But if I gave in to my fear, Harry would mention it in the arrest report. Then it would be back to riding patrol and answering radio calls, where I got even less respect.

I forced myself to move forward. Now my gun was pointing in front of me, toward the direction of the sound. The Beretta was double action and protocol dictated it stayed uncocked. The harder pull meant less accidental shootings. Theoretically, at least. My finger was so tight on the trigger that a strong breeze would have caused me to fire.

“You see him?” Harry asked. I heard him in my earpiece, but I also heard him in the alley, somewhere ahead.

“Not yet.”

“Maybe he’s screaming because he can’t stand the smell.”

I didn’t think that was the case. I’d heard my share of screams on the Job. Screams of joy. Screams of sorrow. Screams of pain.

This was a scream of terror.

A clanging sound, only a few yards away from me. A Dumpster. I held my breath, heard whimpering coming from inside.

“He’s in a Dumptser,” I told Harry.

“Probably sitting in a big pile of rats.”

I approached quickly. It was dark, but I could see the Dumpster lid was open.

“This is the police!” I shouted, hoping my voice didn’t quaver. “Raise your hands up where I can see them!”

Bald Guy complied. But there was something wrong. Rather than two hands, I counted three.

I moved closer, and realized the third hand wasn’t his. It belonged to a woman.

And it wasn’t attached to the rest of her.

I felt someone touch my shoulder and jumped back. It was Harry.

“Looks like he got you a birthday present, Jackie. Quite a handy guy.”

My stomach seized up, then I bent over and vomited, soaking my broken shoes and getting it caught in the fake curls hanging in front of my face. When I heaved for the final time, the transmitter popped free of my bustier and plonked into the puddle of puke.

“Happy twenty-ninth,” Harry said.

The following is an excerpt of Killers by Blake Crouch and Jack Kilborn.

Donaldson

“…multiple fractures of the clavicle, humerus, radius and ulna, a dislocated shoulder, a dislocated elbow, multiple contusions and lacerations, including skin abrasions covering about thirty percent of his body. A concussion. Plus the son of a bitch lost six teeth and an ear.”

The man speaking had a high-pitched voice, with a slight southern lilt.

“How’d it happen?” This voice was Latino, probably Mexican.

“Chained to the back of his own car, which went down the side of a goddamn mountain.”

“Poor guy.”

“Don’t waste any tears on this one. See the deputy outside? Soon as this bastard wakes up, he’s getting arrested. This dude is a serial killer. Name is Gregory Donaldson. Likes to cut up hitchhikers. Did all kinds of crazy, sick shit to them. Hear tell, he murdered more than fifty people.”

Low whistle from the Mexican. “Goddamn. Looks like he got what was coming to him.”

“You said it, brother. There’s a special room in hell for people like this.”

Donaldson peeked his eyes open. The men in his hospital room wore scrubs, the kind with novelty print patterns that were supposed to cheer up patients. One of them was chubby, early thirties, in need of a shave. The other was short, Hispanic, and even from ten feet away Donaldson could smell his armpit stains.

Donaldson figured they were orderlies. Beyond them, through the doorway, he saw the sheriff’s deputy the white guy had mentioned, a portly man in a khaki uniform. He sat in a wooden chair reading a magazine called Handgun Enthusiast. The gun on his belt had a snap over the holster.

Donaldson had been awake for a few hours, faking unconsciousness to avoid being asked questions, biding his time until he figured out a plan.

As situations went, this one was dire. Even in the grip of the morphine haze courtesy of his IV, Donaldson hurt. He hurt bad. His left arm felt like it had been yanked out, chewed up, and sewn back on upside-down. The neck brace was cruel stainless steel, screwed onto his scalp and shoulders, making it impossible to turn his head.

Donaldson peered down at the substantial girth of his body. A thin blanket covered his protruding gut. His arm was a mess, swollen to twice its normal size, purple and scabby with surgical pins and clamps holding his shattered bones in place. The pins poked through the flesh in half a dozen places.

He touched the side of his head, felt a bandage on his cheek and another that went up over his ear. Correction—one that went up over where his ear used to be.

Donaldson tried wiggling his toes, and that ignited his legs. He felt like he was lying on a hot skillet with the flames growing larger. Skin abrasions covering thirty percent of his body. That was the clinical explanation. Fucking agony was a much more appropriate description.

Stronger than the pain was a slithering, palpable fear. Donaldson couldn’t go to prison. He was too old for that and cherished his freedom. He wondered how the authorities knew who he was, what he was. Probably that damn female cop from the truck stop a week ago.

Lieutenant Jacqueline Fucking Daniels. How he’d love to have another go at her.

But she wasn’t the one who incensed him to the point where the pain and the fear became secondary. She wasn’t the true object of his hate. The one who made him twitch with rage and need.

That particular emotion was reserved for the one who put him in this hospital. The one who mangled his body by handcuffing him to the back of his own car. The one who put an end to a murder spree which had lasted almost thirty years, and delivered him right into the hands of the authorities.

Lucy.

Thinking about Lucy filled Donaldson with something more than fear. Something that transcended the pain. He absolutely ached for revenge. The thought of having Lucy all to himself, of doing things to her that made his past indiscretions seem tame by comparison, was so powerful it made him salivate.

He had a fuzzy, final memory of her. The two of them tangled up in each other once the car had mercifully hit a tree. The blood on each so thick it turned the dirt they’d been dragged through into mud. Twisted limbs. Broken bodies. Donaldson peeking open an eye, staring at her, watching her chest rise and fall.

Donaldson clenched his jaw, his few remaining teeth still loose in their sockets.

Please, please, please let her still be alive.

He glanced down at his good hand, saw the push button mechanism for the morphine drip, and gave himself a dose.

It helped with the pain.

It even helped with the fear.

But it didn’t help with the need.

Donaldson closed his eyes. But he wasn’t sleeping. He was plotting.

Plotting on how to get out of there and find Lucy.

The first step was getting rid of the fucking pig by the door.

“I know you aren’t asleep. Your breathing isn’t deep enough.”

Donaldson opened his eyes and stared at the doctor standing next to the bed. The man was tall, wide shouldered, sneer lines on his face. He looked like a fucking Ken doll. The name tag pinned to his lab coat read Lanz.

“Where am I?” Donaldson asked. His throat hurt. Raw from all the screaming he’d done while being dragged behind the car. His missing teeth made words hard to form.

“Blessed Crucifixion Hospital. They found you in a ravine, air-evacced you in. I’m performing your first skin graft later today. Doesn’t seem to be much of a reason for it, seeing how the state is going to execute you.”