Kill Switch: A Vigilante Serial Killer Action Thriller (Angel of Darkness Suspense Thriller Series Book 1) (19 page)

He and his partner, Hubert, rushed their gurney over to the women, most of whom were huddled on the ground together crying – they looked like a flock of sheep that had been traumatized by a wolf attack. He nodded to the mustachioed police officer guarding them and then helped a blonde woman onto the gurney, her face either dirty or bruised – it was hard to tell in the darkness. They dashed away and put her in the back of the ambulance.

Returned with their second gurney, they delicately lifted a woman up onto it as she drifted in and out of consciousness. They wheeled her to their vehicle too.

While Konrad climbed into the back with their two patients, Hubert leapt into the driver’s seat. A moment later, the engine roared, the siren wailed, and away they sped into the night.

In the back of the ambulance, Konrad quickly assessed his two patients. What nightmare they’d endured to end up here he could only guess at – he’d read of the horrors of human trafficking, but never imagined he’d ever see it other than in the movies. But that didn’t matter now. The women were safe. All that concerned him was assessing their injuries and seeing they were treated as quickly as possible.

While the blonde woman wailed constantly, the other woman concerned him more because she was covered in blood. However, an initial assessment proved her vitals were strong and that there appeared to be no head trauma and no obvious wound.

Okay, maybe the blonde was the more urgent case – people rarely moaned the way she was without good reason. He moved over to the other patient.

He talked calmly and gently to her, as he flashed a light into her eyes. “Can you tell me your name?”

She flinched at being touched. But her pupils responded correctly to the light.

“Do you know what day it is?”

She whined like a dog that had been left out in the cold but said nothing comprehensible.

He took her pulse. While her heart rate was elevated, which was only to be expected, it was strong and regular. He concluded his initial checks. The woman had no life-threatening injuries but was suffering from shock and extreme dehydration.

After raising her legs, he covered her with an orange blanket, placed a mask over her face to provide oxygen and then administered fluids intravenously.

He turned back to the bloody patient.

The woman lay unconscious. She had blood on her face, on her hands, and on her leather jacket, but he could see no obvious wound. Maybe the blood wasn’t hers. However, that needed to be confirmed through a thorough examination.

He unzipped her jacket and then began to cut away her black T-shirt, but stopped. What was that? He felt the strange, stiff material secreted under her clothing. He pulled the cut T-shirt away.

What the hell?

Was that…?

It was. It was a goddamn bulletproof vest.

He looked into the woman’s face. Who the hell was she? An undercover cop?

The woman’s eyes popped open. Her hand shot out, grabbed him and yanked him down to her.

She clamped her arms around his neck. Squeezed.

He fought, flailing to break free.

He tried to shout for help, but he could barely breathe, barely make a sound. For God’s sake, he was trying to help her. Couldn’t she see she was in an ambulance?

The inside of the ambulance darkened as his vision tunneled. His brain starved of blood, he was about to black out, but he could do nothing about it. His beautiful Anna flashed into his mind. He wanted to hold her, wanted to—

The ambulance raced toward a sharp left-hand turn onto Jana Pawla II Avenue. Ahead, the shadows of Ronald Reagan Park crawled away into the night. As the vehicle slowed to make the turn, one of its back doors flew open.

Lying half-conscious on the floor of his ambulance, Konrad’s eyes flickered open and closed as if seeing the world under a strobe light. Through darkened, blurry vision, he thought he saw the woman leap out of his ambulance, roll across the asphalt, and spring to her feet. Clutching her side, she hobbled toward the park and vanished into the gloom, like a shadow in a dream.

On a straight road again, the ambulance accelerated and shot along the street, siren wailing, lights flashing. Konrad stared at the park as it disappeared into the distance. And then, it too was nothing but a dark memory.

Tess heard rolled
R
s and a conglomeration of ‘sh’ and ‘ch’ sounds that could only be an Eastern European language. She looked at the speaker beside her.

A young man had hoisted his son onto his shoulders to gaze out at Manhattan’s skyline, as if the sixty-ninth floor of the Rockefeller Center – the Top of the Rock – wasn’t high enough already.

Standing on the observation deck, behind the eight-foot-high protective plexiglass screen, Tess gazed far, far away. In distance and in time. She sighed. Was Catalina still out there? Or had her unidentifiable body been laid to rest in an unmarked grave somewhere in Europe, or the Middle East, or even here in the US?

Tess hadn’t given up hope of finding her, of honoring the memory of her dear friend Elena, but Krakow and Gdansk felt a lifetime ago.

However, it was always good to be reminded of how all this had begun. Her new life had started that day. By complete accident and to Tess’s immense surprise, Elena had changed her life in ways Tess would never have dreamed possible. She’d gone to Asia seeking the tools for revenge but while making her way back home, she had found something very different instead. So very, very different. She’d found purpose.

She hadn’t realized it at the time, but the reason she’d become stuck in Europe and hadn’t yet claimed her justice was because she simply hadn’t been ready. Elena hadn’t just provided that answer but had been the catalyst that pushed Tess forward.

Sixty-nine floors below Tess, specks crawled along the streets, each one looking for their own answers, for something to drive their lives forward too. Love, wealth, fame, happiness, achievement, companionship… People looked for their answers in countless places. However, few realized they were all looking for the same thing – purpose, a reason to be. Each one of them deserved the chance to find that which would make them feel complete. And those who lost that chance because they fell victim to someone else’s greed deserved something else – justice.

Tess often came up here to watch all these specks and to be reminded of why she did what she did. She hoped she’d never look down from here and feel nothing – no empathy, no sympathy, no… purpose. Other than finding him – which had proved impossible to date, despite all her efforts – this was her sole reason for being. And what better reason could there be than one so noble?

Her cell phone rang. She answered. “Hey, Bomb.”

“Yo, Tess, I got a location on our boy.”

“The rapist or the shooter?” There seemed to be a never-ending line of those who deserved the justice only she could bring.

“The guy whose phone you found – I traced the cell tower ping history.”

Tess snatched her black backpack containing all her gear from the concrete floor and turned for the stairs down to the elevators.

“Great. Send me the details. I’m already moving.”

“You got it. Good hunting. Ciao, Tess.”

Tess disappeared into the darkness of the stairwell.

A senseless killing demanded payback. And she would claim that payback today. In blood. No argument, prayer, or plea could save them after what they’d done. They would die today. Period.

Who, how, and where she didn’t yet know.

But one thing was set in stone – justice would be cold, swift and brutal. Just another day at the office.

The End.

(Tess Williams will return in
Angel of Darkness
. See below.)

Tess Williams will return. Grab a sneak peek below at the next instalment in the pulse-pounding
Angel of Darkness
Suspense Thriller Series.

Don’t miss it!

But first, if you enjoyed this book, please leave a review so others may find and enjoy it too. Here is a direct link to your local Amazon to help you:

Anyone can be. It’s easy. Really.

It’s my way of saying thanks for enjoying my books. All you have to do is click this link and get in touch.

Click here to be Reader of the Month.