Under the Skin (Ritual Crime Unit) (15 page)
But she still had a prisoner to secure. As the skinbinder scrambled up, shrugging off the discarded wings like an unwanted blanket, Pierce lunged after him, slamming into his back. He might be younger, faster, more athletic, but she still had the skinny bastard beat on bodyweight.
He went down and she followed him, the hill steep enough to send both of them tumbling. Sebastian hit the rough ground with a sharp cry of pain, and she crashed down on top of him, jarring her wounded shoulder even further.
Her eyes screwed shut in agony, and she didn’t see the bony elbow coming as it cracked her across the jaw. Sebastian tried to wriggle away from her, but she caught him by the arm to haul him back. Something in her shoulder felt like it was tearing, and she sobbed with pain, but didn’t let him go.
“Get back here, you little bastard,” she said through gritted teeth, reaching for the handcuffs on her belt. Not silver, but the standard pair that she’d taken from Maitland would still do for this job. She leaned her weight on him as he struggled and spat and swore.
“You do not... have to say anything,” she wheezed, fumbling with the cuffs, “but it may harm your defence”—she snapped the left loop closed around his wrist, strained tears leaking from her eyes—“if you do not mention when questioned.... something which you later rely on in court.” He bucked beneath her, almost throwing her off, but she rolled back to pin him down with her knee. “Anything you
do
say...”—with a final gasping grunt of pain, she yanked his other arm into position to snap the second cuff in place—“may be given in evidence,” she said, panting for breath. “Understand me?”
He burst into a furious string of swearwords.
“I’m going to... take that as a yes,” Pierce said, and slumped down wearily to sit beside him on the hillside. “Now... stay where you are. You’re under arrest.”
She swallowed as she turned her blurry gaze to the knife hilt still sticking out from her shoulder. The sound of sirens was drawing closer, definitely real this time. All she had to do was stay conscious until backup arrived.
Easier said than done...
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I
NJURED AND RUNNING
on empty as she was, Pierce had little choice but to turn the skinbinder over to the custody of the local police. She spoke to Deepan, and instructed him to make sure Sebastian turned up where he was sent, no unexpected detours. She also had to break the news about Tim, though she shied away from the full ugly details.
Maitland, it emerged, had disappeared into the night, and taken any of his surviving teammates with him. The police who raided the site found no one else to arrest, just more corpses, some still wearing shapeshifting skins.
Analysing exactly what had happened tonight was going to be a hell of a forensic job, but it was one that Pierce was in no condition to oversee. She was too exhausted and in too much pain to protest being sent away from the scene in an ambulance as soon as she’d spat out the most important explanations. She turned out to be sharing it with Leo, clearly in a bad way even before hospital x-rays could confirm it.
At least he was still alive.
It was hard to celebrate her own survival with enthusiasm once adrenaline and triumph faded. Shoulder surgery, and a long program of rehab to look forward to, plus all the lesser scrapes and bruises she’d picked up along the way. It would be a long, grim and painful recovery, without even the indulgence of self-pity when so many of the people who’d been involved in this mess had come out a whole lot worse.
Few visitors came to see her in hospital. Tim was dead, two good friends were hospitalised themselves, and Deepan was stuck doing everybody’s job including hers. The RCU was undersized and overworked as it was, and now it was down by three quarters of its manpower.
So she was surprised when she received a visit from Superintendent Palmer, who she’d always believed to be attached to his desk by an umbilical cord. She was even more surprised that he didn’t seem to be there to give her a bollocking.
In fact, he was unusually reluctant to get to the point, avoiding her gaze as he adjusted the front of his uniform shirt. “Ah, Claire,” he said, with unaccustomed hesitation. “Shoulder improving?”
“So they tell me,” she said. “I’ll let you know when the painkillers wear off.” At least she was sitting up in the chair instead of lying down; entertaining the boss while still in bed would have been awkward. Pierce really hadn’t anticipated a personal visit from him; an elegantly penned Get Well Soon card was really more his style. “Everything all right back at the office?” she asked.
