Beauty & The Beast (Book 1)

10. Joshua

Catherine was on her way to the precinct when she thought she saw someone following her. She'd seen it a few blocks back. She looked in the rearview mirror and went to make a turn, not seeing the bike messenger veering in front of her on his bicycle.
She hits him with the nose of the car and he falls to the ground.
Cat rushes out of the car and hurries over to check on the guy, rolling in pain. When she is close enough and says she is sorry, the man takes out a gun and points it at her.
He lets off a shot, misses her and she kicks the gun out of his hand.
The man fights back, kicking her back and jumping to his feet.
He fights her, both using some sort of Kung Fu training, equally balanced.
Cat flips the guy onto his back and grabs a nearby empty trashcan to hit him over the head. She misses and he is on his feet again.
Her assailant got the upperhand after she gets in a few good shots, uppercuts, jump downs, and wraps the belt of his messenger bag around her neck from behind.
He pulls and pushes her from one side to the next, bashing her against the brick walls. He slams her again against the wall before he removes the belt and tightens his grip while she is still down. He wraps it around her neck again and steps down on her back, pulling the belt tighter, choking Cat. She gasps and tries to grab at it.

The belt loosens and the messenger is picked up and thrown across the alley way by Vincent, who appeared out of nowhere once again to save her. The messenger hits a car full force and drops to the ground. The alarms go off and Vincent growls, already running at the messenger.

"Vincent!" Cat yells, getting to her feet quickly. She needed to stop him. He stopped, his back to her. He whips his head around to look at her. "It's okay," she says tentatively, stepping closer slowly. "I'm okay." Vincent looks at the messenger on the floor again and back at her before he runs past her at super speed, only the wind grazing her hair when she turns to look.
She goes and checks on the guy who attacked her but he was dead.

"Want me to call the cops?!" someone yells from above. Hopefully they didn't see too much.

She sighs. "I am the cops!" she yells back.

*************

"Victim shows signs of lacerations and subjudigenous hematoma indicating blunt force trauma to the head and neck." Evan lists his findings while Cat watches.

"I jumped out to help him, he came right at me. Classic mugging scam."

"No visible chest or torso injuries, no evidence of clinical fractures," he goes on. He looks at Cat. "You were off duty right?"

"Yeah."

"He caught you off guard then."

"I thought it was up."

"And there were no weapons involved?"

"No, I used the force necessary to defend myself. He fell backwards. Must have hit his head on the back of the car."

Evan looks at the body again. "Cortex appears to be lacerated." He eyes Cat.

"Guess that's why bikers should wear helmets. Even if they are muggers."

"Yeah, but to cause this kind of impact for somebody who's a buck two," he laughs, "You must have really been working out."

"Adrenaline kicked in." Evan looked skeptical. "Evan," Cat says, "I obviously didn't mean for this to happen."

"No, of course not, it's just - " He looks at the dead Chinese attacker again and then at Cat. "Are you sure you did this?"

"Yes, why would I lie about it?"

Evan opens his mouth to speak but the door to his lab opens and Joe walks in, checking on Cat. When he asks Evan what he is telling Internal Affairs on the situation, Evan glances up at a worried Cat from his report and says, "That it was self defense."