Under Wraps by Hannah Jayne Page A

remembered.

Chapter Eight
     
    When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Opie’s face hovering above me, his watery eyes studying my forehead. His big nostrils flared, and I heard him say, “She’s coming around, sir.”
    I tried to sit up, but my head and shoulders protested, the searing pain roaring through my body. My head throbbed, felt raw and cold above my eye, and my stomach seemed to curl over on itself. I blinked twice, trying to avoid the angry fluorescent glare above my head.
    “Where am I?” I finally muttered, my lips sticky and stiff.
    “She’s talking!” Opie said, his small hazel eyes not leaving mine. “What should I do?”
    Police Chief Oliver looked down on me next, the dark brown of his eyes highlighting the huge purple bags underneath them. He was an enormous walrus of a man with a heaving chest puffed out and decorated with police paraphernalia, and a fine trail of drying marinara sauce on his navy blue tie. He crouched so that he was eye level with me.
    “Are you okay, Miss Lawson?” he asked slowly, enunciating every word.
    “I don’t know,” I said, trying to take in the scene. “What happened?”
    The chief stepped back and clapped Opie on the back. He said, “She’s going to be okay, Franks. Let’s just give her some room,” and both men stepped away from me.
    I rolled my head, my skull filling with a new needling, angry pain. I tried to blink it away and then focused on the wall in front of me until I realized that I was stretched out on a sticky pleather sofa in an office that smelled of feet and corn chips and was stacked with bargain basement office furniture. “Where am I?” I repeated.
    “It’s okay, Sophie. You’re fine. You’re in my office,” the police chief answered, and I felt his warm hand closing over my wrist, felt his finger find my pulse point and pause. “Don’t try to move,” he said when I attempted to sit up again. “You had quite a scare out there tonight.”
    I struggled to a sitting position despite Chief Oliver’s warning, and yelped at the dull ache that blossomed from my shoulder and inched across my chest. I gently touched the cool spot above my eyebrow and winced, pulling my fingers away and examining the sticky traces of drying blood on them. “Am I dead?” I asked mournfully.
    Opie grinned stupidly, and Chief Oliver set my wrist down, patting my hand gingerly.
    “No, honey, you’re just fine. It seems you ran into”—I watched his eyes shift uncomfortably—“a bad element. What were you doing all alone in the middle of the night anyway?”
    I thought of UDA, of Mr. Sampson and the broken chains. “Looking for my kitty,” I answered finally.
    “Well, you should do that in the daylight hours and in a better part of town. You’ve got a pretty nasty bump on your head and you’re a little bruised up, but I think you’re going to be just fine. Officer Franks can drive you home.”
    “No,” I said, planting my feet firmly on the floor. “I ran into a bad element? What does that mean? What happened to me? What, exactly, happened?”
    I might have been paranoid, but I would almost swear that Officer Opie and Chief Oliver shared a look. I considered that it could have been the “nutty cat lady is getting hysterical” look, but I thought there was more to it. “Please,” I said. “I need to know.”
    “Gangbangers, likely,” the chief said, nodding officially.
    “Gangbangers?” I asked skeptically.
    Though I didn’t remember much of the night and admittedly, my experience with gangs could be summed up by the toe-tapping musical brawl from West Side Story, I would have been willing to bet money that today’s gangs hadn’t evolved to bared teeth, claws, and superhuman strength. I winced again when I took a deep breath that sent pinpricks of pain throughout my chest and back. “You’re sure it was a gang? Did you see them? Did you see anyone?”
    The chief raised one challenging eyebrow, and Opie nodded his head