Broken Rolex

Ten minutes later, she was sitting in the waiting hall of the General Hospital Emergency Room.

The smell of disinfectant seared her nose despite the cold air blasting through huge grated maws of the hospital's air ducts running above the cracked and stained ceiling. She felt the chill creep through her body, into her bones from the hard green plastic chairs that lined the hallway.

Jasmine Love sat there for thirty minutes, freezing from more than just the chilly air, unable to think of anything coherently until a doctor dressed in green scrubs came out to where she sat, snapping off his latex gloves.

"Miss?" He called out to her. "Excuse me, but are you the woman who came in with Officer Stuart?"

"Yes?"

"I'm Doctor South. I made some preliminary checks on Mr. Stuart but I couldn't find anything physically wrong with him."

"But I saw him bent double, sick to his stomach! There must have been something wrong!"

"Physically, he's fine, but there is another underlying issue. We will need to keep him overnight for observation."

"Underlying issue? What's wrong with him?" Jasmine whispered.

"I'm sorry, I can't say at this time, but we're doing everything we can for him."

Jasmine thanked the doctor and got up to leave.

During the wait at the hospital, she had called the police chief and had reached John Greer, the police officer who was in charge of the cases surrounding her bandmates. She had quickly explained to him about Adam's situation and he had assured her that he would keep an eye on Adam and would pick him up when he was discharged.

Unfortunately, that did not excuse her from meeting up with the Chief of Police.

Back outside, in the mild sunshine, Jasmine got in her car and pulled out of the hospital parking structure. Although she had blown through the first scheduled meeting with the detectives working this case, they had rescheduled her. She couldn't blow this second meeting.

What was the time anyway?

Jasmine fumbled with her shirtsleeve to reveal the face of the watch and groaned as the Rolex stared up at her. It was her non-functioning stage piece that she wore as part of her singing costume.

Seeing a light at the bottom of the hill, Jasmine rolled to a stop and reached over to open the glove compartment where she had put her Apple Watch.

Suddenly, her left arm was twisted into a painful position as the strong arms of a man yanked her to her feet.

"Ow!" She screamed as her body was lifted forcibly out of the car and slammed up against the hood of another car. Her stomach hit the hood, causing her to expel a sudden breath as all the air came whooshing from her lungs.

She could not see her assailant but she could hear his evil laugh and she could see the sleek and familiar looking silver Jaguar that she was slammed up against.

"Who are you and what do you want?"

"Relax, Little Miss. Nothing's gonna happen to you. I just gotta bring you in to Anh Hai, that's all." He snickered and pulled Jasmine back into a standing position, her back still to him, her arm in a painful twist between them.

To get her into the seat, he had to let her go for a second to grab his handcuffs, but that second was all Jasmine needed.

She twisted from his grasp, slipped the Rolex onto the palm of her hand, and using it as a solid weight, slammed it up the man's nose with every ounce of strength that she possessed.

She heard a roar of pain and anger from the man and felt the sticky flow of blood on her palm.

Without waiting to see how much damage she had caused, Jasmine ran for her car and jumped in without bothering to open the door.

She did not look back or she would have seen the man being held back by invisible hands, grappling in the air as he was being strangled to death.

The engine was still idling so she shifted into gear and floored the pedal, taking off down the mountainside as if the devil was chasing after her.

Behind her receding yellow bug, the man slumped to the ground, his eyes rolling back in his head.

On his neck were the dark and clear bruise marks of ten large male fingers. Those phantom fingers had squeezed his throat until he had asphyxiated.

«Congratulations. You have gained 10 power points from: Tony Boi. Active Aggressive Transference.»

Jasmine drove back into Newport Beach in record time, aiming her little yellow bug towards the direction of the Newport Beach police department.

John Greer was looking more and more handsome with each horrifying incident.

☯︎☯︎☯︎

"You hit him with that?" John gasped as he examined the Rolex that Jasmine had turned over to him for evidence.

There was a smear of blood, congealed on the watch's face plate. It was enough to run a DNA identification match on the assailant or at least put together a profile on the bastard.

Jasmine was seated on John's neat office, on a soft padded chair across from a desk with a wide expanse of empty shiny top. Nothing cluttered its surface except for a telephone and a marble paperweight of considerable heft.

"Whew! I can't even believe this is your only weapon against a strong male assailant," he shook his head with rueful regret.

Jasmine scowled. "He was going to kidnap me and take me to some mafia head he called Anh Hai. I had to do something!"

"Hey! I'm not blaming you. In fact, I hope you broke his nose. It's just that this is a really nice watch! It's just too bad you broke it." John slipped the watch back into a paper bag.

"I didn't break it," Jasmine smiled. "If you stick a battery in it, the hands will start moving again. It's really hard to kill this thing."

"Batteries? Why are you walking around wearing a Rolex without batteries in it?"

She was about to respond when he got a call from the phone on the table.

"Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I gotcha."

He hung up the phone. "That was the hospital. Adam's in trouble. I gotta go."

Jasmine jumped up. "Take me with you!"