His arm clamped like a vise around her neck, Michael Lake dragged Cat toward the library. Sure that her windpipe would collapse under the pressure, she clawed at his arm, desperate for air.
She felt him laboring to keep his balance. If she could trip him and free herself of his grip she could make a run for it.
She swung her foot back between his legs, but before she could hook his ankle, he slammed his fist into the side of her face and shoved her onto the couch.
Blinded by the pain, she shrieked and tried to pull away, but Michael threw himself on top of her, pinning her left arm under her.
She opened her mouth to scream again when he pressed his fist against her windpipe, cutting off her air. She pushed against his arm with her free hand until he grabbed her wrist and crushed it into her shoulder.
She sucked in air as the pressure on her throat eased. When the black spots cleared from her vision, she forced herself to think, straining her eyes as far as she could, searching the room for anything she might use as a weapon—assuming she’d even get the chance. Other than a hardbound volume of Voltaire, there was nothing within reach.
The door to the hallway was at least ten feet away. If she could distract him, at least to get her left arm free, she might be able to gouge his eyes or push him off her.
From her psych training she remembered the protocol for dealing with a violent patient, the first rule being to try and diffuse the violence before it happened. Too late for that.
If she could get her voice to work, she’d try to engage him in simple conversation, as with a child who is having a temper tantrum and wielding a loaded carbine with a hair-trigger.
The look in Michael’s eyes told her his psychopathic self had vacated the upper chambers of his dream castle in the sky and had moved down into the dungeons in order to torture the prisoners.
“What’s your name?” she asked in a shaky whisper.
For a moment, Michael was distracted from grinding his knees against her thighs in what seemed to be a concentrated effort to break her legs.
“You know my name,” he snarled, “so don’t fuck with me.”
She wasn’t sure if he would interpret talking to him as fucking with him, but she needed to buy time in order to figure out what to do.
“Why aren’t you in Arizona?”
He barked a contemptuous laugh. “The cops are dumb fucks. I got off the plane in Los Angeles, gave my ticket to some kid and hitched a ride back up here.” His eyes turned cold as steel. “I’m going to finish what I started with that bitch.”
“Are you going to kill me too?”
The hard-edged sensuous expression he wore in the Blazzie’s Secret ads crossed his face. “Not right away. First I’m going to have a little fun.”
The ‘not right away’ caused in her a flood of relief, until she fully grasped the meaning of his words. “What do you mean?”
In answer he grabbed the belt of her robe and tried to pull free.
She forced down a terrified whimper. The idea that he meant to rape her left her paralyzed with fear. In her mind, rape was almost worse than being murdered.
Out of fear jumped the memory of a women’s self-defense class she’d attended. She clearly remembered the resentment in each woman’s eyes that such a class was even necessary.
The instructor, a tough, retired cop, emphasized that rape was a crime of violence. “Rape,” he said while wearing an expression that came across as ‘don’t flatter yourselves, girls’, “is not an act stemming from uncontrollable sexual desire.”
Stalling for time, she subtly shifted her weight, making it harder for him to untangle the belt. “I’m not your type,” she said, knowing it was a ridiculous thing to say to a man who was about to rape and murder her. But if it made him pause or set him off talking, it bought her precious seconds.
“You’re a fucking whore! That’s my type.” Frustrated, he let go of her wrist, and with both hands ripped the robe open, exposing her breasts.
He leaned close. The smell of his dirty hair and sour cigarette breath making her gag. For a second she thought he was going to bite her face.
Instead, he began kneading and twisting her breasts. “You’re going to like this so much, you’ll beg me not to stop. By the time I’m through with you, you’ll be just like every other bitch in heat.”
Anger overtook any rational thought she may have had as she tried to buck him off, her free hand gouging his face, aiming for his eyes.
She saw the first punch coming and lowered her chin to protect her throat. His fist caught her just above her cheekbone. His second punch landed squarely on the side of her face. The force of the blow left her ear ringing.
He put the heel of his hand under her chin and shoved her head backward into the throw pillow, holding it there while he pulled something from his waistband.
Her hand clamped around his arm in an effort to push it away so she could move her head, but he was strong, intent on hurting her.
She felt his hand move quickly as a searing pain ran down the left side of her neck to her shoulder and across the top of her breast. Moving her eyes as far to the left as she could, she managed to catch the glint of a knife blade. Something wet dribbled down her neck and shoulder. Moving her head a fraction of an inch, she could see her blood saturating the throw pillow.
“Please don’t do this,” she begged, flashing on the victims of violence she’d cared for over the years. She suddenly understood the expression they all wore—of having seen the other side.
“Don’t kill me. Just let me leave and I promise I won’t tell anyone. You can go on hiding. Just let me—”
“Shut the fuck up!” He let go of her head and backhanded her.
Through sheer will, she moved her head again to the side in time to see him set the knife on the back of the couch
“See this face?” he grabbed her neck, causing her to cry out. “No fucking bitch ever says no to this face.”
“Is that why you tried to murder Cross? Because she stood up to you?”
“She’s nothing but a lying whore! You’re all whores!” Michael rocked back, and for a heartbeat, the pressure on her legs eased.
