Skin and Blond (Blond Noir Mysteries Book 1)

by V. J. Chambers

  “I had to take her too.”

  My fingers brushed the knife. It fell out of his pocket, landing on the bed next to me, soundlessly.

  He turned, hand going to his pocket.

  My heart stopped.

  He furrowed his brow, looking around.

  Don’t see the knife. Don’t see the knife.

  He took a deep breath. “The other one’s really your fault, don’t you see? If you’d just stayed with me that night, I wouldn’t have gone after her.”

  “Well,” I said, my voice tight, “it’s like I said, I sleep better in my own bed.”

  His features tightened. “You’re making me angry. Do you really think that’s smart?”

  “Way I figure it, things couldn’t get much worse.” I wanted to grab that pocket knife, but I didn’t want to call attention to it with my movement. He might snatch it back up. However, every second that passed was another that he might notice it lying on the bed, and then I’d never get another chance with it. “You’re going to kill me no matter what I do, aren’t you?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “There are bad ways to die, and then there are worse ways.”

  Okay, yeah, that made me feel queasy. I was already lying in someone else’s dried blood here. I looked at the knife—just for a second, then I flicked my gaze elsewhere, because I didn’t want to draw his eye there—and then I looked back up at him. I needed a minute alone. Just a couple minutes…

  “What was that?” I said.

  “What was what?”

  “I heard a noise,” I said. “Maybe it’s the backup I called.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You’re not a cop. You don’t have backup.”

  “Sure I do,” I said. “I figured it out as I was driving up here. Right before I got here, I figured out that you were a killer, and I called my backup, and I told them to come. And that’s probably them, right outside, ready to take you down.”

  His mouth twisted into a smile. “You’re lying.”

  “Go check it out then,” I said. “Call my bluff.”

  He hesitated. Then he walked across the room and pulled the moldy curtains away from the window. He peered outside.

  I snatched up the knife, doing my best to work out the blade with one hand.

  He turned back to me.

  I froze, hand covering the knife.

  “Don’t go anywhere.” He chuckled like he’d made a fantastic joke, and then he opened the door and stepped out of the room.

  My heart was pounding like a steel drum. I flipped the blade out of the pocket knife and began trying to pick it up.

  But no.

  That was no good. I didn’t have the ability to hold it and saw with it. The angles were too awkward.

  I’d need to move the rope against the blade, wedge the knife down somehow…

  I cast a glance back at the open door. All I could see outside were the stars of the night sky, but a breeze blew inside, tickling my skin, making the door rattle back and forth.

  I turned my attention back to the knife.

  There. Now I could get the rope against the blade. Like that.

  I looked back at the door.

  Nothing.

  I sawed the rope into the blade. A few strands of nylon came loose.

  I gritted my teeth, putting more pressure into it, yanking my wrist—and the rope—backwards.

  The knife came free from the place I’d wedged it.

  “Shit,” I muttered.

  And then I looked back to the door. He’d be back any second. This was taking too long. My heart was skipping beats now, pumping out an irregular rhythm that tripped over itself.

  I put the knife back, and I yanked with my wrist, and—

  The rope snapped.

  I grinned. Yes.

  Grabbing the knife with my newly free hand, I went to work on my other wrist. Now that I had mobility, it was much easier, and I got the other hand free in record time.

  I sat up, going to work on my feet.

  The door slammed.

  My head snapped up, and I expected to see Ralph standing just inside the doorway, his face a sneering grimace. He’d rip the knife away from me, and I’d find out what he was talking about when he said that some deaths were worse.

  There are bad ways to die, and then there are worse ways.

  But there was no one there.

  The breeze had blown the door closed. Some strong gust had shut me in here, all alone.

  I drew in a shaky breath, and returned to my task, cutting my legs free from the bed. It took me seconds, and then I scrambled to my feet.

  I crouched, holding the knife, unsure of what to do. I could go through the door, but I didn’t know where Ralph was. He might be waiting for me outside.

  The door was the way out, the way to freedom, the way to safety.

  But if he caught me…

  I turned and darted inside the bathroom. Inside, the toilet hung off the wall. The sink was full of rust stains. There was no curtain on the shower, where there were glinting spiderwebs in the corners. The tile was browned and aged.

  And there was no way out. No window, no other door.

  Out in the motel room, I heard the scrape of the door opening.

  Fuck.

  Ralph was back, and I had nowhere to hide.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “What the hell?” said Ralph.

  He obviously wasn’t expecting to come back in the room and find me gone. I thought of his stupid admonition not to go anywhere before he left the room. I couldn’t help but smile grimly at the thought of outwitting him, if only temporarily.

  But I wasn’t going to outwit him, was I? Not really. Everything I’d done had been in vain, because he was out there in that motel room, just feet away from me, and he was coming back here.

  I could picture it. He would step into view in the bathroom doorway in just a moment. His hulking figure would be a dark silhouette, and I would be trapped in this tiny room. He’d step inside. I’d back up. And then…

  He’d slam me back into the sink, crashing my head into the mirror above it. It would shatter, and pain would lance through my skull. I’d be stunned and unable to struggle. He would press a thick blade into my gut, and the pain would be so much that I couldn’t think. Blood would be gushing out of my body, my intestines would be slithering out, and I’d be too terrified to even scream—

  No. I shook myself.

