Donovans 02 - Jade Island

fingers closed around his wrist.
    “Red Phoenix,” Lianne translated. “Can I open my eyes now?”
    “You’d rather not. Trust me.”
    An instant after she looked, she decided that Kyle was right. She would rather not have known what he was doing. But she did. She drew a deep breath and reminded herself that the assault hadn’t been her idea. The man had been looking for trouble.
    He certainly had found it.
    “Ask him why he was trying to kill you,” Kyle said without looking away from the Asian.
    Lianne was speaking in Chinese before Kyle had finished with his question. The answer was longer in coming.
    “What did he say?” Kyle asked.
    “The Chinese equivalent of ‘Fuck you and your ancestors, too.’”
    “Not real useful.” Kyle’s finger’s tightened on the sinewy, rapidly swelling wrist. “Ask him why he was told to kill you.”
    “I already did.”
    “He might be feeling more talkative now. Ask him.”
    The attacker jerked.
    Lianne’s breath came in with a ripping sound and went out in a rapid stream of Chinese.
    Cold sweat stood on the assailant’s face.
    Cold sweat ran down Kyle’s spine. Nausea clenched viciously. Silently he cursed his weak stomach and the Asian’s grim ability to endure pain.
    Abruptly the man went slack.
    “Shit,” muttered Kyle. He thumbed back one of the attacker’s eyelids. Only white showed. “He’s not faking it.”
    Sirens cried in the distance. A different siren screamed a lot closer, then shut off. The city cops had arrived.
    “Don’t mention the man in the tan Ford unless the cops do,” Kyle said, standing up. “Ditto for being out on bail. It will just confuse things.”
    The cop who strode through the door was a middle-aged heavyweight whose uniform collar cut into the slack flesh of his neck. There was nothing slack about his eyes. After a fast, comprehensive glance at the sprawled, unconscious suspect, the cop took in everything at the scene, from the blood on Kyle’s arm to the pallor on Lianne’s face to the knife kicked halfway down the dirty hall.
    “Let’s start with names,” the cop said, pulling out a notebook. “Ladies first.”
    Lianne gave her name, handed over her driver’s license for ID even though the law didn’t require it, and generally tried to be a good citizen while not mentioning that she was out on a half-million-dollar bail and had a permanent, unwanted federal tail.
    Two paramedics rushed in, one male, one female. With cool efficiency and latex exam gloves, they checked the unconscious man’s vital signs and determined that he was in good shape, all things considered. They trussed him to a backboard just in case and carted him off on a gurney for the best medical care the free world and the taxpayers of Seattle could provide.
    While the male medic began attaching tubes and sensors in the back of the ambulance, the female medic returned. Saying little, she began working on Kyle.
    When it was Kyle’s turn to field questions from the cop, he did the same as Lianne had, answering whatever was asked and offering nothing that wasn’t. The questioning was a little more awkward in Kyle’s case because the medic was peeling him down to the waist, taking his blood pressure and pulse, listening to his heart, and swabbing his cut arm with stuff that left a yellow-brown stain.
    The cop scribbled, asked questions, scribbled, and asked more questions.
    “So you kicked in the door, not the perp,” the cop said to Kyle.
    Lianne blinked. “Perp?”
    “Perpetrator,” Kyle explained. “You should watch more television. Yeah, I kicked it in. She was screaming and I didn’t have a key.”
    The medic looked up. “How does your foot feel?”
    “Like I kicked in a door.”
    “Better have it X-rayed.”
    “I’m standing on it, so it’s not broken.”
    The cop looked at his watch and decided he had better call his ex-wife on the way back to the station and tell her he would be late picking up the kids for the weekend. Filling out paperwork on this one would take hours, especially with a wounded citizen and a perp who didn’t speak English and whose only ID was tattooed all over his skinny, rope-muscled body.
    Kyle glanced at the doorway, wondering where the federal tail was. He couldn’t see much of the small alley from the hall. The city cop’s partner had leaned the door upright to keep out the street people. Idly Kyle wondered if the drunks would see the door as hanging straight or if it would look even more