The Fifth Target

The Fifth Target – Excerpt

Chapter 1

Rachel Fenimore came back to herself like a swimmer breaking the surface—sudden, gasping, and with no memory of the depths. Rain stippled her face in cold pinpricks. A streetlamp twenty feet away flickered, its stuttering yellow-white transforming the wet pavement into a mirror of broken light. She lay on her side, one arm pinned beneath her body, the other sprawled across rough concrete. The world smelled of garbage and rain and something copper-bright and familiar that made her stomach twist before her mind could name it.

Blood.

She pushed herself to sitting, her sweatshirt clinging to her chest and stomach. Not with rain. With blood. Dark crimson patches spread across the gray fabric, still wet enough to gleam under the faltering streetlamp.

“No,” she whispered, the word dissolving into the steady drum of rain.

Her fingers trembled across the wet fabric, searching for a wound, a source. Nothing. No pain anywhere, no break in her skin. Not her blood.

A soft gurgle drew her attention.

Three feet away, a man lay curled on his side, his back to her, shoulders hunched as if warding off a blow that had already landed. His clothes—layers of jackets and shirts despite the summer night—were dark with rain and more. One hand clutched at his midsection.

“Sir?” Rachel’s voice sounded strange to her own ears, borrowed from someone else. “Sir, can you hear me?”

The man made another wet, bubbling sound. Rachel moved toward him on hands and knees, her palms slapping against the wet concrete, the knees of her jeans soaking through instantly. When she reached him, she placed a hand on his shoulder. Warmth radiated through all those layers. Still alive.

“I’m a nurse,” she said, the words automatic as breathing. “I’m going to help you.”

She rolled him onto his back with gentleness. His face was gaunt, skin stretched tight over sharp cheekbones, a graying beard matted to his chin. The whites of his eyes showed as he stared past her shoulder at something far away. A horrible sucking sound accompanied each shallow breath.

Rachel’s training took over, pushing aside confusion. She placed her fingers against his throat, feeling for a pulse. It fluttered beneath her touch, fast and thready.

She looked down at his midsection, where his hands were clutched. Blood seeped between his fingers, mixing with the rain. She moved his hands away and caught her breath. The wound gaped open beneath his sternum, a deep puncture that had torn upward through vital organs. With each struggling breath, pink froth bubbled from the opening.

His lung was collapsed. And from the amount of blood, something else was hit too. His liver maybe. Or his spleen.

“What’s your name?” she asked, though she knew he couldn’t answer. His lips moved silently, eyes rolling. “I’m Rachel. I’m going to get help.”

There would be no help. There was nothing to be done for a wound like this, not here in an alley with nothing but weeds as witnesses. Not with her bare hands. He needed surgery, blood, drainage tubes. He needed a hospital ten minutes ago.

“Hang on,” she said, the words pointless. She fumbled in her pocket for her phone, her fingers leaving smears of blood on the screen as she pulled it out.

The man had a name. All men did. But she didn’t know it. In the hospital, he would be a John Doe until someone identified him. Here, in this rain-slicked alley with death already settling into his features, he was just a stranger. No, not even that. He was a patient. The last patient she would ever fail.

She knew his face now, though. Gray-white beneath the weather-beaten tan. Eyes a pale blue that was turning milky even as she watched. Late fifties, maybe older—hard living aged a person faster than calendar years.

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” The voice on the other end of the line was clear, professional.

“I need an ambulance,” Rachel said, her voice cracking. “There’s been a stabbing.” She looked up at the street sign visible at the mouth of the alley. “Corner of 8th and Porter, in the alley behind the Chinese restaurant.” She swallowed hard. “Hurry. He’s critical.”

“Is the victim conscious?”

Rachel looked down at the man. His eyes were still open, but no one was home anymore. She pressed her fingers to his throat again. Nothing.

“No,” she said. “No pulse. I’m starting CPR.”

She set the phone down without ending the call, positioned her hands over the man’s sternum, and began compressions. It was futile. With that wound, she was only pushing more blood out of his body. But she couldn’t stop. Not yet. Not while someone on the other end of the line was listening.

One-two-three-four. She counted silently as she pushed down on his chest. The rain mingled with sweat on her forehead, dripped into her eyes. Blood seeped between her fingers.

What am I doing here? The thought struck her between compressions. I was at home. In bed. I took my medication. I did everything right.

The sleepwalking had begun when she was eight—her parents finding her in the kitchen, or curled up on the couch. Minor incidents that grew worse as she aged. In college, her roommate had woken to find Rachel trying to leave their dorm room at three in the morning, fully dressed. After that, locks with keys she kept far from her bed. Medication. A sleep specialist who told her it was stress-related.

For five years, she’d been careful. Controlled. Few incidents, nothing dramatic.

Until this.

She had gone to bed at ten in her apartment, six blocks from this alley. She had taken her medication with a glass of water. She had checked the locks twice. And then—

Nothing. Just darkness between closing her eyes and waking up here.

But the blood. God, the blood on her clothes. On her hands. This man, with a wound that could have been made by a knife. A knife she might have held.

The sound of a distant siren wailed over the rain. Rachel’s hands stilled on the man’s chest.

She looked down at her bloody clothes, at her bloody hands. At this man, a stranger, dead beneath her fingers, his blood literally on her hands. She took a deep breath.

