Page 40 of Rooke
An hour passes, and every minute detail goes down into Jacobi’s notebook. He grunts every now and then, but he doesn’t make any other comment until we’re done. That’s when he looks up at me, locking me to the spot with dark, invasive eyes and he tells me something that makes panic rise around my throat like a clenched fist.
“Is there any chance you didn’t hit this guy as hard as you think you did?”
I stare at him dumbly, trying to process the question. “Yes. I hit him really hard. I mean, I…I saw the blood. There was blood everywhere. And the hook...”
“You saw the hook actually strike him?” He sounds unsure.
“It didn’t just strike him, Detective. It sank into his skull.”
He grimaces, making a swift note of this. “Okay. It seems we’re on the hunt for a tall, psychotic redheaded guy with a hole in the side of his head, then. He must have gotten up and run off because we couldn’t locate him, Sasha. There was no body to be found.”
He leaves, and I sit and stew on this information. Seriously? How can they not have found his body? He was dead when I left him. There was blood everywhere…
The nurse comes back an hour later to let me know that the doctor wants to keep me here for a couple of days for observation, and that my friend Allison is waiting for me, anxious to see if I’m all right. Another police officer comes by to tell me that detectives will be by again tomorrow to talk to me, to see if I’ve remembered anything else about the “incident” as they’re calling it. The young kid with the bad acne scars then warns me not to talk to the press, just in case I say something that compromises their investigation. The door opens again, and I’m about to tell the person standing in the doorway to politely fuck off and leave me alone, when I see who it is and my words die on my lips.
He came.
“How did you get in here?” I whisper.
Rooke just stands there, staring at me. His jaw is clenched tight, eyes filled with a frightening calm that belies the turmoil he’s clearly neck-deep in. “How bad is it?” he asks quietly.
“Nowhere near as bad as it looks.”
“It looks pretty fucking bad,” he growls.
“Gee. Thanks.”
Rooke doesn’t respond to my attempt at humor. “Who did it?” he demands.
“I don’t know. Some redheaded guy. I think he was drunk or high. He didn’t tell me his name.”
“Describe him to me.”
“Rooke, I’ve been through all of this with the cops. They’re handling it.”
“They’re not going to handle it. They’re going to fuck it up.Iwon’t fuck it up, though.”
It’s weird. Relief washes over me, so intense and powerful that I feel every single rigid muscle in my body finally relax. The look on his face says it all. Rooke’s going to go out there, and he’s going to find this guy. He’s going to make him pay for what he’s done. I feel safe all of a sudden. Then, reality starts to kick in. He can’t go after this guy. He can’t. He’s angry right now, so angry I can see every single one of the veins in his arms bulging from where he’s clenching his hands so damn tight, but he’s going to kill this guy if he finds him. He’s going to murder him, and then what?
“Rooke.Please.”
“Tell me everything,” he grinds out. “Now, Sasha.”
I shake my head. “No.”
“He was ginger. Did he have any birthmarks? Scars? Tattoos?”
And there it is. Tattoos. Rooke must see my expression change, because he takes one small step into the room. The tension pouring off him is like heat from a fire. It fills the small space, sucking all the air out of the room. “Tell me,” he says quietly.
“I don’t know what it was. Something small on the back of his hand. It looked like a black smudge. It was faded and blurry, like he’d had it for a long time.”
Rooke nods slowly. “Anything else? What was he wearing?”
“All black. Black jacket, black pants. His shoes…wait, his shoelaces were different colors. One was red, one was black.”
Again, Rooke nods. “Okay. How tall was he?”
“About six foot, I guess.”
