The One That Got Away (10 page)

“Do you think he’ll make the cut for adoption?”

“Hard to say, but his chances are probably less than fifty percent.”

He hated the idea of Brando being euthanized. The animal had so much power and presence that he deserved a shot at life on his terms. He wouldn’t allow him to be put down. He’d get Brando one way or another.

“This dog means a lot to you—why?”

“I see something in him and I want to nurture that.”

Kristi smiled again. “Look, if you’re really serious, I’ll have you work with Tom. He’ll show you how to handle a dog like Brando.”

“Thank you.”

“I can’t make you any promises. If Brando fails his assessment, then there’ll be nothing I can do. My hands will be tied.”

I can assure you they will be if Brando dies
, he thought.

CHAPTER NINE

Zoë stared blankly into the mall from her seat at the information kiosk. Shoppers passed back and forth across her field of vision, but she barely noticed them. A single, recurring thought played across her mind—
He’s out there
. It was the same thought that had kept her awake all night and preoccupied her throughout her shift at the mall. She’d always known the man who’d abducted her and Holli was out there somewhere, but she’d never known where. He existed in the formless shape that was someplace. But last night had changed everything. He was in the Bay Area. She was within his grasp again. It had taken her a long time to lose that feeling, but now it was back. She ran a hand over the gooseflesh on her arms. It had been a near permanent feature since the cops had released her and the enormity of the situation had sunk in.

Jeff Hall, her fellow security guard, said something that jerked her from her thoughts. “What did you say?”

Jeff tapped his watch. “Time to make a sweep. You want to take it?”

It was the first thing he’d said to her in an hour, which was fine by her. She hadn’t wanted conversation, and Jeff was good for that. He possessed the personality of a pet rock and was half as talkative. Normally his silence irritated her, but today it made him the perfect partner.

Zoë glanced at her own watch. Just thirty minutes until her shift ended. By the time she finished the patrol, it would be time to knock off.

“Sure. I’ll do it.”

She slid from her stool and made the pretense of conducting a sweep of the mall. She walked the upper and lower concourses and wandered through the stores. Her presence was enough to provide security for people who looked for it and to spook anyone who was loitering.

Questions filled her head as she patrolled. Why was her abductor here? Had he come looking for her? Did he know where she lived? She couldn’t come up with answers. He could be in the Bay Area to finish what he’d started, but she’d moved since escaping him. Her rented apartment was in her parents’ name because she had needed them as guarantors on the lease. And if he’d wanted to finish what he’d started, why had he left it so long? Wouldn’t he have tracked her down as soon as she escaped? Why wait? It had to be merely coincidence.
Coincidence
—the word crumbled and fell apart as soon as she assembled it in her mind. The raw truth of the matter was that he was close. How close didn’t matter, she just needed to protect herself against the possibility of another attack.

Just as she was coming to the end of her sweep, a small woman, no more than thirty, moved in from Zoë’s right to block her path.

“Hi,” the woman said with a smile. “I wonder if you could help me. I’m looking for the Starbucks. Could you point me in the right direction?”

Zoë didn’t want to. She was off the clock, and the staff locker rooms were just fifty yards away. In there, she didn’t have to be helpful, break up fights, or stop thieves. In there, she wasn’t beholden to anyone but herself. But as much as she didn’t want to, it was her job.

“Sure,” Zoë said, forcing a smile. “You want the next level up.” She pointed in the direction of the coffeehouse. “You see the Claire’s? Turn left there.”

“Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

“No problem,” Zoë said and sidestepped the woman, but she grabbed her arm.

“You’re Zoë Sutton, aren’t you?”

Zoë didn’t recognize the woman and just stared at her in silence.

“You were at the crime scene at Pier 25 last night. You claimed you know the killer.”

Zoë looked down at the small hand grasping her upper arm. Despite the light grip, it held her securely to the spot. “What?”

“I’m Lara Finz from the
Chronicle
. I wonder if we could talk?” She increased the wattage of her smile. “I’ll buy you a coffee.”

Fear knifed through her. It wasn’t Lara Finz that frightened her. It was how easily this reporter had tracked her down at her job. If she could do it,
he
could do it.

