The chief stepped back and clapped Opie on the back. He said, “She’s going to be okay, Franks. Let’s just give her some room,” and both men stepped away from me.
I rolled my head, my skull filling with a new needling, angry pain. I tried to blink it away and then focused on the wall in front of me until I realized that I was stretched out on a sticky pleather sofa in an office that smelled of feet and corn chips and was stacked with bargain basement office furniture. “Where am I?” I repeated.
“It’s okay, Sophie. You’re fine. You’re in my office,” the police chief answered, and I felt his warm hand closing over my wrist, felt his finger find my pulse point and pause. “Don’t try to move,” he said when I attempted to sit up again. “You had quite a scare out there tonight.”
I struggled to a sitting position despite Chief Oliver’s warning, and yelped at the dull ache that blossomed from my shoulder and inched across my chest. I gently touched the cool spot above my eyebrow and winced, pulling my fingers away and examining the sticky traces of drying blood on them. “Am I dead?” I asked mournfully.
Opie grinned stupidly, and Chief Oliver set my wrist down, patting my hand gingerly.
“No, honey, you’re just fine. It seems you ran into”—I watched his eyes shift uncomfortably—“a bad element. What were you doing all alone in the middle of the night anyway?”
I thought of UDA, of Mr. Sampson and the broken chains. “Looking for my kitty,” I answered finally.
“Well, you should do that in the daylight hours and in a better part of town. You’ve got a pretty nasty bump on your head and you’re a little bruised up, but I think you’re going to be just fine. Officer Franks can drive you home.”
“No,” I said, planting my feet firmly on the floor. “I ran into a bad element? What does that mean? What happened to me? What, exactly, happened?”
I might have been paranoid, but I would almost swear that Officer Opie and Chief Oliver shared a look. I considered that it could have been the “nutty cat lady is getting hysterical” look, but I thought there was more to it. “Please,” I said. “I need to know.”
“Gangbangers, likely,” the chief said, nodding officially.
“Gangbangers?” I asked skeptically.
Though I didn’t remember much of the night and admittedly, my experience with gangs could be summed up by the toe-tapping musical brawl from West Side Story, I would have been willing to bet money that today’s gangs hadn’t evolved to bared teeth, claws, and superhuman strength. I winced again when I took a deep breath that sent pinpricks of pain throughout my chest and back. “You’re sure it was a gang? Did you see them? Did you see anyone?”
The chief raised one challenging eyebrow, and Opie nodded his head wildly, his strawberry-blond hair bobbing against his forehead. “Gangbangers, definitely. We didn’t see ‘em, but that’s what they were. Definitely,” he said.
The chief stepped away from me and eyed Officer Opie. “Franks, why don’t you help Miss Lawson to her feet?”
“I think I’m good.” My legs were a little shaky, but I opted to steady myself against a cold metal file cabinet rather than risk my chances with Opie’s awkwardly outstretched stick arms.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” I said, “but I’m feeling much better now. I just need to get home and rest.”
“I’ll drive you,” Opie said, dangling a chain full of keys in front of me. “We can take my squad car.”
I looked from Opie to the chief and realized that I’d be lucky to walk out of this station under my own volition (rather than be thrown over the shoulder and carried out by Opie), let alone be allowed to drive my own car home, so I agreed to let Opie drive me.
“But I need to stop by my car first,” I said quickly, “just to grab a few things.”
The chief nodded, and Opie led me out of the office and into the cold night air. We walked in awkward silence across the parking lot, and I sucked in a tortured breath when I saw my car in its space on the street.
My car, my little green baby, my first big-girl purchase, was a complete mess of crumpled steel and scratched-up paint. The driver’s side door was smashed in like a tin can, and the cut on my forehead throbbed when I examined the forehead-sized crack in the passenger-side window. The driver’s seat was shredded, and cotton stuffing bloomed from tears in the passenger seat, too.
“Those gangbangers,” Opie said, clucking his tongue, “they can really do some damage.”
I nodded solemnly and stuck my head into the car, feeling around on the carpet for my keys. I remembered the sound they made as they fell onto the floor, right before I felt the wind get knocked out of me. I shuddered, then closed my fingers around the keys.