Free Get Katja by Simon Logan

girl,” he says as she helps him to his feet. He touches his ear, clotted with dried blood, winces. “That fucking man.”
    “What man?” she asks, wondering if he meant the man from the club, if he’d tracked down Katja before she could. But she came straight to Flesh Heel from the apartment, he couldn’t possibly have gotten there before her.
    “The one you brought!” he shouted at her, pushing her away. He sways, still woozy and now without her for support. He leans on the counter behind him, smearing blood on it.
    “Where is she?” Bridget asks. “What did she do to you?”
    “She’s gone!” he screams and Bridget feels something plummet deep within her chest.
    “She’s gone?” Bridget says, trying to get her head around the concept and what it means. “She . . . she can’t be gone . . .”
    “Take a look around!” He switches on the tap and dabs water over his wound.
    “But I have to find her.”
    “You’re damn right you do, Nurse Soelberg,” he says, switching back to the more formal method of addressing her. “That fucking junkie you brought here helped her escape. This is
your
doing,
your
responsibility. Get out of here and go find her. Bring her back to me.”
    Bridget’s mind spins, having trouble keeping up with the night’s events, now spiralling around her.
    “But . . . I . . . I don’t . . .”
    Her words falter. She has no idea what to do now. She thinks of Liz and her panic increases.
    “How am I supposed to know where—”
    “
Your
problem, Nurse Soelberg,” Stasko snaps, applying a cotton swab to his wound.
    It was sheer luck that had enabled her to find the girl in the first place, what chance is there of her being able to do the same thing again? Particularly now that she is on the run, Katja will be even harder to find than she had been earlier. The only connection Bridget has is the squat and there is surely no way that the punk will be stupid enough to go back there, not after being grabbed from outside it—twice within ten minutes. She’ll need to head for somewhere else, somewhere she can lie low and get to quickly.
    Someone Nikolai can go to as well.

21.
    Heading towards Lindenmuth, trailing Bridget’s car at safe enough distance, Stasko still isn’t sure whether he can trust her any more.
    There is something about her reaction to him telling her about Katja escaping that feels wrong to him and this feeling is compounded by the fact that it was Bridget who selected the guinea pig in the first place—the guinea pig who ended up helping the punk to break free. Bridget had made it clear throughout her time with him that she didn’t want any involvement in his special procedures but despite this he had always felt that he could trust her.
    Now?
    He sees a Policie car up ahead coming in the opposite direction and slouches a little farther into his seat until it passes.
    He turns a corner, rain water spraying up side of the car as it passes through a puddle. The rain is falling again so he hits the wipers, slowing to keep a safe distance between Bridget and himself.
    Up ahead, a figure emerges from between two buildings. It staggers into the illumination cast by the streetlights.
    Stasko slows the car even further. Rain batters the windscreen. He squints, trying to figure out if it is just another drunk or junkie—or something more.
    The figure is slim with a shaven head and wears a pair of black leggings and a tight t-shirt with a skull painted on it, now stained with blood, something wrapped around their neck.
    “Katja,” he says aloud.
    So Bridget had been across this side of town for a good reason. She must have known, or suspected, that the punk was in the area. But how?
    He stops the car and continues to watch from a distance.
    The punk stumbles along the street, using the brick wall of the adjacent building to support herself, clasping a hand to her head.
    Stasko flicks the headlights off, puts the car back into gear and drifts towards