LOVING HER SOUL MATE (23 page)

“Are you decent?” he yelled to
her.

Shay laughed, certain he was
joking.
 
“I’ll be right there, Ronnie,”
she yelled back from, just as he imagined, the bedroom.

But he didn’t wait for her to come
to him.
 
He went to her.
 
He moved down the hall toward the sound of
her movements like some animal on the prowl. Shay, in her bedroom, could hear
his footsteps heading her way too, but was fortunately already dressed and was
just combing down her once-wild hair.

“I told you I was coming, Ronnie,”
she said, heading out of her bedroom.
 
“I
had to-”

“Put on your clothes?” Ronnie
asked as he stood in the doorway, blocking her path.

Shay looked at him.
 
“Put on my . . .” She smiled.
 
“What are you talking about?
 
And move out of the way.”

She attempted to move pass him
again.
 
But this time he pushed her
back.
 
“What was Malone doing here?”

Shay stared at Ronnie.
 
What was his problem?
 
“That’s none of your business,” she said.

Ronnie shook his head.
 
“I don’t believe you.
 
John Malone?
 
Are you serious?
 
You’re fucking
that
player?”

“Okay, now, you’re weirding me out
here.”

But Ronnie couldn’t stop shaking
his head.
 
He couldn’t stop behaving as
if he was some scorned man who knew the deal all along.
 
Shay was so baffled that she could barely
comprehend the moment.
 
She was so
confused that she didn’t see the danger.

“You women are all alike,” Ronnie
said, as if a light bulb had suddenly gone off in his head.
 
“All you want is a big dick.
 
That’s all you ladies want.
 
A big fucking dick!
 
Not a good guy.
 
Not a man who treats you with nothing but
respect.
 
Not a man who has taken you
under his wings and taught you the ropes.
 
Not a man who lays awake every night wondering if you’re okay.
 
You want a thug!”
 

Then he pushed Shay violently,
causing her to fall.
 
“Well I got your
thug right here!” he yelled as he slammed the bedroom door, unzipped his pants,
and began coming toward her.

Shay’s confusion was now replaced
with anger.
 
She saw the danger clearly
now.
 
She wasn’t fighting Ronnie anymore,
but some man she didn’t know at all.
 
Some monster.
 
She
scooted on her butt toward the nightstand.
 
She grabbed the lamp so hard that it popped out of its socket, taking
the dangling socket cover with it.
 
And
she threw it at Ronnie, the entire lamp.
 
But he batted it away as if it was a feather, and it crashed to the
floor.
 

She began throwing everything she
could get her hands on, the brush, the telephone,
the
books she read at night, as she scrambled to get on her feet.
 
But he was upon her too quickly, and he
grabbed her by the catch of her jersey, ripping it he grabbed so hard, and
slung her to her feet.
 

“I got your thug right here!” he
yelled again as he balled up his fist, lifted his arm as high as it could go,
and then crashed that fist against her face with a blow that nearly knocked her
unconscious.
 
Her knees buckled by the
impact of the blow.
 
And he began hitting
her again and again, her blood gushing out all over him, but he wouldn’t stop
pounding her.

But she was fighting back,
throwing punches that never landed, hitting and hitting and screaming as she
hit.
 
She was calling John’s name. Was
John still out there?
  
He could still be
in her driveway while Ronnie was nearly killing her!
 
She fought with all she had.

She was fighting against his every
move, trying with what little strength she had left to beat him back.
 
She was scratching and clawing but he was so
much larger than she was, and so much stronger.
 
She could barely see for the blood, and her heartbeat was beginning to
grow faint.
 
She felt barely alive.

And the pain.
 
It was excruciating.
 
She couldn’t make sense of any of it.
 
This was Ronnie, wasn’t it?
 
Her mentor?
 
Her partner at the Tribune?
 
The one guy she thought was a good guy?
 
Why would one of the good guys, she wondered,
be brutalizing her like this?
 

And as every lick he laid on her
drove her closer to unconsciousness, as he was spewing all manner of evil words
she could no longer understand, all she could think about was little things.
 

Sweet things.
 

Like the hopefulness she felt
tonight, when John Malone had her in his arms.

John stooped down at the body in
the street, some young drug dealer with dreads, and all he could think about
was the senselessness.
 
Another kid gone, and for what?
 
He stood erect.

“They’re getting younger,” he said
to Officer Wayne Peete, who was young himself.

“Yes, sir,” Peete replied.
 
“And dumber.”

John snorted.
 
“You got that right.”

“Can we take him now, Cap?” the
medical examiner asked.
 
They had been
waiting for John to arrive and view the body.

“Yes,” he said.
 
“You can bag him.”

“Thank-you,” the silver-haired
coroner replied.
 
“All right, guys, we’re
on.”
 
He began to instruct his
people.
 
John and Peete looked on.
 

