorry, Gaby, so sorry, but my head hurts.”
Gaby stared up at the sky.
Luther locked both hands behind his neck. He wanted to kill someone. He wanted to know who would do this to Bliss. Damn it, he wanted to know why.
After a moment of internal struggle, Gaby put her palm to Bliss’s cheek, and the girl quieted. Luther could tell that Gaby was unsure how to console her friend, how to comfort her. Embracing was foreign to her.
Any signs of affection were anomalous to Gaby’s austere life.
Pulling himself together, Luther held out his hand to her. “Come here, Gaby.” He had no problem with affection, and right now, he wanted, needed, to hold her.