The flicker of the streetlamp intensified, throwing wild shadows across the alley walls. For the first time, Rachel noticed a metal dumpster hulking behind her, its green paint peeling. A stack of broken pallets leaned against the restaurant’s back door. A small dark movement that was either a large rat or a small cat. No witnesses. No cameras that she could see.

Just her and a dead man in the rain.

And a siren getting closer.

The rain fell harder now, plastering her hair to her scalp, running in rivulets down her neck and beneath her blood-soaked sweatshirt. She sat back on her heels beside the man’s body—not a patient anymore, just a body—and stared at her hands, sticky with someone else’s life. The siren wailed closer, then cut off abruptly. First responders, arriving at the scene. Police would be with them. They would ask questions she couldn’t answer.

What happened here?

How did you find him?

Why are you covered in blood?

Rachel pressed her palms against her thighs, leaving dark handprints on her jeans. Her sleepwalking episodes had never taken her this far from home before. Never for this long. Never with such consequences.

She had walked six blocks in her sleep. Had she ever done something so bad?

Once, at nineteen, she’d woken up in her dormitory’s common room with a kitchen knife in her hand. Her roommate had found her standing there, staring at nothing, gripping the handle so tight her knuckles were white. Rachel had no memory of taking it from the drawer. No memory of what she’d planned to do with it.

The sleepwalking always worsened with stress. Finals week. Bad breakups. The first month at a new job. Her therapist said it was her subconscious mind trying to resolve problems her conscious mind couldn’t.

But what problem was her mind trying to solve with this man’s blood?

“I couldn’t have,” she whispered to herself, but the words sounded hollow against the drumming rain. “I’m a nurse. I save people.”

The siren had stopped, but no red and blue lights painted the alley walls yet. They must have stopped on the main street. Any minute now, flashlight beams would sweep the alley, find her sitting there with a dead man and his blood all over her.

Rachel’s breath quickened. Her heart knew what was coming. Arrest. Questions. Headlines.

NURSE ARRESTED IN HOMELESS MAN’S MURDER.

She could claim innocence, tell them about her sleepwalking. But what jury would believe her? What hospital would ever hire her again? Her entire career, the only thing she’d ever wanted to do, would be over. Eight years of education and training reduced to an asterisk: *Lost license after being charged with murder.

“I didn’t do this,” she said to the dead man, as if he could absolve her. His open eyes reflected the flickering streetlight. Accusing her.

Rachel stood on legs gone wooden with dread. Water ran down her face—rain or tears, she couldn’t tell anymore. She looked down at the man one last time.

He wore three layers of clothes despite the summer night: a faded denim jacket over a flannel shirt over what might have been a thermal undershirt. All soaked through with rain and blood.

What was his name? Had she asked? It was unimportant. More important was his condition, his wound, his pulse. Professional to the end. But now she wanted to know. Needed to know.

Because he wasn’t just a body. He was a person, and people deserved names, especially when they died alone in the rain.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, though she didn’t know what she was apologizing for. For not being able to save him? For leaving him? For something worse she couldn’t remember?

A thin beam of light swept across the mouth of the alley, thirty feet away. A flashlight. Voices murmured, indistinct beneath the rain.

“The call said the alley behind the Golden Dragon—”

“This one here—”

The blue and red strobe of police lights colored the alley walls, diffused by the rain into watercolor smears that crept closer with each pulse. Rachel’s medical training and her duty as a citizen told her to stay. To explain what she knew, which was almost nothing. To help identify the man, give what details she could about his wounds.

She heard a car door slam. The sound punched through her, primal and final.

Rachel turned and ran deeper into the alley, away from the light. Her sneakers slapped against wet pavement, splashing through puddles. The alley doglegged left, then right, emerging onto a narrow one-way street lined with parked cars. She kept running, the stitch in her side growing with each step, the blood on her clothes growing tacky as it thickened.

Where was she going? Home was to the east, but she couldn’t go there. Her clothes, her appearance—someone would notice, would call the police. A woman covered in blood running through the streets after midnight? She wouldn’t make it two blocks.

Think. Think. Rachel forced herself to slow, to stop beneath the awning of a closed bakery. She stood in the shadows, watching the empty street, trying to steady her breathing.

She needed to get inside somewhere. Needed to get clean. Needed to think.

The YMCA was three blocks south. They had showers. They had lockers where members could leave clothes. They were open 24 hours.

And she had a membership card in the pocket of her jeans.

No damned way could she show up like this.

She pushed away from the wall and started walking, shoulders hunched against the rain. Each step felt like moving through mud, her body resisting the direction her mind had chosen. A car passed, headlights sweeping over her. She ducked her head, turned to examine a dark storefront as if interested in whatever was displayed there. The car continued on.

Two blocks later, she heard sirens again, closer this time. More units responding. She pictured the police spreading out from the alley, looking for witnesses, checking nearby streets.

Looking for her.

She broke into a run again, no longer caring if she looked suspicious. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, no longer washing the blood from her clothes. She ran with her head down, arms pumping, breath coming in ragged gasps.

At the next corner, blue and red lights flashed a quarter-mile down the cross street. Rachel froze, then bolted in the opposite direction. She ran past shuttered storefronts and darkened apartment buildings, past a late-night convenience store where the clerk watched her pass with wide eyes, past a taxi letting out passengers who turned to stare.

She ran until the buildings around her became unfamiliar, until she no longer recognized the street names, until her legs threatened to buckle beneath her. Still, she ran.

Away from the body in the alley.

Away from the name she would never know.

Away from a truth she wasn’t sure she could face.

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