Zoë backed up a step, jerking her arm free. “Stay the hell away from me.”

“Look, Zoë, I just want to get your side of the story.”

“I don’t have a story.” Zoë recognized the note of panic in her voice. She hated the sound of her own vulnerability.

“You do, and I want to get it out there.”

Zoë continued to back away.

The journalist made a mistake. She stepped forward and grabbed Zoë’s wrist. The impertinence of the woman’s action ignited a primal instinct in Zoë. She didn’t think. She reacted. She slammed the heel of her free hand into Lara Finz’s shoulder. The impact sent the reporter tottering back on her heels. Not even her grasp on Zoë’s wrist could keep her on her feet, and she crashed to the floor on her back. The contents of her purse exploded across the concourse. The spectacle forced everyone to turn and stare.

Zoë was frozen in the moment. She didn’t know whether to help the journalist up or run. Shoppers were moving in. Damn the woman for cornering her like this. This was her fault.

Zoë felt the heat of stares on her. She backed away, then bolted for the staff locker room. Once there, she swiped her key card and burst inside. The door, with its pneumatic hinge, slowly wheezed closed and she threw her weight against it to close it just a bit faster. She released a breath when the lock snapped into place.

She staggered over to the bench opposite her locker and dropped down onto it. Her hands trembled. She clasped them together in an attempt to cancel out the shakes. It didn’t work.

“Screw it,” she said to herself.

She shouldn’t have lashed out, no matter how much that woman had deserved it. She focused on one of her breathing exercises. It worked, but it was a couple of minutes before the shaking subsided. She unlatched her locker and pulled out her bag, then changed from her rent-a-cop uniform into sweats and a T-shirt.

Just as she was slipping her hoodie on, the door to the locker room opened. Jared Mills filled the doorway. At six-three and 220 pounds, it was hard for him not to. He was here to take the next shift. He was the one guy who could handle any of the assholes the mall cared to throw their way. He smiled at her and she smiled back. She liked Jared. He was a good guy and fun to be around. He managed to make a shift pass with ease. Sadly, they didn’t get to work alongside each other as much as she would have liked.

“Hey, girl.” He looked her up and down. “You got your self-defense class tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“Be careful. There’s some action out there. Some chick fell on her butt or was pushed or something. Jeff’s dealing with it, but you don’t want to get sucked into it on your way out.”

She slung her sports bag over her shoulder and slammed her locker shut. “I’m in stealth mode.”

Jared laughed. “Take it easy.”

Zoë wished she could.

She slipped out of the locker room. There was a small group surrounding Lara Finz, including Jeff. She didn’t think she had too much to worry about since Ms. Finz wouldn’t want to reveal herself, but Zoë wasn’t taking any chances. While everyone focused on Lara, she went in the opposite direction.

In the parking lot, she breathed a sigh of relief. There would no doubt be repercussions from what had just happened, but they’d be tomorrow’s problems. All that mattered to her now was getting to her class.

She jumped on her motorcycle and joined the slow crawl on the freeway back into San Francisco. The traffic was thicker than normal, but she managed to make it to The Female Warrior in time. The studio was in the SoMa district off Howard Street. At night, it was a dark and desolate location, and probably not the best spot for a women’s self-defense studio, but then again, maybe it was if you wanted to put technique into practice. For once, she found parking close to the entrance. She jogged across the street and pressed the buzzer to be let in.

The Female Warrior was a private-members’ studio. A lot of the women who attended the self-defense classes were victims of violence or knew victims of violence. This wasn’t the place for the latest exercise fad. This was a place where women learned to defend themselves, which might just be the difference between life and death.

Classes were limited to twenty, and Zoë was the last to arrive, judging by the number of women in the workout room already. She quickly peeled off her hoodie and stowed it with her sports bag and helmet.

Karen Haldane owned the studio and taught the classes. She walked to the head of the workout room and called everyone to order. “Ladies, we’re going to get started in five minutes, so warm up however you like.”

