The First Cut by Dianne Emley Page A

weapon.
    Without warning, the realtor ran toward her, yanking a six-inch utility knife from the wood block on the island. She pulled her gun. He slashed the back of her hand. She fired and missed. He jammed the knife into her neck. She discharged the gun again but he had his hand on the muzzle, directing it away from him.
    Seconds passed. She felt each one. Her hand went to the knife in her neck. The heat of her blood startled her. While she wavered on her feet, he kept his hand on her gun. He looped the other around her waist, holding her up, pressing her against him. His face touched hers. He was breathing through his mouth. She felt his breath. It was fresh, smelling of mint. His eyes were bright, their pupils large. He didn’t move his intense gaze from her. He didn’t want to miss a thing. It was as if they were making love.
    She heard the dispatcher nattering into her earphone. She dropped her hand to the choker mike but he pulled it away before she could key it.
    Her earphone blasted three sharp tones. The sergeant had instructed dispatch to try to raise her.
    There was knocking at the front door. A male voice yelled “Police!” Sirens approached.
    The realtor blinked and sighed. Vining later decided he was wistful, as if taking leave of a lover whom he would never see again. She dropped to her knees, a posture of submission. At the sound of heavy, rapid footsteps across the hardwood floor, the realtor bolted away, tripping on her legs, then ran downstairs to the basement. They’d later learned he’d escaped through a basement door that led into the backyard, and then skirted through a hole he’d cut in the cedar plank fence that was hidden by thick shrubbery.
    When the unwelcome image of his last longing look returned to her in nightmares, she felt she knew what he had been thinking. He was sad he wouldn’t be there to see her die.
    There was shouting and cursing as officers overwhelmed the kitchen. They darted throughout the house and outside, lurching over her body that was facedown on the blood-slick floor. An officer kneeled beside her. She could tell he was trying to keep his panic under control as he gave instructions into his radio. His voice was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Then she barely heard it. Then it didn’t matter. On the floor, her hand was near her neck. She opened her fingers to touch the steel blade jutting from her skin that seemed too accommodating of the intrusion. It was the most peculiar thing she’d ever felt.
    Sergeant Early’s voice jolted her back to the present. “Nan, you’re entering this case with your objectivity already shot.”
    She was right, but Vining wasn’t giving up that easily. She spun it.
    “Sarge, all of us bring our pasts and attitudes to the job. No one is truly objective. No one is clean. That’s reality.”
    “Okay. Since we’re being real, Kissick told me he believes you had a panic attack this morning. What should I know about that?”
    She’d wondered when it would come up. “That was a blip. It didn’t affect my work.”
    “What if it does the next time?”
    “There won’t be a next time.” She hoped.
    “And if there is?”
    All the what ifs, Vining thought. The world was wringing its hands with what ifs. Vining had experienced her what if and it had washed away the hesitation from her life, like the incoming tide eroding a sand castle. Because she hesitated, T. B. Mann was free.
    They were distracted by Kissick accompanying two men into the department.
    Vining summed up her position. “Sergeant Early, you need me and I need to work this case.” Her demeanor dared her to say otherwise.
    The sergeant slowly exhaled. “Go ahead into the conference room. I’ll be in shortly.”
    Vining nodded and left.
    She didn’t breathe a sigh of relief. Early wasn’t going to pull her off the case. Vining just had to wait until Early arrived at that conclusion herself. It was a different approach from the old Nan. Before, she would have