Laura drew her gun, pointing it at the two of them. She wasn't completely confident that she could get a good shot here, but she could try. And sometimes, the threat was enough.
At the very least, they had a Mexican standoff. Him with his knife pulled up at the woman's throat, her with her gun pointed at him. Neither of them could make a move unless the other acted first. It was mutually assured destruction, even if it wasn’t Laura’s own life at stake. He knew she wanted him to let the woman go.
“Drop the knife,” she yelled. “Put it down right now!”
The killer hesitated, his face white and his eyes wide over the shoulder of his victim as he tried to hide behind her. But he was taller than her, just by enough that he could not quite get himself all the way behind her without compromising the angle of the knife at her throat. Laura aimed her gun carefully, trying to take a deep breath to steady her aim, focusing on the top of his head. She could blow the top of it off from here. It wasn't without risk, but if he was going to make a move to cut the woman's throat anyway, she would do it. She felt a kind of darkness settling down over her, a shroud. A feeling of…
Of death.
Someone was going to die.
“I'm with the FBI,” Laura shouted. “You're not going to get away. Just drop the knife and put your hands up in the air!”
There was a flash of light reflecting off the blade of the knife as it moved, not down but across, and Laura squeezed the trigger. She knew he was making the cut. The shot seemed to echo in the otherwise silent residential street, the recoil throwing her arm back, just enough that she would have to aim again to fire a second time. It took her a moment to recover from the loud bang, the flash of the gun, the shock of having to fire at all. Then she saw that the woman she had followed was staggering to one side, and the man, the killer, was running away.
“Are you hurt?” Laura demanded urgently, rushing towards the woman. The shadow of death was getting heavier. Had she hit the woman? She did not put her gun away. She had no intention of letting him escape right now, not if she could go after him, not if the woman didn’t need help.
“No,” the woman said, gasping. Her hands were going all over her neck, her head, her shoulder, as if to verify that there had been no damage. The shot must have passed right over her shoulder, the knife missing her skin as the killer recoiled. But from the way he was running, from the lack of blood splattered on the floor under the faint light coming from the next house, Laura could not be confident that she had hit him. He might be getting away uninjured, unimpeded, not leaving any trail to show where he had gone.
The victim was fine. But Laura could still feel it. The shroud settling on her shoulders.
Was it for her, or the killer?
“Stay here,” Laura said, breaking off into a dead run after the suspect.
She could not let him get away. If he did, she had no guarantee that she would be able to identify him. She had only seen part of his face, and the woman looked like she was in too much shock to be any help. Even if she could identify the man, there was no guarantee that he would not simply go to ground, make it impossible for them to find him.
She raced after him, trying to keep up. It was dark, and the streets were unfamiliar to her. The small patches of light afforded by streetlights, or house lights here and there, were not enough. They only blinded her for the interval of time that she was within their sphere, making it even harder to see where he was in the dark. Laura raced through a patch of light at the end of the road, then stumbled, unsure of herself. She couldn't see him. Where had he gone?
There were two directions to go. Straight ahead, or to the left. The stop-sign at the junction stood vigil above her as she stared down both directions, trying to figure it out. Which way would he have gone? Which way made the most sense?
She had no idea where she was, but she remembered looking at the GPS to help her find her way towards Genevieve Piper's house. She remembered that the road ahead led into a more commercial district, but she was sure that the area to the left was more residential. If she was trying to run, that was where she would go. She would go into the houses, into the darkness, where it would be even harder to track her down.
She took a gamble, racing to the left. If she was wrong, there was nothing to tell her it. No visions came, despite the tight grasp she still had on her gun. The vision of the auditorium made sense now - it had been his stalking the woman through that space that led to her pulling her gun on him in the first place and firing at him - but no help was coming now. There was no way for her to tell if she was on the right track.
She kept her eyes trained ahead, straining them, trying to see if there was a figure moving anywhere in the shadows. It was quickly beginning to feel hopeless, even though the feeling of death was getting stronger, starting to ma
ke her feel sick to her stomach. What if he was ducking inside one of the properties? What if he had leapt over a fence into a backyard? What if he had simply ducked behind a car, waited for her to go past, and then run back in the other direction?
Back towards his intended victim?
Laura's head whipped around in panic, looking back where she had come. That was the only reason she had any time at all to react. It was a split second only, but when he pounced out of the shadows beside a properties garage, she had that split second of warning before they collided.
She at first expected the horrible feeling of a tear somewhere in her abdomen or her chest, a knife slicing across her. But it didn't come, even as they both tumbled to the ground, the air being knocked out of her lungs as she fell on her back. He fell beside her, faring only just better, and then he scrambled on top of her to hold her in place. His hands were empty – the knife must have fallen somewhere along the way. Laura tried to bring her gun around but realized her grip on it was not strong enough, the weapon skittering away across the sidewalk as she tried to move her hand. Laura ignored it. It was gone. There was no use trying to go back for it now. It would only alert him to the fact that he could reach for it and try to get it first.
Laura instead tried to use his momentum against him, using the grappling techniques she had learned in classes at the Academy. She swung sideways, so that he tumbled forward and to the side along with her. But he was good, quick enough to roll her over again, his hands going for her throat. She pushed them aside, managing to break the lock of his elbows, but she did not have enough purchase or enough strength now to knock him off herself again. The only choice that she had was to try and find some advantage, some way to prevent him from getting his hands around her throat permanently. She needed something that would make her stronger. She needed an advantage.
She needed the gun.
Laura couldn’t reach. She cast her eyes to the side, but it was above her head now, out of her way, too far to be able to grab it. Not if she also wanted to fight him off, stop him from strangling her. He got his hands on her neck again and she managed to slam her fists into his elbows to knock them aside, making him fall on her, but it wasn’t enough. He was still stronger.
He was going to win.
The shadow of death – it was hers.
Laura thought desperately about help, about Nate coming around the corner in a squad car with the blue lights flashing, about the woman she had saved catching them up and saving her in return. But it was useless. Nate knew where Laura had been heading, but not the exact point on the road between the theater and the victim’s apartment where he had struck. The woman had been shell-shocked, stunned.
Laura was an FBI agent. People didn’t come and rescue her. She rescued them.