A deathly silence followed, punctuated only by my own ragged, tear-laden breathing. I laid there, my partner dead, waiting to join him, when I felt the hand on my belt start fiddling with one of my handcuff pouches. I heard the click of the snap as he undid the flap, and heard the telltale click of a handcuff ratchet as he readied a pair of my handcuffs. Oh God. Oh my God no, not like this, anything but this. I didn't need to imagine what was next, I knew what was next. I didn't need to hear him say it, I didn't need to guess at his motivations. He'd just executed Thomas, and despite my attempts to arm myself, he'd not killed me. It wasn't out of kindness. The handcuffs only confirmed it. Despite knowing who this monster was, what he'd just done. I couldn't help but plead.
"Please don't do this, you don't have to do this." I got out, doing my best to keep the sobbing from returning.
He stopped for a moment. "Would you rather I kill you now?" He asked quietly, in the kind of tone a 7/11 worker might use when asking if you needed a receipt.
Now, he said. Would I rather he kill me now? My heart dropped when I realized what that meant. He was going to kill me. He'd just told me he was going to kill me. The only choice I had was if I died now, or later.
"Please, I'm begging you, don't." I whispered, unable to think of anything else to say.
He scoffed. "Well, I'm gonna, so you just gotta decide if you want to die now, or die when I'm done fucking you. I don't mind much one way or another." He replied, as he secured the first cuff tightly around my limp wrist.
He was going to rape me. He was going to do it whether I was alive or dead. I was going to die here, and I was going to be raped here. The only question was whether I'd be alive to feel the rape. I winced as he wrenched my other arm behind me and secured the handcuffs. How did this happen, how did I let this happen? Where did I fuck up?
"Time's ticking sweetheart." He added after a minute, and I felt him tapping the barrel of my gun absently against the back of my head.
"Please don't kill me." I got out.
"Heyyy, there we go!" He exclaimed. "You should've put the word 'yet' at the end of that, but y'know what, I'll take it." He corrected me. "You've got hope, and that's good! Use that hope!" He added, sickeningly upbeat.
With that, he pulled me to my feet and immediately bent me over the hood of my patrol car. I didn't even see Thomas at first, but when I turned around and saw him slumped forward over the trunk of the BMW, still pinned between the cars, I shrieked in horror. The whole back of his head had been blown out, and I could see pieces of skull and brain in the exit wound. I began sobbing and hyperventilating, fixated on the gory sight. This is what had happened because of my fuckup. This was my fault.
My assailant sighed. "Damnit, you're acting like you've never seen a little blood before, what gives?"
I didn't reply. I couldn't speak, and I could hardly breathe. Just five minutes ago we'd been talking quietly together as friends and colleagues, and now his brains were plastered across the BMW's rear upholstery.
"Goddamnit, fine, I'll move him. Stay there." He said bitterly, walking back around to the driver's side of the BMW.
I watched, frozen solid as the BMW moved forward a couple yards, and Thomas fell to the ground in front of the patrol car. As I saw my partner slump to the ground, a hole the size of a grapefruit in the back of his skull, I realized there was no ending in which I lived here. My best chance, my only chance, was to run. I didn't wait to see where the BMW stopped. I just stood up, turned, and ran.
I made it halfway back down the dirt track to the main road before he caught up with me. To add insult to injury, I saw a pair of headlights speed past the entrance to the road, right before he caught me. He tackled me to the ground, I landed heavily, and all of a sudden the gun was back to my head.
"Sweetheart, you are lucky I want to fuck you when you're breathing, because that was your one and only warning." He said after a moment, sounding not so jolly anymore.
It was a slow and humiliating walk back to the cars. I'd blown it, and he was going to take vengeance on me tenfold, I knew that for certain. As it happens the first thing he did when he got me back over the front of the car, was he took my radio from my belt, and unclipped the external microphone from my shirt.
"I'm gonna keep a hold of this. Not sure if you've got any sort of panic button on here, but I'd like us not to be disturbed." He said cautiously after a minute.
I didn't press my panic button. The realization of that hit me like a ton of bricks. I'd been fighting for my gun, then scrambling for Thomas's gun, then I was handcuffed. Did I have the opportunity to press a single button in all that time? When I was scrabbling for the gun underneath the car, I could've. I could've also ran like hell down the path and hailed a passing motorist. I could've pressed it the moment he took control of my gun. I probably could've pressed it when I was handcuffed and he wasn't looking at me as well, truth be told.
I fucked up, and now I was watching him carry my dead partner over to the side of the road, just in front of the BMW. I was also handcuffed, bent over my patrol car, and about to be raped on camera. I hadn't forgotten about the dashcam in the car. While my body camera had a five minute buffer, recording had to be started manually. I'd neglected to start recording when I had the chance. I don't know if Thomas had done, but I was almost glad I hadn't. I didn't want my body camera footage in an evidence file somewhere with the title 'Deputy Murphy's Rape POV'. I looked up at the dash cam as I laid bent over the hood of the patrol car. I knew it could hear me. The passenger door was still open, and those dashcams had very good microphones.
"Don't let my family see this." I said desperately, looking directly at the camera. "Please, if anyone finds this, don't let them see any of this. Don't let this go in some fucking training film. God help me, please don't let this go on the fucking internet."
"Who you talking to?" Came the bastard's voice as he wandered back over, wiping his hands off on his shirt.
"Nobody." I croaked out, looking away from the camera.
He seemed to notice it then and laughed. "Ohhh, yeah, goddamn! I almost forgot, we're gonna be stars!" He exclaimed.
"What?" I demanded, horrified.
"Well, I'm gonna kill you later, so I wanna be able to look back and enjoy this, time and time again." He explained casually, sending a chill down my spine.