by Reid, Ruby
Fury welled up inside of him, starting in the depths of his guts and quickly rising throughout the rest of him. The anger was so startling that it wrecked his judgment for a moment. Before he was able to put all of the pieces together, it was too late.
He realized what it meant a split second after he heard the footsteps behind him. He turned and barely saw the face before he saw the lead pipe. He acted in just enough time to save the top of his head from the pipe, catching the brunt of it with his hand. A jarring pain encompassed his hand, sending rivers of fire through his fingers and down his arm. He stumbled back against the bike, his right hand going numb, and saw the face behind the pipe clearly just as it was being raised again.
It was Larry. And Marco’s unmistakable face was lurching behind him. He barely caught the glint from the knife he held before he had to dodge Larry’s next attack with the pipe. He rolled to the left, nearly falling down. The pipe swooshed through the air and struck the rearview mirror on the bike’s left handlebar. It fell to the ground with a clatter behind Alex’s foot.
As he gained his balance, he caught the slightest flicker of motion from his right. He realized that it was Marco, coming in with the knife. Alex leaped back as quickly as he could but still felt the knife rip into the flesh just below his chest. The pain was minimal, and he felt certain the cut wasn’t too bad, but the blood started flowing at once.
No sooner had he realized that he had been cut than the lead pipe was coming at him again. It was coming straight for his head, and the only defense he had in that moment was ducking down. He knew that he would still get hit, but at least it wouldn’t be a blow to his skull. He dropped to his knees, and the pipe fell hard against his upper back.
The wind and energy escaped his body at the blow. He tried to stay upright on his knees, but the blow drove him to the ground. Larry wasted no time, bringing the pipe up immediately and bringing it back down. Alex could do nothing but cover his head. The pipe came down hard, hitting him just above the elbow. A flare of pain wound through his entire arm and signaled one alarming fact: if he didn’t get to his feet soon, he was going to die.
“Don’t kill him,” Marco said to Larry. “Let me do it.”
Alex barely heard this. The pain in his back was immense, and he was seriously worried that his left hand was broken. He was dimly aware of Larry stepping backwards while Marco came in with the knife. Alex tested his left hand, pressing against the concrete with both hands to get himself up. He felt his blood draining from the cut in his chest and also realized that his right arm was sliced from having fallen on the shattered rear view mirror.
Rage began to replace the pain, and his right hand fell absently on the dismembered mirror. He gripped it quickly and moved fast. When he did, he was well aware that Marco could easily shove the knife into his back when he did so… but that was a risk he’d have to take regardless. If not, he’d die anyway.
With the rearview cupped in his right hand, he quickly sprang up from his knees and brought his right hand up in a hard upward jab. He had little time to aim, but the shot landed true. It caught Larry underneath his chin. The sound of his teeth clinking together filled the garage. He did not go falling backwards as Alex had expected; instead, he went limp and simply fell in a heap. When he fell to the ground by Alex, he saw that Larry’s head was turned at an odd angle.
My God, I broke his fucking neck, Alex thought. He’s dead.
Marco apparently realized this, too. He was in momentary shock and awe, standing in the same spot with his knife in his hand.
Alex looked to him, waiting for him to attack. Instead, Marco did a very predictable thing. He threw the knife at Alex and went running in the other direction. The knife struck Alex in the shoulder, but it had not been thrown with any real force. It drew blood but bounced innocently to the pavement.
Alex started to give chase, but when he did, the cut along the top of his stomach seemed to roar at him. He doubled over and screamed—not in pain, but at the fact that Marco was going to get away again. In pure fury, he picked up Larry’s lead pipe and threw it as hard as he could in Marco’s direction. It fell about three feet short of the retreating man as he made it to the end of the row and took a hard left.
Alex took another lunge forward and went to his knees. He looked down and saw that the lower half of his white shirt was now dark red. He’d been injured in similar ways more times than he could remember, but he’d never bled quite this badly. It was a foreign concept to him, and the first way he was spurred to react was with anger. To hell with it, he thought. I’ll stop running when I pass out. I can catch him before that happens, though…
Or so he thought. Taking a few running strides, he realized that he was growing dizzy. Not only that, but his head felt like a balloon that was slowly drifting away from his shoulders. He felt himself giving out, his knees like jelly.
Good thing I’m already at the hospital, he thought.
And with that, he realized that he had to give up on Marco. Wanting to scream in frustration and defeat, he went stumbling back towards the front of the parking lot and the emergency room doors.
CHAPTER 4
Amanda was pleased to find that when she got wrapped up in work, her mind was actually able to push the drama of the last few days to the back of her mind. She put on some music, lost herself in work, and her life almost seemed to find the groove that she had come to accept before she’d met Alex. Going to the cemetery had also helped, she supposed. Yes, she’d admitted that she was pretty sure that she’d been falling in love with Alex while she had been there, but the routines and monotony of everyday life easily helped her to forget such things.