  No, I could fight. I had this pocket knife after all.

  I gripped it tightly in one hand and squared off with the empty doorway, legs slightly bent, arms out, tensed and ready to fight.

  I waited.

  I strained to hear something from the room. Ralph’s footsteps as he moved closer, or his breathing, or—hell, maybe he’d say something else.

  But it was astonishingly quiet. Apart from my own noises, I heard nothing. I was breathing. I could hear that, even though I was doing my best to keep my breath quiet. I could hear my heart beating too. It was pounding all through my body, and I felt it especially behind my ears—pulsing out blood.

  He couldn’t hear my heart beating. I thought it was deafening and loud, but I knew that it was only because I was afraid. Ralph wasn’t going to hone in on my location by virtue of my loud heartbeat. More likely, he’d do it by process of elimination. If I wasn’t in the room, I had to be in the bathroom.

  And so I waited.

  The knife was beginning to feel slippery in my palm. My hands were sweating, wet with tension, wet with anticipation. I redoubled my grasp, tensing…

  What the hell? Where was he? It didn’t take that long to walk back to the bathroom.

  Maybe he was searching the room, looking for me anywhere I might have hidden. I pictured him looking under the bed, pulling aside the decrepit curtains near the window.

  He’d come to the bathroom soon enough.

  And what would he do to me?

  There are bad ways to die, and then there are worse ways.

  I thought of
his discussions of the way he’d cut up his victims, of the stain of old, dried blood under my body on that bed.

  And he was going to be angry with me. I had caused problems for him. I had run away. I’d made it difficult. That might mean he’d take his anger out on me, and maybe that would make it even worse.

  I didn’t want to die. I hadn’t come here to die. I’d come here to get laid, to hide from the issues that I had with Miles, but all of that seemed so far away now. Still, I couldn’t help but think that if I had just bitten the bullet and gotten it on with Miles—as unpleasant and mechanical as it might have been, I wouldn’t be in this position.

  It was too late, though. These might be my final moments on earth, and I wasn’t going to spend them regretting everything I did. I was going to spend them fighting.

  So when Ralph came through that door, I was going to—

  No, you know what? Fuck that.

  Why wait for Ralph to come to me? What if he really was bending down and looking under the bed? If I ran out there with my pocket knife and caught him unawares, that would give me an advantage. There was no reason to stand here and wait like a trapped rabbit.

  I surged forward, bursting out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, brandishing the pocket knife. I was ready. I was going to stick him the minute I saw him. I was going to hurt him, slash him, cut him, do whatever I could to stop him.

  He wasn’t there.

  My body went cold as I looked around at the empty room.

  What?

  I knew that I’d heard his voice, just a few feet away from me. I knew that I’d heard the door opening.

  I surveyed the room, the flickering, burning candles now full enough of hot wax that they were dripping and adding new rivulets and layers to the wax already there. In their scant light, I could see the bed, and there was so much more blood on it than I’d ever even imagined.

  I knew how much blood was in a human body. I’d seen it when my parents had been bled out on the carpet of our den. But this was so much worse. More than two—more than three people—had been killed on this bed, and it had been soaked with their blood, and I’d been lying on it.

  I felt a crawling sensation on my back, an urge to scratch back there to clean my body of the filth and death and carnage and—

  Goddamn it, where was Ralph?

  I’d heard him out here.

  Hadn’t I?

  Oh hell, what if I’d just imagined it? What if the wind had blown the door open, and I’d spent all that time in the bathroom waiting for him when he wasn’t even out here, imagining the worst, like a stupid, idiot woman. Hiding when I should have been running.

  I took unsteady steps forward, fully expecting him to jump out at me—materialize out of the shadows like some dark demon formed from smoke and imagination, eyes bright, teeth glinting in a horrible grin.

  Of course, no one appeared. The room was empty, and I could see that.

  The door.

  The door wasn’t closed, but it was almost closed. There was a little sliver of moonlight…

  Had it closed all the way before? When it startled me?

  I couldn’t remember.

  I took several more steps forward. Silent steps. Tentative steps. I wasn’t making any noise, but I was going for that door.

  If it had closed all the way—closed and latched—then it meant that Ralph had opened the door. The wind couldn’t turn a doorknob.

  Had it closed?

  I couldn’t remember.

  I paused in front of the door, my hand on the knob.

  I knew it had made a loud noise, and that I’d been startled, but I didn’t know if it had closed or not.

  Oh, hell. I couldn’t stay in this room forever.

  Or could I? I looked over my shoulder. Maybe if I could find somewhere to hide—somewhere good, somewhere he’d never find me, then I could just wait this out. After all, he had to sleep sometime, didn’t he? I’d wait, and eventually, I’d get a chance, and I could get away.

  Maybe that was the safest thing to do, after all.

  My hand still on the knob, I craned my neck further back, scrutinizing the room. Where could I hide? Under the bed was too obvious, as was behind the curtain. There wasn’t much else in the room to obscure me. Maybe if the floorboards were loose—

  The door burst open.

