Chapter 7 - Blood and Steel
The impact produced a sickening, wet crunch.
Julian let out a strangled, choked gasp as the jagged steel tore through his trachea. The gun in his hand discharged with a muffled *PHUT*, the silenced round ricocheting harmlessly off the reinforced concrete wall and showering the floor with sparks.
He stumbled backward, dropping the pistol, his gloved hands flying to his neck. Dark, arterial blood welled up between his fingers, black in the pulsating crimson emergency light.
His eyes bugged out of his head, bulging with disbelief. In all his calculated psychopathic planning, in all his years of preying on vulnerable women and children, he had never accounted for the ferocious, lethal violence of a mother protecting her young.
He lunged at me, his face twisted into a mask of pure demonic rage.
His heavy shoulder slammed into my chest, knocking me off my feet. I hit the floor hard, the breath exploding from my lungs, the steel pipe clattering away across the smooth concrete.
Julian pinned me down, his bloody hands locking around my throat.
His weight was crushing. His fingers dug into my windpipe, cutting off my air instantly. Spots of black and red danced across my vision. His face hovered inches from mine, his teeth bared, bloody foam spraying from his lips as he tried to speak through his ruined airway.
*‘Die,’* his eyes screamed. *‘Die with me.’*
My lungs burned. My vision began to tunnel into darkness. The edges of the red room were fading into black.
Then, from the corner of my blurring sight, I saw a tiny figure emerge from beneath the bed frame.
Emily.
She wasn't crying. Her small face was set in a mask of pure, concentrated fury that mirrored my own. In her two small hands, she held the heavy, solid-steel bedside lamp—the one bolted to the nightstand that had broken loose during my struggle with the frame.
"Get off my mommy!" Emily shrieked.
With all the strength in her eight-year-old body, Emily brought the heavy steel lamp base down directly onto the side of Julian Vance's skull.
*CRACK.*
The blow didn't kill him, but it shattered his cheekbone and broke his focus. His grip on my throat slipped.
Air rushed back into my lungs with a ragged, burning gasp.
Before he could recover, before he could turn his rage on my daughter, I brought both of my legs up to my chest and kicked violently upward with heavy work boots into his shattered throat and chest.
Julian flew backward, crashing into the heavy steel door of the witness suite.
At that exact second, the physical master deadbolt from the exterior hallway finally engaged.
*CLANK-CLANK.*
The heavy steel door swung inward with tremendous force, driven by two two-hundred-pound SWAT officers breaching the threshold. The door struck Julian like a battering ram, pinning him face-first against the concrete floor.
"Police! Don't move! Hands behind your back!"
Four heavily armed tactical officers swarmed into the room, their weapon-mounted tactical lights instantly blinding the red darkness with brilliant, searing white beams.
An officer planted a heavy combat boot directly between Julian’s shoulder blades, ratcheting zip-tie handcuffs around his bloody wrists with professional, brutal efficiency.
"Suspect secured! Suspect secured!"
Detective Miller burst through the door, her service weapon drawn, her eyes sweeping the room until they landed on me and Emily.
I was sitting on the floor, coughing violently, dragging my daughter back into my lap. Emily buried her head against my chest, sobbing so hard her little ribs shuddered. I wrapped my arms around her, pressing my face into her hair, kissing the bruised, hacked scalp that had started this entire nightmare.
"It’s over, baby," I gasped, my voice raw and broken. "It’s over. We got him."
Detective Miller holstered her weapon and dropped to her knees beside us. She checked my neck, where purple bruises were already forming in the shape of Julian's fingers, then checked Emily.
"Medic!" Miller bellowed over her shoulder. "Get trauma medics in here now!"
She looked down at Julian, who was lying in a pool of his own blood, gurgling through his severed airway as two tactical medics clamped a pressure dressing to his neck to keep him from bleeding to death on the holding cell floor.
Miller leaned down until her face was inches from his ear.
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"You're not dying today, Julian Vance," Miller whispered with cold, righteous venom. "You're going to live. You're going to stand trial for every single thing you did. In Ohio, and in Illinois."
***
