Chapter Text
The Mid-Wilshire unit worked its way through late afternoon traffic, lights fading through intersections as the sun dropped low over the city and warmed the cruiser’s dash.
Inside the car, Lucy listened to dispatch traffic, until one call came in.
“All units, be advised. Multiple 9-1-1 calls reporting a possible 415 in progress, shouting heard in the vicinity of the abandoned commercial building near Desert Ridge Road. One caller also reports what may be gunfire. Use caution. No confirmed victim.”
Lucy’s expression changed immediately.
Her hand moved to the radio.
“7-Lincoln-300,” she said clearly. “Show me responding.”
“Copy, Lincoln-300.”
It was quiet out there, desert-dry and empty, the kind of street where a disturbance call usually meant nothing more than a couple of squatters arguing over a bottle.
She pulled up in front of the store, gravel crunching under the tires, and keyed her radio before she'd even unbuckled.
-"Dispatch, this is 7 Lincoln-300, I'm on scene,show me code 6."
The building in front of her looked dead, windows long gone dark with dust, a faded sign hanging by one bolt and for half a second she let herself believe this was going to be nothing,when three men with ski masks , came out from around the side of the building so fast she barely registered movement before they were already on her, two of them closing in near her window, guns raised. She caught the third one only at the edge of her vision, standing near the passenger door. Her hand was already moving toward the radio clipped to her belt.
-"Shit what's happening!" She mutters to herself
-"Out of the car slowly with your hands in the air." The voice was low, which somehow made it worse.
Lucy's pulse was hammering but her hands stayed steady out of pure muscle memory as she popped the door handle, stalling, her fingers brushing for the radio one more time ..
That's when a shot came from the passenger side. The window exploded inward in a spray of glass before she even heard the crack of it, and the bullet caught her high in the shoulder, spinning her half around in the seat. For a second there was no pain at all, just a strange heavy shove, and then it arrived all at once, a white-hot burn that pulled a whimper out of her before she could stop it. Blood was already running down her arm, spattering dark against the door panel, soaking into the fabric of her uniform.
-"Out. Now. Don't make this worse."
L: "Easy," she said calmly. "You don't want to do this."
"Oh, we absolutely do."
She didn't have a choice left to make. Lucy got her good arm under her and pushed herself out of the seat, the world tilting sideways, her vision narrowing to a tunnel of gray asphalt and the dull shine of gun barrels. She was halfway out of the car, one foot finding the ground, when the butt of a pistol came down against the side of her head. She didn't feel herself fall.
There was just the sky, then the ground, then nothing , but not before two kicks landed against her ribs, hard enough that even unconscious her body curled instinctively away from them, a reflex with nobody left awake to feel it.
-"That's enough. Load her in."
A black SUV had already pulled around from somewhere behind the building, backing up fast until its rear door was nearly flush against the men standing over her. They didn't bother being gentle. They took her by the arms and dragged her, her boots scraping twin lines through the gravel, a smear of blood trailing behind her from the shoulder wound, dark and wet against the pale dirt. They threw her into the back of the SUV like she weighed nothing, climbed in after her, and the doors slammed shut.
The SUV pulled away without urgency, just a vehicle leaving a quiet street, like it had every right to be there.
Behind it, Lucy's patrol car sat abandoned with its door hanging open, the window shattered, blood drying dark on the seat and the asphalt below it. The radio she'd been reaching for crackled faintly with static, still open, still listening to a silence no one was left to answer.