Instinctively, she drew her knee up to cover her pubic area, fighting to suppress the pins-and-needles sensation beginning to cloud her mind. If he in fact had cut her carotid artery, she wouldn’t be able to stay conscious for much longer.
Michael pushed between her thighs and again pressed his forearm across her throat. She strained to keep her legs together, but felt herself weakening.
“Don’t kill me,” she gasped. “If you kill me, you’ll end up on death row.”
He released her wrist and unzipped his pants, his breath coming faster. “Shut up! After I kill that other bitch, I’m going to disappear to a place nobody will ever find me.”
As he began rubbing his penis against her belly, she started to struggle, then stopped.
Don’t fight with them, the cop had said. Women who put up a fuss or fight get killed.
Fuss. She thought at the time it was a condescending word to use, and meant to mention it to the cop after the class. Fuss was a word one usually associated with unstable, hysterical women. Fuss trivialized rape.
The thought of this maniac forcing his way into her body, defiling her, making his touch and the sound of his grunts her last sensations, brought on a fury she’d never known existed in her.
It was a given he would kill her when he was done, so why not put up a fuss? She was a big strong girl, an Amazon—isn’t that what every person she had ever known called her at one time or another?
Indignation pure and simple caused her to squeeze her legs closed. The bastard wasn’t going to rape her and kill her too.
At her resistance, she felt his temper flare.
“If you give me a hard time, I’ll kill you now instead of later,” he said. “Makes no difference to me one way or the other. Understand?”
“Okay,” she said angling her body slightly as he spoke. She reached over his shoulder as if to pull him closer, her fingers sweeping the back of the couch for the cold steel of the knife blade.
If the situation ever came up, the cop said, and, if you just happened to have a gun or a knife pulled and ready to use (there was some halfhearted laughter over that), then you’d better be prepared to use the weapon, or take the chance of having it used on you.
Michael again pressed his fist against her throat while he bore down on her legs, forcing them apart.
Willing to chance his wrath, she squirmed, moving her pelvis enough to block his first thrust. As he registered what she’d done, she stretched her hand an inch further and felt the knife under her fingers.
“You fucking bitch!” he screamed as his hand flew back, seeking the knife.
She’d assisted in hundreds of surgeries, watching surgeons use blades to repair and restore life—deliberately taking a life with one was antithetical to everything she knew.
At the same instant he discovered the knife was gone, she shoved the blade into him with every bit of strength she could muster. She felt it graze a rib, then slide in easily until it hit something hard and immovable.
He grunted in surprise and rocked back onto his knees. Lowering his head, he stared in disbelief at the handle of the knife jutting from the side of his chest. A thin line of blood trickled around the handle, and dripped onto the floor. Sliding off her, he grasped the handle and, before she could stop him, pulled it out. Blood gushed from the site.
Her mind immediately skipped to the ‘impaled objects’ section of her trauma manual.
The worst thing one can do with an impaled object, is to remove it. Stabilize the protruding part of the object with sterile towels, taking extra care not move it. The surgeon will dislodge the object in the operating room where the bleeding can be controlled.
No control here, she thought.
He tried to stand and fell to his knees, still unable to take his eyes off the blood pouring from his body.
Cat lifted herself off the couch and took two weaving steps before a dozen black spots crowded her vision. She gagged and fell.
Michael made a grab for her ankle. “I’ll kill you,” he said, in a voice guttural with hatred. He swung wildly, hoping to catch her hair.
Shaking him off, she pulled herself up and stumbled to the door then down the hall into the foyer where she tripped over a metal statuette of a crow and went down. She was vomiting by the front door when Michael appeared, crouched and using the wall for support. One hand was pressed to his side, blood gushing from the cracks between his fingers. His other hand still held the knife.
Incredulous that he was still conscious, let alone alive, Cat forced herself to her feet. Her fingers, slick with blood, slipped as they worked frantically to pull back the dead bolt.
Michael lunged for her and gripped her leg.
She shook him off. In desperation, she clamped the bolt knob with her teeth and pulled it free.
The door opened just as Michael threw his body against her legs, making them buckle. Both of them had lost a great deal of blood, and as they grappled, it was clear to her that neither of them had much strength left.
Too weak to fight or even scream, Cat briefly closed her eyes. To be a murder victim under a tarp was not the way her life was supposed to end. She’d been so sure she’d been next in line for one more try at living, to do it the right way, to love and be happy, to grow old and complain of arthritis and a failing memory.
How incredibly stupid of her
Like a wraith appearing out of the fog, Michael was crouched over her again, unsteadily raising the knife over her throat.
She felt herself urinate as everything receded into a white fog. Through the high-pitched buzz taking over her hearing she thought she heard herself scream. There was other noise too. Shouts and…barking?
The knife sawed the air above her. Hands grappled for the handle—like kids’ hands climbing a bat handle, choosing up. The blade, that long elegant streak of shining sliver, moved down, seeking her throat.
Drifting away from the commotion, she waited for her life to pass before her, while keeping a close watch for the tunnel of white light.