Tag: writing prompt

Rescued woman still hasn’t regained consciousness.

Watching Calico fall off the roof took decades off his life.

Garret was screaming her name and running towards the house as she seemed to float through the air in slow motion.

She was halfway down when she suddenly jerked to a stop.

it didn’t take him long to figure out why.

Dr. Daniels was leaning out the window, his hands gripping Calico’s wrists.

“You come any closer and I let her go,” Dr. Daniels called out.

“Shoot him, Garret,” Calico screeched at the same time.

“You’ll fall,” he yelled back. There was no way he was doing anything it put her in more danger than she was already in.

“Better than whatever he’ll do to me. Please. I just want to be free of him.”

The desperation in her plea hit him deep. This woman had blown into his life like a breath of fresh air, she’d tangled herself up in his hear almost immediately, and he wanted a future with her.

But she’d suffered horribly at the hands of this man, and he didn’t want her to suffer anything else. Still, he couldn’t willingly send her plummeting to what could at worst be her death, and at best would leave her with serious injuries.

“He’s never going to do it,” Dr. Daniels taunted, seemingly unperturbed by the number of weapons aimed at him. “He doesn’t love you as much as I do.”

With a roar that belied her small size, Calico yanked her body hard to the side. The movement was enough to cause Dr. Daniels to lose his balance, and then both of them were falling.

There was no way Garret was letting that man live. Not after everything he’d done. Firing off a shot at the man, he started running, wanting to catch Calico before she hit the ground, use his body to break her fall.

But he was too far away.

Forced to watch in horror as her body hit the hard ground and bounced before lying still.

As he dropped to his knees beside her no more than a couple of seconds later, his fingers went straight to her neck, pleading with the universe to let him find a pulse.

Missing woman rescued from rooftop.

It was cold out. Or maybe it was just that she was cold. Either way Calico couldn’t stop shivering.

Inside the bedroom below her she could hear Dr. Daniels raging in a fury, cursing her, his son, and life in general.

Her perch on the roof was precarious at best, the tiles were slippery because it had been raining recently. One wrong move and she’d go tumbling down to the ground below. If the fall didn’t kill her then Dr. Daniels would.

There were lights shining from the houses around her, and help felt so close but so far away. If she could just reach one then this would all be over. She could call Garret and he’d come to her and she’d finally be safe.

“Please leave,” she murmured under her breath. If Dr. Daniels would just leave the house then she’d be able to figure out a way down.

Or just scream until someone came or called the cops.

Then like a miracle the sound of sirens filled the air.

Help was coming. Someone must have seen her up here on the roof and called in the cops.

Relief had tears brimming in her eyes, tumbling free as she pushed up onto her feet, waving her arms as the flashing lights came into view.

She was saved. She was going to live.

Then she heard a sound below. Looking down she saw Dr. Daniels head sticking out the open window she’d just escape through.

He looked up.

She looked down.

He grinned.

She screamed.

Then lost her balance and fell.

Friends and family of missing nurse desperately cling to hope.

Garret stood over the discarded body, fear and hope warring inside him. The body wasn’t Calico’s, not this time anyway, but it was her ex. Derek Daniels had been almost decapitated when someone slit his neck.

Derek’s father.

DNA had proved that he was the killer, but it didn’t tell them where he was hiding out.

If the man could kill his own son with such apparent ease then killing Calico wouldn’t be at all difficult for him.

How much time left did she have?

Hours? Days? Weeks? Months?

While he would never stop hoping she was alive, Garret also knew that being alive meant she was suffering. He had no idea what her relationship with the man had been like when she’d been dating Derek, there had been no reason at the time to ask about it, the man hadn’t abducted her for no reason.

Staring down at the body, Garret knew this was Calico’s fate if he couldn’t find her in time. Maybe Dr Daniels wouldn’t slice through her neck but he’d kill her just the same.

“We got a call,” Tony rushed up beside him. His partner was a good friend, bringing him to the site despite him not even officially being released from the hospital much less back at work.

“Who? What?” Fear churned in his get. Had her body been found? Was it already too late to save her?

“Someone just called in seeing a woman climb out a second story window of a house and up onto the roof.”

“And?” There had to be more than that if the message had been passed on to Tony.

“Description matches Calico.”

Heart in your throat.

This had to work.

If it didn’t then Calico honestly wasn’t sure how much longer she’d last here. Dr. Daniels was devolving a little more each day. While he didn’t seem remorseful for killing his own son it was clear the act had affected him mentally.

He was falling apart.

Right before her eyes.

While he was feeing her, or dressing her, he would go on these huge long rants about nothing in particular. Jumping from idea to idea with no clear path between them.

She’d taken to faking sleep whenever he was around and he seemed to buy it because he’d skipped the last two doses of the sedatives.

Without as much of the drug in her system she felt more alert, stronger, and more in control than she had in days. Since he could start drugging her again any time she had to move now. If Garret was going to magically find her and rescue her he would have come for her already.

For now she was on her own.

Creeping across the bedroom, Calico carefully eased up the window. She was on the second floor, it would be a nasty drop if she slipped. Possibly survivable, but not without injury.

Only she didn’t plan on going down, she planned on going up.

She was betting on the fact that when he came in and discovered her gone, and the window open, Dr Daniels would assume she’d gone down to try to escape and would take off after her. Only he wouldn’t find her because she’d be hiding on the roof. Once she was sure he was gone she could climb down and go to a neighbour for help.

Her body was still weak, and as she swung her legs out the window she prayed she had enough strength to make this work.

Standing on the windowsill, when she reached up she could just reach the gutter. Gripping it as hard as she could she swung her legs from side to side trying to get up enough momentum that she could hook one on the gutter and pull herself up, because there was no way she could use just her hands to get her entire body weight up there.

By some miracle her plan worked, and she was just scrambling up onto the tiles when she heard the bedroom door open.

If this didn’t work she was as good as dead.

Coroner finds foreign DNA on body.

“You were right.”

Garret looked up as Tony came into his hospital room. It had been three days since he’d been found after the accident. Another almost twenty-four hours he’d wandered lost and concussed in the forest.

Four days that Calico had been in the hands of a madman.

“About what?”

“DNA found on the last victim was a match to a close relative of Derek Daniels,” Tony informed him.

“His father.”

“Yep. You were right the old guy is involved. I don’t know whether it was both of them at first, or if it was Derek, or Dr. Daniels, but regardless he was the one who caused the crash.”

“And the one who took Calico.” He might not have known her long, but the ache in his chest told the story of how deep he’d fallen for her.

It sucked being stuck here instead of out looking for Calico, and he was forever grateful that Tony was keeping him in the loop.

When his partner’s phone rang, he felt a sinking feeling in his gut.

Bad news.

“Hello?” Tony said into the phone.

For the next sixty seconds or so Garret was forced to sit there and wait for news, unable to make a guess at who was on the other end of the line or what they were saying.

“What is it?” he demanded the second Tony disconnected the call.

“They found a body.”

The bottom dropped out of his world. “Who’s?”