“Er, yes, yes,” he said with a nod. “Your... sergeant is doing very well. And there will, erm, be an official investigation into the Counter Terror Action Team’s handling of this case. Rest assured that the skinbinder you brought in will be appropriately punished for his crimes.” He grimaced, as if aware she wouldn’t like what he had to say next. “But it will, of course, have to be handled discreetly. You understand that word of this young man’s work can’t be allowed to get out.”
Perhaps he expected an explosion, and if she’d been healthy he might well have got one, but right now she was too weary to give both barrels to the debate. Secret courts were nobody’s friend in her eyes, but politics was what it was, and those kind of decisions took place far above her head. At least she knew she could trust Palmer to be a straight shooter, far more so than Maitland.
And talking of shooting... there had been curiously little mention of her less-than-legal part in bringing the skinbinder down. Was it all being swept under the rug as part of the general cover-up? The thought didn’t sit entirely right with her, but now was hardly the time to go falling on her sword. With Sally in worse shape than she was and Tim dead, the RCU couldn’t afford to lose its DCI in charge as well.
Pierce grimaced at her own thoughts. A convenient excuse why ‘just this once’ the rules had to bend.
That
was a hell of a slippery slope to start down.
Palmer’s uncomfortable squirming drew her out of her darkening thoughts. “Well, erm, that’s all the news you need to worry about right now,” he said. “I should probably get back to the station.” He made an abortive move to check his watch, lowering his arm rather awkwardly as a flash of bare wrist was revealed. Things
must
be hectic back at the office if even her immaculately pressed boss was getting ready for work in that much of a hurry.
Or maybe not. Her amusement iced over as she remembered the watch the Superintendent usually worse, the kind of status symbol that immediately marked him out as someone who did his policing from behind a desk. Her own taste in watches ran to the cheap, plastic, and shockproof, but Palmer’s favoured wristwatch was far more ostentatious...
And made of sterling silver.
Her eyes snapped up to study his face, but he was already turning to move away. “I look forward to seeing you back at the office,” he said over his shoulder.
He looked like Palmer, sounded like him. Her doubts had to be no more wild paranoia.
They had to be... but how could she be sure?
His footsteps faded away into the background hubbub. Pierce shivered in her hospital gown, goose pimples crawling over her skin. She was surrounded by the noise and bustle of the busy ward... but right now, she felt very much alone.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
E.E. Richardson has been writing books since she was eleven years old, and had her first novel
The Devil’s Footsteps
picked up for publication at the age of twenty. Since then she’s had seven more young adult horror novels published by Random House and Barrington Stoke.
Under the Skin
is her first story aimed at adults.
She also has a BSc. in Cybernetics and Virtual Worlds, which hasn’t been useful for much but does sound impressive.
Five years ago, it all went wrong for Cason Cole. He lost his wife and son, lost everything, and was bound into service to a man who chews up human lives and spits them out, a predator who holds nothing dear and respects no law. Now, as the man he both loves and hates lies dying at his feet, the sounds of the explosion still ringing in his ears, Cason is finally free.
The gods and goddesses are real. A many-headed pantheon—a tangle of divine hierarchies—once kept the world at arm’s length, warring with one another for mankind’s belief and devotion. It was a grim and bloody balance, but a balance just the same. When one god triumphed, driving all other gods out of Heaven, it was back to the bad old days: cults and sycophants, and the terrible retribution the gods visit on those who spite them.
None of which is going to stop Cason from getting back what’s his...
‘If you’re looking for a sassy, hard-boiled thriller with a paranormal slant, Wendig has established himself as the go-to man.’
The Guardian
‘Exactly the kind of spin I was looking for. Bad asses, psychotic cannibals, religious fundamentalists, zombies and insane clowns... Wendig has created a zombie-infested world that you will enjoy spending time in.’
Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review
on
Double Dead
Available to buy from the Kindle Store