The only time she allowed herself to slip back towards the what-ifs was when she stopped for lunch. She sat quietly in her kitchen, eating a tuna salad sandwich, and wondered what she might be feeling like right this very moment, if she had have forgiven Alex for being associated with the men that had ultimately been responsible for Stephen’s death. After all, Alex had just found out about it all—there was no way in hell he had been involved either directly or indirectly.
So what might her life be like? For one thing, she would not have woken up this morning with an empty bed and a heavy heart to fill her life. There would have been a warm body next to hers and a future on the horizon that could hold anything.
Still, she felt that she had made the right decision. It was simply all too much to handle. While it was certainly a case of some sort of divine encounter or a small world scenario, it was hard to give herself over to it. Stephen’s death—or, rather, his life—had been worth much more than simply allowing herself to get washed up in a series of coincidences that had led to her discovering the man that had killed her husband.
When she called the police department, she left Alex out of it all. She had simply told them that she’d gotten some information from sources that would not name themselves. That information had pinned Stephen’s death on a criminal named Marco O’Brien. When they had asked her to come in for questioning, she declined. The call ended with the officer promising to look into it.
They had called her the next day asking if she was sure about the information, and she had heard the doubt and skepticism in the officer’s voice. She simply said, “Just do what you want,” and ended the call.
She had heard nothing from them since then. She wondered if the police had her flagged somehow. Oh no, they’d say when she called. Here’s that woman that won’t let her dead husband go. She understood that without solid evidence, they wouldn’t even look in her direction.
Maybe that was for the best. Alex had come into her life and brought her some temporary happiness and a link to Stephen’s death. If Stephen was supposed to have some sort of justice, then he would get it. There was ultimately nothing that she could do by herself to ensure that it happened.
Burdened with those thoughts, she headed back to her computer to finish out the day. Within half an hour, she was back into the work zone. She barely ever
glanced at the clock, but when she felt the need for a glass of wine, she checked and saw that it was 3:30. Sure, she thought. We can wrap up the day early and enjoy one of the perks of working from home.
She started to wrap up the project she was working on and felt herself slipping back into the zone. She was interrupted by a knock on the door.
Alex, she thought. It’s Alex.
A flurry of emotions tore through her, and she was immobilized for a moment. She sat at her computer chair, her head cocked as she considered what she might do if it was Alex at her door.
Slowly, she got up and walked through the living room. She came to the front door and looked through the window. Before she even saw the face on the other side, part of her was certain that it was Alex. Her heart fluttered with the knowledge, and she actually felt slightly dizzy as she peered through the glass window along the top of the door.
But it wasn’t Alex. If she had any doubts about her feelings for him, they were made crystal clear in how deflated she felt when she discovered that it was not him knocking at the door. Instead, it was the face of someone she had never met. It wasn’t until she noticed the uniform with the USPS logo on the breast pocket that she realized that she had gotten all worked up over the mailman.
She opened the door, trying to hide her severe disappointment. She smiled to the mailman and saw the small box he held in her hand.
“Hi,” she said.
“Howdy,” he said, offering the box. He then held out a clipboard with a form. “I have a package, and I just need your signature.”
“Oh,” she said, taking the clipboard and the pen. She wasn’t waiting on anything and wondered what might be in the box. She looked to the form on the clipboard and didn’t realize that none of the information related to her until it was too late.
When she looked back up to the mailman, she saw not his face, but a large fist inches from her face. She didn’t even have time to blink before the fist collided with face, catching her right between the eyes.
She cried out and stumbled back, falling to the floor. The mailman came in, closing the door gently behind him. He tossed the box and the clipboard down onto the floor and then simply stood there, looking over her.
“You’re Amanda, yes?” He asked.
Amanda could say nothing. She was too shocked. Black dots swam in her line of vision, and she frantically tried to make sense of what was happening.
“Answer me, please,” the mailman said. He then ran to her and kicked her hard in the left leg.
Amanda cried out again and suddenly knew that she needed to run. She could lock herself in the bedroom and call the cops. Just what in the hell was going on here, anyway?
She scrambled backwards, turning around to head through the kitchen and into the bedroom. She only made it two strides before she felt the mailman grab her leg and pull her back to him. As she was dragged across the floor, she then realized with the utmost certainty that this was not the mailman—not some random postal worker than had lost it at work. Given everything that had happened as of late, this had to be tied to Alex and the unknowns.
She turned around onto her back, kicking at the man dressed in the USPS uniform. He dodged her kick easily and then swatted another away. He brought his hand back and slapped her hard across the face. This time he connected with her nose and an explosion of pain lit up the inside of her head.
