“Sampson told me Nicco was the only other one to survive.” I sighed, dumbfounded, a tremble going clear through to my soul. “It wasn’t Nicco who vowed revenge. It was Sampson.”
Alex licked his lips. “What do we do now?”
I closed my eyes and saw the destruction burned into my eyelids. Saw the torn faces, the ruined bodies, the rivulets of blood. I saw the single tear cutting through the blood on Feng’s face, but I couldn’t pull up an image of Sampson.
“We bring him in,” I said, my voice cracking.
Alex leaned into his car and pulled out his radio, thumb at the ready. “Where is he? I’ll have a car there in two minutes.”
I put my hand on Alex’s arm. “No. Not the police.”
“Lawson, you saw what he did.”
I swallowed as the tears poured down my face in a steady flow. “So you know what he’s capable of. Jail won’t hold him. You’re just going to lose your officers. He’ll go with someone he trusts.”
A cool breeze started to kick up then, and for the first time in days the fog blew in in thick gray blankets. I shivered and held my hands over my bare arms. “He trusts me.”
“Lawson, are you sure?”
I wasn’t, but I nodded anyway. “I need to call Dixon. I need to tell him.” My breath hitched on a sob that wracked my entire body.
This couldn’t be happening.
“I need to tell him to have a team ready for—for him.” I couldn’t say Sampson’s name anymore. The person—the monster—responsible for all this carnage, for lying to me, wasn’t the Pete Sampson that I had known.
That Pete Sampson was dead.
I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the Underworld Detection Agency, each ring of the phone slicing deeper into my heart.
I was doing this.
I was leading Pete Sampson to his death.
Dixon’s voice mail clicked on and I cleared my throat. “Dixon, this is Sophie Lawson. I—I have the werewolf who killed Octavia. It’s—it’s Pete Sampson. He’s here in San Francisco.” It physically hurt to say the words. “I’ll bring him to you.”
I hung up my phone, numbness spreading through my whole body. Alex slid his arm around my waist and nuzzled me to him, but I had never felt more alone, more separate, than I did at that moment.
“Is Sampson secure where you have him?” Alex asked.
“Yeah.”
“Then let’s get your shoulder fixed up first.”
The ambulance was right behind us, and the same paramedic who tended to me at the Sutro Point crime scene went to work cleaning the wound on my shoulder. I recognized him from the Pacific Heights scene , where he’d been handing out paper cups of water to the pup cops after they hurled in the bushes.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” I said, feeling the strange need to insert some bland normalcy in the day. “Torres, right?”
“You’ve got a good memory,” he said without looking up.
“Guess so.”
The paramedic just smiled at me, and silently brushed mercurochrome over the wound. I winced and was about to open my mouth, but was stopped by a bone-rattling scream.
“Medic! Medic!” I heard as people started to mobilize toward the scream.
“It’s Feng,” Alex said.
“We should get out of here.”
“No,” Alex said, with a hand on my good shoulder. “She’ll be taken care of.”
I craned my neck to see two more paramedics restraining a flailing, screaming Feng. I should have been frightened, but my heart just lurched. Feng wasn’t looking for me. Her eyes were focused on the open door of the family restaurant, her cheeks blanketed in a wave of fresh tears, her whole body vibrating under her wails.
“Nick!” One of the paramedics holding Feng said, “We need you.”
My paramedic—Nick, I now knew—looked over his shoulder and then glanced back at me. “You’re almost done, but I’ve got to tend to her.”
“Don’t worry,” Alex said. “I can slap a Band-Aid on her.”
Nick nodded and snatched a fresh pair of gloves out of his medical box before running toward the group restraining Feng.
“I feel really bad for her,” Alex said, watching Nick join the group. Squad cars were starting to leave now and the restaurant was blocked off so most of the curious onlookers had ambled away. Those who remained looked up at the darkening sky with worry-etched faces and moved toward storefronts and awnings.
My cell phone chirped and I nudged it toward Alex as I held one arm up, using the other to poke around Nick’s abandoned medical box for a Band-Aid.
Alex answered the phone and mouthed, Dixon.
My chest tightened, my heart starting to thunder again. “I—I can’t,” I mumbled. Even after all that had happened, I couldn’t be the one to say the words. I couldn’t be the one to tell Dixon, couldn’t be the one responsible for Dixon giving the kill command.
Alex nodded and stepped back, walking behind a squad car for privacy. I sucked in a shaky breath and tried to locate a Band-Aid.
When my hand ran across something furry, I retracted it, disgusted.
“Ugh!”
What kind of injury requires something fuzzy in a first aid kit?
I pushed my hand into the medical box again, my fingertips touching the soft material.