  “You gotta be in here after all, bitch.” Ralph pushed the door against the wall with one meaty hand, propelling me with it.

  I screamed. I couldn’t help it. I was so startled, and he was right there, and it just ripped out of my lungs.

  I was trapped, pinned against the wall by the door.

  Ralph turned to look at me, a grin sliding over his features. “There you are.” He reached for me.

  I was still holding the doorknob. I pulled it, crouching down, using the door as a shield.

  He grasped the other side of the doorknob and yanked.

  There was a brief tug of war between the two of us, but it wasn’t much of a contest.

  Ralph ripped the door away from my body and closed in on me.

  I was huddled against the wall, looking up at his huge form coming for me. I balanced on the balls of my feet, adrenaline shooting through me.

  He wrapped his hand around my throat.

  I pistoned up, using my legs to propel myself into his body, punching the blade of the pocket knife directly into his stomach.

  He shrieked, letting go of me and stumbling backwards.

  I tried to keep hold of the pocket knife, but it was slippery with my sweat and his blood, and it was stuck in his body, and the knife went with him, not with me. I didn’t have time to get it. I had to leave behind my only weapon.

  I scrambled out of the door, out into the night air, and I took off sprinting.

  I careened across the parking lot, heading straight for my car.

  When I got there, I ripped open the door.

  No keys.

  Right. Right, I should have thought of this before running for my car, shouldn’t I? Why wasn’t I thinking? I had to be smart here. There was a crazy man after me—

  Ralph.

  I turned around, looking for him.

  I didn’t see him anywhere. I could see the warm light of the candles emanating from the room I’d just left, but no Ralph.

  Fuck. Where was he? Where was he? I hadn’t stabbed him that badly, had I? He should be coming…

  Oh screw it. I needed to get away. I couldn’t drive the car without keys—although, note to self, learn to hotwire a car—and so I needed some other escape route.

  What?

  The road? Should I run down the road and hope I could wave down a car?

  What was that?

  I turned. There had been a noise. I thought there had been a noise. But now… nothing.

  Ralph came staggering out of the room now. He was bleeding from his stomach, and his face was a mask of rage. He tore the pocket knife out of his wound and dropped it on the ground.

  “You bitch,” he said again.

  I looked at the road. I looked back at Ralph.

  I ran for it.

  “Bitch!” he screamed.

  I pumped my legs, feet colliding with the pavement. Once I hit the road, I ran right on the double yellow lines. They were my path to safety, they were my way out of—

  Behind me, the noise of an engine turning over.

  Ralph had started my car. He must have my keys. He was pulling it out of the parking lot and coming after me.

  Fuck. What the hell? Was I supposed to outrun a car?

  The car was already crossing onto the road, straddling the yellow line and heading straight for me.

  I swerved, darting into some weeds that were growing out of the ditch.

  Ralph brought the car after me, lurching off the road. I could hear the bottom of my car scrape the ground, and I winced in spite of myself. He was fucking destroying my car.

  And that was the last thing that I should have been worrying about, because now I was
running through a field of weeds with a car at my heels.

  Ralph was right up on me. He had the window rolled down, and I could hear him laughing.

  I turned back to see him, his arm hanging out the open window, his mouth twisted into a cruel grin.

  I couldn’t outrun a car.

  On the other hand, if he was chasing me in the car, he wasn’t killing me either.

  Of course, he might just run me down, run over me with my own car. I’d be just as dead, and then he could dissect me like road kill, since that was apparently what he liked to do.

  I turned back around, and saw that the headlights of the car illuminated a chain-link fence ahead of me. There was a dilapidated gate, hanging open and swinging in the wind.

  Ha! He couldn’t take a car through a chain-link fence, could he? I headed for it, a new rush of energy churning through my limbs.

  I ran through the gate and realized that I’d come to the old pool for the motel. The pool was dry—no longer filled with water. I could see that as I approached. There was a tangle of lawn furniture in one corner, concrete under my feet, ringing the rectangular pool.

  I stopped short of falling over the edge, panting and flailing. The headlights of the car were at my back, and Ralph was cackling in the background.

  I looked down into the empty pool, and I saw that it wasn’t empty after all. The bottom was littered with bodies—most too old to be anything other than skeletal, but bits of clothing still clung to their shriveled bones. Their bare bones grinned up into the night sky, lit up in the headlights and the light of the moon. And not all of the bodies were old. Some were fresher, still bloody, still covered in skin. The bodies were in pieces. They’d been cut and hacked. I saw an arm, a leg, toes poking up through the grisly collection. The toenails were painted a metallic blue that gleamed in the headlights.

  I felt sick.

  I reeled, stumbling back from the edge.

  Behind me the engine revved. Ralph slammed the car into the chain-link fence.

  I let out a cry, running away from the car, parallel with the pool. But where was I going? The pool was surrounded by this fence. I thought that I’d been so clever, and I’d only succeeded in trapping myself again.

  The fence toppled under the weight of the car.

  One of my headlights busted.

  There was a painful scream—metal on metal.