Blood of My Blood by Barry Lyga Page B

edge of panicked laughter. Connie realized she’d been screaming the whole time. Her adrenaline had whited out all sound until now. “Run, Connie!”
    Billy showed impressive fortitude for a man who’d just had his balls mashed against her knee—he was gasping for breath, but he single-mindedly, doggedly, reached out forher again. Connie spun back to the window. The opening beckoned her, lined with sharp glass teeth.
    No choice. No time. She couldn’t think, couldn’t even pause.
    She covered her face with her arms and launched herself through the window headfirst. The shards scraped and tore at her, slicing furrows along her arms and snapping off as they caught on and ripped her clothes. But she was through the window. Through the window and onto a fire escape and—
    And Billy’s hand was locked around her ankle.
    Connie lay half in, half out the window, glass studding her along her arms and torso. As she twisted to turn her gaze to Billy, her weight drove glass deeper into her. She barely even noticed. All her senses were filled with Billy, with the gleam in his eye as he leaned toward her through the window. That gleam—that glow he seemed to exude—filled her sight and even her hearing and touch and smell. She could
taste
it.
    She kicked with her free foot. A piece of glass slashed up her calf, but she didn’t care. She cared only that she managed to land a blow against Billy, just enough that he relaxed his grip on her ankle. She jerked away from him, spilling onto the fire escape, tumbling. She saw the sky through the fire escape above, then the filthy alley floor one story below.
    Barely able to move, shaking with adrenaline, she pulled herself to the ladder. Billy knocked the remaining shards of glass out of the window frame and started to climb through.
    Footsteps behind her. So near. She didn’t dare take the moment to look back. She flung herself at the ladder.
    The opening was there, but the ladder was retracted all the way up. She couldn’t figure out how to lower it, so without thinking, she just dragged herself to the lip—
    Only one story really only one story only about ten feet or so that’s all it is that’s all
    —and dropped through feetfirst.
    A dizzying moment of breathless descent. A cry from Billy, above.
    She landed on her left foot a half second before her right touched down. Something very much like a shot of electricity blasted up her left leg, pins and needles along every inch of flesh, sunk deep into every muscle. She exhaled a
WHOOF!
and stumbled forward, nearly falling down but somehow managing to keep her feet under her, where they belonged.
    run run run run run run
    When her left foot came down, that electricity sizzled again, and she nearly screamed in pain, but she needed her breath for running. She hissed into the agony and forced herself to run, hobbling as quickly as she could, not caring which direction she went, not paying attention to where she was, just propelling herself forward as fast as she could go, each step a mad, hurtful rush.
    Each step taking her farther from Billy Dent.

CHAPTER 13
    Hughes didn’t want to coordinate his efforts to catch Billy Dent from the kitchen of the Hat Killer’s apartment, but right now he had no choice. He had uniforms rushing to him constantly, giving him updates every minute or so, and he wasn’t about to take the time to drive back to the precinct. He’d had someone get Hershey’s family to a hotel for the night about an hour ago and had set up camp at the table where—he was keenly aware—the Hat Killer had eaten dinner every night.
    Currently, he was on the phone with his captain, Niles Montgomery, trying to get through the man’s head that they needed to shut down Brooklyn entirely.
    “I’m talking buses, subways, tunnels,” Hughes went on. “Close the bridges.…”
    “Lou, I’m not closing down the entire borough just because you have—”
    “Captain, look—we’ve never been closer to Billy Dentthan we are