Lie Like a Villain

Chapter 21 || What's Your Emergency?

Jason's blood boiled. His arm—the one that wasn't intermittently screaming at him—stayed around Rachel's shoulder as they walked back toward the rail yard. He was half-convinced she'd shake him off, but she didn't, and concern fed his roiling anger. If he'd stayed in the parking lot where she'd told him to meet her, he never would have seen what was going on. He never would have even known anything wrong, not until the sun set and she still hadn't returned. Or until she did stumble back, clothes torn, eyes down, shoulders hunched to ward off his questions—

His fingers curled, and he turned them into his palm to keep from hurting her. "Come here," he said, steering her toward an old library with a wide flight of stairs leading down to the street. "Let's sit here a minute."

His arm was throbbing in time with his pounding head, but that wasn't why he stopped. After settling them onto the cold concrete, he rummaged in the new backpack to pull out the burner he'd bought. He punched in the number, and it rang.

"What are you doing?" Rachel muttered, and he put a finger to his lips.

"911," the operator answered. "What's your emergency?"

"I'd like to report an assault on an alley near West 18th and Canal street. The girl got away, but her attacker is lying in the alley. You need to find him before he runs off. Green jacket, white shirt, five ten, dark close-cropped hair."

"Sir—"

Click. Jason pocketed the phone.

Rachel shifted away from him. "That was freaking dumb."

"He shouldn't be on the street." He looked over the scrape on her face, still trailing blood. "We need to clean that up. There'll be bathrooms inside." He rose and offered her his hand.

She pushed up without it. "They won't arrest him just because you called."

"Unless they've already been looking for him." Jason mounted the steps slowly. "Today wasn't his first brush with crime."

"You know that, huh?"

Her voice begged for a fight, but he didn't want to argue with her. His steps carried him steadily up.

"And what about me?" Rachel padded after him, spinning him by his good shoulder as they reached the landing. He winced. "You gonna turn me in too? I do something you don't like? You gonna tattle on me?"

"You think that's what I'm doing?" His brow drew, hurt mingling with anger. "Tattling?"

"You don't have the first idea what our lives are like!"

Our lives, she said, as if she was more on the side of that animal of a man than she was on his. Disgust laced Jason's voice. "Right, I see, because he's simply forced to live that way. He doesn't have any other choice than to attack girls on the street."

"Like you would know, Suburbia!" She tried to shove him, and he caught her wrist gently.

"I know people," he insisted. "That was a predator." He cut off the flow of facts that would do nothing to calm her nerves: that most assaults happen between people who know each other; that if someone were to assault a stranger, it'd be much less risky to take place somewhere quiet and out of the way; that there was no reason to run across town in broad daylight—unless chasing was some sick part of the game.

She pulled, and he let go of her easily. But she didn't turn or walk away. She held her back straight, her chin up. Still, despite the angry lines of her face, her eyes shone.

Jason's voice softened. "You joke about me being psycho, Rachel. He was a psycho. That's not one of your friends back home. That's not me picking on you or your lifestyle. That is a rabid wolf."