“Stop fighting,” he said. He was clammy, and his voice was eerily soothing. “You’re coming with me one way or the other. The question you can help answer is whether or not you’re going to be in a shitload of pain or if you will come willingly. You understand?”
She answered with another kick. This one connected with his knee, and he buckled just enough to loosen his grip on her leg. She got to her feet and went running. She made it to the kitchen before he was on her. He literally fell on top of her, and they fell into the kitchen table. She tried sliding hard to the left, hoping to fall onto the floor and escape him, but his hands found her hair and yanked it hard.
She screamed out as he pulled her to him. Her scalp was on fire, but she had hardly any time to register this because he then delivered a blow to her stomach that doubled her over. He pushed her into the floor as she gasped for breath, her lungs burning.
He then knelt down and placed a knee between her breasts. She writhed under his weight but knew right away that moving was useless. As he perched on top of her and worries of rape ran through her mind, she realized that the second blow to her face caused her nose to bleed; she felt the blood running down the side of her face and into her hair.
“Last chance,” he said, applying more weight to the knee. She groaned out under the weight and nodded.
“Good girl,” he said. “Now… if you use your brain, you won’t be hurt anymore. I don’t give a shit about whether you live or die, but I need you alive right now. But that does not mean that I won’t fuck you up pretty bad. I can put you through a lot of pain… so much that you’d beg me to kill you. Do you believe me?”
She nodded. “Why?” she asked.
He got off of her, and the ability to suck air back into her lungs was glorious. He grinned down to her and shook his head.
“Why?” he asked, repeating her question. “Simple. Because I’m tired of playing a game of cat and mouse with Alex. And some well-paid intel informs me that you’ve been screwing him for the last few days. I’m also being told that he just might be abandoning his club for you. To me, that means he cares a lot about you. Which means he’d do damn near anything to save you.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t—,”
He interrupted her grabbing her under the arms and pulling her to her feet. He shoved her back into one of the chairs by the kitchen table and pulled a knife out of the waist of his pants. He flashed it in front of her eyes, passing the blade less than two inches in front of her.
“Here’s how this is going to work,” he said. “You’re going to leave here with me, and you aren’t going to try anything like screaming for help. If you do, we’ll come right back in here, and I’ll show you how good I am at inflicting pain. I’ll start by breaking your fingers one by one. When you’re out of fingers, I’ll start with ribs. And if you get really stupid, I’ll take your ears. Do you believe me?”
She didn’t answer him. She couldn’t open her mouth. She was petrified and could not move any part of her body.
“You should,” he said. “If you have any doubts, I’ll let you take a peek in the mail truck a block down the road. How do you think I got these threads?”
“You’re Marco…,” she said.
“Guilty,” he said.
Then, realizing that he likely wasn’t going to need the knife, he returned it to the hidden holster at his back. He reached out, took her by the arms, and gave her a push towards the living room.
“We’re leaving here and going two blocks to the left. From there, we’re getting in my car and going for a drive. You understand that?”
She only nodded. And as she started walking towards the front door, she started crying.
“No need to cry,” Marco said. “He’ll come for you. He’s stupid like that. Now open the front door and lead me out.”
With trembling hands, she did as he asked. They stepped out onto the porch, and Marco closed the door behind them. Amanda looked to the right and saw the mail truck parked along the curb. She did not see a driver behind the wheel.
This maniac killed the mailman, she thought. And he did it gladly. He’ll do the same to me if I put up a fight.
She knew this was true, and it placed a cold seed of fear in her heart.
“Walk,” Marco said, placing a hand to her back. She recoiled from his touch, but he made sure to keep his hand there, leading her down her sidewalk and towards wherever his car was parked.
This man killed my husband, Amanda thought as they walked through the warm sunshine. A brief anger swelled up in her, but it was consumed by the fear that rampaged inside of her.
She was helpless but to do what he asked. With that knowledge in her head, she walked where he led her and cried out silently for Alex. She then realized that she was, in some very complex way, trapped between two men—or, rather, three. There was Stephen, whom she had loved and lost and continued to grieve. Then there was Alex, the man that had come out of nowhere, saved her from rape or worse at the hands of a stranger, and a man that she was fairly certain if, given time, she could fall in love with.
And now there was this third man… a psychopath that connected both Alex and Stephen. To Amanda, it went far beyond coincidence and felt like some weird event the universe had orchestrated just for her.
With a gun planted firmly into her back, she wondered about God and fate and all manner of other predestined things. Was this entire bloody scenario just the universe’s way of giving her not only the chance to close the chapter on Stephen’s death, but to also present her with another chance to love again?