While some women stretched, others practiced defense moves one-on-one. Zoë made a beeline for BOB. BOB was a sparring dummy consisting of a life-size head and torso made of plastic and foam, sticking out of a post. BOB stood with his semifeatureless face staring blankly at her. This was how she saw her abductor. The drugs he had dosed her with had reduced a positive ID to a less-than-defined face that could have belonged to anyone. That piece of shit had done that to her. He’d done worse to Holli and now to this dead woman. How dare he do this to anyone? How dare he ruin her life? There’d been things she’d wanted to accomplish, and he’d wiped them all away. Her hopes and dreams had ended in that desert. Now she was left to live this half life because of him. Well, fuck him. She drove the heel of a palm into the underside of BOB’s chin, jerking the dummy back on its post. When the punching bag rocked forward again, she drove the heel of her hand into its nose. It deflated and reinflated. In real life, the nose would have splintered, with a satisfying crunch.

She worked the dummy using a combination called
ichi roku
. First, she drove a vertical fist to BOB’s solar plexus. Using the momentum of her body and her close quarters to the dummy, she slid her arm across its chest and drove an elbow into the same point on BOB’s solar plexus. This brought her close to BOB, so close she could smell its funky rubber smell. She turned her body and chopped it across the neck with the same hand. It was a nice little move that took only a couple of seconds to deliver but would disable most attackers.

She repeated the combination again and again, each time a little faster than the time before. With speed came elaboration. The four-point combination became five, six, seven, eight, and more, with the inclusion of a palm strike to the underside of the dummy’s jaw, a haymaker to the side of the head, rabbit punches to the gut, and a knee drive to the rib cage. Keeping her guard up as Karen had taught her, she pounded all of BOB’s vulnerable points. BOB recovered from them all. A real man wouldn’t have. He’d be in an ER.

“OK, ladies, let’s get started.”

As Zoë left BOB and crossed to the center of the studio, she noticed Karen watching her.

This was an intermediate class, with most of the women in training for over a year. Zoë had been coming to The Female Warrior just short of twelve months, although she’d advanced further than many of the women who’d been there longer.

Regardless of the class level, Karen started it the same way, with ten minutes of stretches and lunges that helped warm up the body and unknot muscles. She followed with self-
kumite
, or self-fighting, where everyone essentially shadow sparred with an invisible foe, using strikes and counterstrikes. This warm-up reinforced the basics until they became muscle memory.

Zoë went through the drills. She didn’t like her performance tonight. It was unfocused and clumsy. She wasn’t in the zone. She blamed Lara Finz for undermining her focus.

At the top of the hour, Karen had everyone circle around her. “OK, ladies. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been practicing scenarios involving attacks from behind. Tonight, we’re going to look at a move that deals with an oncoming, charging attack. Jennifer, can you give me a hand with this one?”

Jennifer nodded and stepped forward.

By all accounts, Jennifer was a long-time attendee of Karen’s classes, so Zoë knew this had to be a tough combination.

“OK, Jen, freeze for me in a charging attack.”

Jennifer stood in a wide stride, as if running with her arm raised.

Karen stood to one side and simulated a side kick to Jennifer’s knee in a stomping fashion. Jennifer feigned collapsing to a knee. Karen followed this with double palm heels to Jennifer’s nose. She ended the move by turning again to deliver a second side kick to the same knee using her trailing leg. Karen demonstrated again, this time with movement. Jennifer attacked in slow motion, and Karen repeated the three-point technique to show its fluidity. She performed it several more times, each time with a little more speed and with a few options thrown in.

“Done right, I guarantee that your attacker will be coming away with a busted knee and broken nose. OK, does everyone see how this combo works?”

Karen received a round of yeses.

“Good. Now, pair up and let’s see how everyone does.”

Zoë partnered with a woman she knew only as Monica. Monica had been coming to the studio a little longer than Zoë, but Zoë knew little about the woman other than that she’d been mugged a couple of years earlier.

“What do you want to do first—attack or defend?” Monica asked.

“You choose.”

“I’ll defend. I want to try this move out.”

Zoë nodded and took up an attacking position, albeit a static one. Just as Karen had demonstrated, Monica followed the steps as Karen called them out. Monica repeated the combination until she’d gotten a handle on Karen’s new combo.