A Family Divided (Dividing Line #3) by Heather Atkinson Read Free Book Online Page B

wanted to be challenged again. Alex wandered through her mind. She was losing his friendship, she was certain of that, their lives had deviated too much. The thought made her sad but also apprehensive. He was not someone she wanted as an enemy. Even though she was a Law now, Alex still felt to be as much her brother-in-law as Jez did.
    She gathered up her things and headed back downstairs to the club, which was substantially busier than before she went upstairs. At least The Slasher wasn ’t affecting business. The dance floor was crowded and she had to fight her way through the press of bodies towards the exit, the bouncers stern-faced as they kept an eye out for any trouble. Since The Slasher had gone to work they’d been on high alert.
    She was almost at the door when she felt something warm and wet splatter her bare left arm and the left side of her face. Her automatic reaction was that it was a leak and she looked up, but it was warm, it couldn ’t be from a pipe. The woman to her left, a blond in a short floaty dress, was staring down at herself in horror, watching the blood seep from a large gash to her right upper arm. Her eyes locked with Rachel’s then the woman’s knees buckled and Rachel rushed to catch her, almost falling with her. The music was so loud, the lighting so dim, no one else noticed. She heard laughter and saw people pointing, thinking the woman was drunk. Rachel wrapped an arm around her waist and attempted to pull her away from the dance floor, towards the bouncers and safety when she saw a man fall, grimacing in pain, a hand pressed to his side. Another man dropped a few feet behind him, clutching at his bleeding thigh. The thing she’d always told Ryan was impossible was happening. The Slasher was here.
    She hauled the woman towards Fletch and Leo, her two head bouncers.
    “The Slasher’s here,” she called to them. She could go no further with the woman, who was a lot heavier than she looked and she helped her slump into the booth closest to the door. “Call the Police and an ambulance.”
    Immediately they got talking on their headsets while simultaneously barrelling a path through the crowd. Rachel was glad all her doormen wore stab vests, something she ’d insisted on after a doorman at another club had been killed a few months ago by some drunken tosser with a knife. She saw her other doormen converging on the area, helping the injured to their feet but still everyone danced on, assuming the wounded were just drunk.
    Rachel got the bleeding blond back to her feet and hauled her towards the coat check room where she could sit down. The door had a lock so she could be certain she ’d be safe.
    “ What’s going on?” said Carmel, the coat check girl, paling when she saw the blood on them both.
    “ The Slasher’s here. Fletch has called the Police. You have first aid training, help her. I’ll get the rest of the injured sent here,” Rachel replied, settling the blond in a chair. She snatched up a handful of tissues from the box Carmel kept behind the counter and wiped the blood from her face.
    “ But…but…”
    “ Just do it,” Rachel yelled over her shoulder as she returned to the dance floor, wishing she still carried a taser but she stopped carrying a weapon when she went legitimate.
    “ Take her to the coat check room,” she told Royce, another of her doormen who was holding the weight of a bleeding, shaking man easily on one arm. “Then we need to get everyone out.”
    “ But The Slasher is probably still here, we can catch him.”
    “ The priority is stopping anyone else getting hurt. Get everyone out, quietly.”
    He nodded in understanding and hauled the man off to the coat check room. Rachel jumped up onto the DJ stand and had to shout in the DJ ’s ear to be heard. His mouth fell open as she talked and he hastily cut off the music. There were collective boos and hisses but, ever the consummate professional, he called over the microphone in a perfectly calm