“What did you find on him?” John
asked as they watched the medical examiner’s team.

“A few dime bags,” Peete replied.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.
 
He apparently was near the end of his sales
for the night.”

“Apparently,” John replied.
 

“Sir,” another officer said as he
approached his captain.

“Yeah, Mike, what is it?”

“Call just came in.
 
An assault over on
Bluestone Road.
 
Is it okay if
me
and Collins head on over there?”

“Bluestone?”
John asked.

“Yes, sir.
 
They say the lady got
worked over pretty badly.”

John’s heart pounded.
 
“What lady?” he asked and then braced
himself.
 
Somehow he knew.
 
But it couldn’t be.

“That
reporter.
 
Shay Turner.
 
The one that got Chief suspended.”

Peete looked at John.
 
He knew Shay too.
 

John’s heart momentarily stopped.

TEN

He jumped into his Porsche and flew through the
streets of Brady like a madman.
 
His car
wasn’t outfitted for sirens, but he didn’t care.
 
He ran red lights, blew through stop signs,
and made it to Shay’s house in a third of the normal time.
 

The house was cordoned off with police tape by the
time he arrived, and police cars were parked along the driveway and the
yard.
 
The ambulance was also there as he
got out of his car and ran across the front lawn.
 
He hadn’t been gone an hour.
 
One measly hour.
 
And now this?
 
His heart was about to pound out of his chest
as he slung open the front door, and hurried inside.

The good news, he thought as he entered the home,
was that she was the one who had apparently phoned in the incident.
 
Which meant she was still alive.
 
The bad news, he also thought, was that his
officer said she had been worked over pretty badly.

“Captain Malone, what are you doing here?” one of
those uniformed officers immediately asked when John walked in.
 
It was highly unusual for a man of John’s
rank to appear at a domestic disturbance scene, unless there was a fatality.

“Where is she?”

“The D.A.?”

“The victim,” John asked.
 
He was doing everything he could to maintain
his cool.

“Oh,” the uniform said, surprised by the wild look
in his captain’s eyes.
 
“Back
there.”
 

John walked toward the back of a house he had just
left, and toward a bedroom he was very familiar with.

“What’s he doing here?” the same cop asked the
evidence tech who was fumbling around in the living room.

“Like how should I know?” the tech responded.
 
“John Malone has been known to bang his share
of women.
 
Maybe this reporter’s one of
them.”
 
And they both snickered.

John heard their snickering but didn’t care.
 
He had to see Shay for himself.
 

Paramedics had her already on the gurney, readying
her for transport, and Craig Yannick, one of John’s detectives, was standing at
the foot of the bed.
 
John nervously
approached Shay.
 
And when he saw her
face, his heart sank.
 
Her eyes, both of
them, were swollen shut.
 
Her face was
bruised so badly that it looked to be twice its normal size.
 

“Good Lord,” John said when he saw her.
 

Yannick shook his head.
 
“Whoever did this wasn’t playing.”

“John?” Shay said, as his voice suddenly registered
from within the chaos all around her.

John hurried over to the stretcher to stand beside
her.
 
He held her hand, one of the few
parts of her body untouched.
 
“Yes, Shay,
it’s me,” he said.

“John?” she asked again.

“Don’t try to talk, sweetie,
okay
?
 
You’re going to be all right.”

Yannick looked at his boss, surprised that he would
use such a term of endearment.
 

But John was completely focused on Shay.
 
“They’re going to take good care of you,” he
said to her.
 
“We’ll get through this.”

“Ronnie,” she said to him.

John looked around.
 
Was Burk still there?
 
Could Burk
tell him who did this?
 
“Is Ronnie Burk
still around?” John asked Yannick.

“Burk?
 
The reporter?
Not that I know of.
 
I haven’t seen Ronnie Burk.”

“He’s not here, Shay,” John said.
 
“Did he leave before this happened?”

“It was Ronnie,” Shay managed to say, a tear
escaping from a tiny slit within her swollen eye.
 
“It was Ronnie.”

Yannick
looked at John,
stunned.
 
John leaned down to Shay.
 
He could hardly believe it himself.
 
“Are you saying Ronnie Burk did this to you?”

“Yes,” Shay managed to say, the pain unbearable,
but she had to let them know.
  
She had
tried to tell the other cops, but they kept confusing what she was saying.
 
“It was Ronnie.
 
Ronnie did this to me.”

“Excuse us, Captain,” the paramedics said, “but we
need to transport.”

John stood aside as they began hurrying the now
gurney-strapped patient out of the bedroom.
 

“Ronnie Burk?” Yannick said to his boss.
 
“Is she serious?”

John remembered that stupid smirk on Ronnie’s
face.
 
Remembered his
crass joke.
 
“Yes,” John
said.
 
“She’s serious.”
 
He began heading out of the bedroom, Yannick
hurrying behind him.
 
“And so am I,” he
added.