High Noon

she pushed to her knees. Tattered strips of her shirt and skirt hung on her. The rags of the rest were scattered on the stairs.
    He’d left her naked, humiliated, bound. But he’d left her alive.
    She used the wall to brace herself, used her trembling legs to push, push, until she could stand, leaning back on the wall. Giddiness and nausea rolled through her, and she prayed she could hold off both until she reached help.
    Even as the voice inside her head screamed to hurry, hurry, he could come back, she made herself step carefully down, back to the wall for safety. At the bottom, with her body quivering with fear and exhaustion, she had to find the strength to turn, to grip the door handle with her clammy hands and pull.
    She fell through the doorway, into the corridor. Shuddering, she began to crawl.
    Someone shouted. She heard it like some dim bell through a fog. And, spent, she collapsed.
    She wasn’t out long, the pain wouldn’t allow it, but when she groped back, she was on her side and the rawness around her mouth told her someone had ripped the tape away.
    “Get a blanket. Give me your damn jacket, and somebody get a key that’ll open these cuffs. You’re all right, Lieutenant. It’s Liz Alberta. Do you hear me? You’re going to be all right.”
    Liz? Phoebe stared into grim brown eyes. Detective Elizabeth Alberta. Yes, yes, she knew that name, she knew those eyes. “The stairwell.” Her voice was a raw wheeze. “He got me in the stairwell.”
    “A couple of guys are already in there, checking it out. Don’t worry. Paramedics are coming. Lieutenant.” Liz leaned closer. “Were you raped?”
    “No. No, he just…” Phoebe closed her eyes. “No. How bad am I hurt?”
    “I don’t know yet.”
    “My weapon.” Phoebe’s eyes flew open. “God, my weapon. I couldn’t get to it in time. Did he get my piece?”
    “I don’t know yet.”
    “Hold on, Lieutenant. I’m going to get these cuffs off.”
    Phoebe didn’t know who spoke from behind her, kept her eyes trained on Liz. “I need you to take my statement. I want you to take it.”
    “That’s what I’m going to do.”
    Phoebe couldn’t stop the sharp indrawn breath as the cuffs slipped off, or bite back the whimper when she moved her arms. “I don’t think they’re broken. I don’t think anything’s broken.” She clutched the jacket to her breasts even as someone wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. “Can you help me sit up?”
    “Maybe you should stay down until—”
    There was a rush of footsteps, and a shout. Then Dave was kneeling beside her. “What happened? Who did this?”
    “I didn’t see him. He caught me in the stairwell. He put something over my head.” Tears slid down her cheeks to sting the abraded skin. “I think he got my weapon.”
    “I’m going to get her statement, Captain, if that’s clear with you. I’ll go with the lieutenant to the hospital and get her statement.”
    “Yes.” But he gripped Phoebe’s hand as if he couldn’t bear to let go.
    “Don’t call my family. Captain, please don’t call them.”
    He gave her hand a squeeze, pushed to his feet. “I want this building searched, floor by floor. This is red status. Nobody comes in or out without a search. I want the whereabouts of every cop and civilian in this building accounted for.”
    “It wasn’t a civilian, Captain.” Phoebe spoke quietly as his furious face turned toward her. “It was one of us.”
     
    It all blurred, but Phoebe counted that as a blessing. The paramedics, the ambulance, the ER. There were a lot of voices, a lot of movement, more pain. Then less, blessedly less. She let herself drift while people poked and prodded, lifted. While cuts and scrapes were treated, she kept her eyes closed. When pieces of her were X-rayed, she shut down her mind.
    There would be tears, she knew. There would probably be floods of them, but they could wait.
    Liz stepped into the exam room. “They said you wanted to talk to me now.”
    “Yeah.” Phoebe sat on the exam table. Her ribs ached, that rotted-tooth throb she already knew would give her trouble for days if not weeks. But the sling around her arm eased the pain in her shoulder.
    “Mild concussion, bruised ribs, sprained shoulder.”
    Liz stepped closer. “Nasty cut on your forehead and a shiner coming on. Split lip. Your jaw’s swollen. Son of a bitch did some work on you.”
    “He didn’t kill me, there’s that.”
    “Always a plus. Your captain was in. He