The police were going to be there soon.
“Laura?”
With one panicked glance, he took in the sight. The floor was soaked. Some kind of powered herb littered the countertop and spilled into the sink.
He couldn’t see Laura’s shape in the shadows behind the shower curtain. Yanking it open so forcefully he ripped one of the plastic-lined holes holding it in place, Harry spotted Laura immediately.
Oh, God. “No!”
Down on his knees, completely uncaring about the cold water that was spitting on them, he hauled his beautiful wife out of the tub and onto his lap on the floor.
“Laura?” he cried softly, hating the weakness in his voice, his limbs, his heart.
She was breathing. And conscious if the tears were any indication.
“Oh sweet baby, we’ll take care of you, I promise,” he said, conviction behind every word. “We’re going to make this better. We’ll get them.”
He didn’t know how, but he knew, in that second, that he’d keep this promise to her.
Harder sobs were Laura’s only response to his vow—to his presence in general. Tears streamed from beneath her closed lids. She wouldn’t even look at him.
Harry prayed to God she was still in there. Laura was a peacemaker, always had been. A gentle, loving person.
Had they wreaked irrevocable damage on that precious spirit he loved so completely? Broken her?
“Come on, sweetie,” he said. He pulled a blanket from the bottom shelf of the still-open linen closet, wrapped it around her shivering, limp body and hugged her to his chest. The pain in his shoulder was growing more noticeable, yet he welcomed it—needed the immediate feeling to focus on. He had to get away from the horror, the fear of what this night had done to Laura, if he was going to get them through these next hours.
“It’s okay now, love,” he crooned, his bruised face close to her neck. “I’m here, I have you. You’re safe.”
He didn’t know if her shiver was from the cold or in reaction to him. God, he needed her to talk. To yell at him, to whisper her fear or blame him for not being man enough to protect her. In their own home, their own bed.
“You’re strong, Laura.” He had no idea where the words came from, but he couldn’t stop them. “You know that. Anytime a fight’s been necessary in your life, you were ready for it. You stood up to your parents when you fell in love with me, fought like crazy to be a black man’s wife.”
“Y-y-y-our…. wife…”
Tears prickled his eyes again as he heard that soft voice. The love of his life was still here with him.
With a silent oath, Harry once again dedicated himself to finding out who’d done this to Laura—and to making sure they were locked up and put away forever. If all he could give her was peace of mind from knowing that they’d never be able to get her again, then he’d risk whatever it cost to see that she had it.
And anything else she needed.
By the time the two forensics officers from the investigative services bureau, sex crimes division, were at their door, Laura was calm and dressed in sweatpants, T-shirt and a jacket zipped up to her chin—in spite of Tucson’s June heat. Clinging to Harry’s arm, she went with him to the door. He wouldn’t have it any other way. He couldn’t seem to let go of her, either.
“Can you describe what happened?” Jim Mendoza, the older of the two officers, asked before they were even in the door.
As succinctly as possible, Harry did as they asked, somehow getting words past the emotion.
“Did you recognize either one of them?” The speaker barely glanced at Laura, though his question was clearly directed at her.
She shook her head.
“Can you describe them?”
“One was taller than the other,” Harry said, the vision imprinted on his brain. He named approximate heights and weights. “They were dressed identically in black jeans, leather jackets that came to just above their hips and black hoods made out of some kind of cotton. The hoods tucked into the jackets. They both wore black leather gloves.” Harry handed over the scrap of leather he’d bitten off.
The younger cop, Bill Warren, got on his cell phone, relaying the information to others in the field.
“We’ll need to get more information from both of you.” Mendoza was moving slowly into the house. “But first, we need to get her to the hospital.” Once again, he barely glanced at Laura.
Or at Harry, either, for that matter. Warren clicked off his cell phone, eyeing them both, his face lined with compassion.
“An ambulance is waiting outside for you, ma’am,” he said to Laura. “An officer will accompany you to the hospital.”
She squeezed Harry’s arm and he looked down to see the fresh tension tightening her upper lip, panic in her eyes.
“I’ll drive her,” he said. The grip on his arm loosened to a more comfortable pressure—notwithstanding the sharp pain shooting from his shoulder to his fingers.
“We’d rather your wife didn’t leave the custody of a police officer,” Warren began. “That’s so—”
“There’s less chance of any claim of evidence tampering that way,” Mendoza inserted.
Laura’s weight fell against him, her shaking intensifying. “Listen, gentlemen,” Harry heard himself saying the words without conscious thought. “We appreciate your position, but right now, my only concern is my wife. She doesn’t want to ride in an ambulance and as she’s not in major physical distress, I’m not going to ask her to do so.”
Mendoza looked at Laura fully for the first time, staring at her hair, still damp from the shower. “You didn’t bathe, did you?” he asked, his voice urgent.
“She did,” Harry told him.
“They didn’t tell you not to?”
Not wanting to waste another second on something that couldn’t be changed, Harry shook his head. “The dispatcher mentioned it, but Laura’s comfort seemed more important.” he said.
Not that those instructions would have mattered. Based on Laura’s somewhat incoherent behavior, he didn’t think he would’ve been able to prevent her from getting in that shower, even if he’d thought of the Allen wrench earlier.
“They’ll still be able to use a rape kit,” Warren said. “You two go on ahead and we’ll talk to the detectives in charge.”
Harry nodded.
“We need to look around here first, though.”
“Fine.” Harry opened the door wider, moving so that his good arm was around Laura as he led her through their house to the garage and saw her safely buckled into the front seat of his car.
He wanted her as far away as he could get her before the police turned their bedroom into a crime scene.
“Did either of you get a glimpse of their faces?”
In a private office at the hospital, Laura tried to concentrate. She had no idea how long it’d been since she and Harry had been whisked through emergency-room protocol and ushered into separate treatment rooms. She’d not only lost track of time, but all sense of herself.
Her body ached everywhere, as though she’d been rolled down a twenty-mile hill of rocks wrapped in burlap. Her wrists were raw and burning in spite of the salve they’d put on them. And she had what felt like menstrual cramps.
The policemen, Detective Boyd and his partner, Robert