by Evelyn Glass
I know that Dad and even Uncle Richard would judge me. Richard, a smart man, a man who read much and had more empathy than anyone could reasonably expect from a killer nicknamed Black Knight, never got close to women. He used hookers, or else had short flings which always ended in disaster. I’ve been more successful than the two old men in money. And now I’m more successful than either of them was in love. It’s an odd sensation to outgrow an idol you’ve looked up to your whole life, even after he’s dead. (Richard, not Dad; I never looked up that cruel old man and I hated him before my eleventh birthday.)
On the third evening, we’re sitting in the living room. I sit on the couch and Anna lies down, her head resting in my lap. I stroke her head softly, savoring the feel of her hair, the softness of it. We had sex ten minutes ago and both of us are sweaty, tired and content.
I don’t want to say it, but my plan won’t wait and I know she’s scheduled to dance tomorrow; my plan hinges on her dancing.
“We have to go back to the city by tomorrow,” I say. “River must be desperate by now, really desperate. I bet she’s scouring the city for us. She’ll be watching the arena, without a doubt. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s hired extra eyes and ears, maybe even hitmen to help her along the way. She’ll come after us with everything she has, and we have to stop her.”
“I know,” Anna mutters. “It frightens me.”
“Of course it does,” I say. “And if you don’t want to do it, I can think of something else. But the way I see it, this is the best way to draw her out and get rid of her without killing her. And . . .” I pause, wondering at myself. Is it because she’s a woman? Or is it because it’s my fault she was taken, tortured? Maybe it’s a mixture of the two. “And I can’t kill her,” I go on. “I just can’t. I think about doing it and I sort of seize up. I think if I had her at my mercy again, it would only be the same. Anyway, she won’t let that happen. She’ll be more careful now. She’ll only strike when she’s sure she can get us. So that’s what we have to do: make her sure, when we know she’s not.”
Anna reaches up and touches my hand which rests on her head. “I know the plan,” she says.
“Tomorrow, then,” I say. “And this will all be over—”
Suddenly, a crash sounds from the window. I’m so relaxed it takes me a half-second to understand what’s going on. I scan the room. Broken shards of glass rest upon the floor. The man is holding a knife, a curved machete, and he is dressed in black overalls from head to toe. A mask is pulled up around his mouth and his eyes flitter to me and Anna. Time seems to slow, a half-second becoming much longer, and I watch as he regains his balance, ignoring the glass clinging to his clothes like crystals of ice, and then takes a step forward.
The half-second passes and times speeds up. I don’t think, have no need to think. Like a soldier who has been drilled into action, trained to act without thinking in battle, I too have been trained to react to danger as an animal would. I jump to my feet. “Get behind me!” I roar.
Anna leaps up and runs to the other end of the room. I don’t see where she goes, but I stand between her and the man, and that’s enough. I hold my hands out in front of me, getting a gauge of the man. He passes his blade from one hand the other, his eyes watching. He takes a few steps forward, still out of reach, wielding his machete and ready to strike.
I wait exactly where I am, feet spread shoulder-width, hands opened and ready to disarm, to fight.
There’s a pause, a before-battle pause.
“I’ve been told to tell you River sends her regards,” the man says. “She wanted you to know that before you died.”
I shake my head slowly. “Are we fighting or not?” I growl.
“Rarrrrghhh!” the man snarls, charging at me, machete raised over his head.
He may be a seasoned killer, but I can tell from the way he charges me, letting anger guide his movements, that he’s a seasoned killer of carrion. I doubt he’s ever had to deal with a proper fight in his life. I keep my back straight, standing as though I am going to fight him on my feet—and then at the last possible moment, I dive, throwing the weight of my body at his legs. He grunts, tumbles, falls on his face. Glass crunches beneath him, the crystals crushing into him.
“Ah!” he mumbles.
I leap onto his back, burying me knee between his shoulder blades, pressing him against the bearskin rug.
But then he swings back with the machete, a movement a gymnast would be proud of. His arm bends at an unnatural angle and the machete arches with a swoosh through the air and the tip of it catches me in the side, nipping me, cutting about half an inch into my skin. I grunt as the pain spikes through my stomach, and then grab the man’s wrist and twist it. There’s a crack and he drops the machete.
Then, with all his strength, he rolls over. He’s a big man, and when he rolls over I’m thrown from him across the room and into the wall. It smashes my face and I reel back, dazed for a moment. The man’s fist smacks into the side of my head. I stumble again, into and over the couch, landing on my knees. His fist smacks me again, again—and then I lift my hand and catch it mid-strike. He yelps, perhaps thinking me already beaten, and I smash his own fist into his nose. Blood showers over me, tinging the air with a metallic smell, and I smash, crunch, smash. He falls backward and I fall upon him, barely thinking. I’m aware of the blood gushing from the wound in my side, but only vaguely.
I manage to get the man to the floor, sitting on top of him, hitting madly. He dodges left; my fist hits the floor. Reverberations move up my arm, bone trembling, and he lifts his legs and kicks me in the balls. I grunt, fall back for a moment, and he rushes me again.
Enough messing around, I think. Damn enough.
I jump to my feet, let him rush me, and then step aside and grip his head in my hands. One swift movement, another crack, and the man’s neck snaps. He falls to the floor as if all the bones have suddenly left his body.
I look down at him for a second, making sure he’s done, and then I sit on the couch, touching the wound tenderly.
I don’t know where Anna is. I look around, terrified that she was somehow hurt in the fray, but then she rushes in from the kitchen holding a knife. She must’ve been gone for only a few seconds, but fights always seem to last longer. She looks to me and then the man, and drops the knife.
“You’re hurt,” she says, rushing over to me. “Do you have a first aid kit?”
“Under the sink,” I sigh, and she rushes back into the kitchen.
###
“Looks like my veterinary training is coming in handy, after all,” Anna says, as she washes and closes the wound. “He didn’t hit anything vital, which is good. Just a flesh wound. I’ve heard that so many times in movies, it’s strange to say it in real life.”
She talks rapidly, and I know it’s so she doesn’t have to acknowledge the corpse in the room. It can’t be easy for her, sitting on the couch, seeing to my wounds, when there’s a dead man lying not two feet from us. She sews up the wound with skill. The pain that hits me as the needle bites into my skin is horrible, but I can manage it. I’ve dealt with much worse pain before, and maybe before this is over I’ll have to deal with worse pain again.
Soon, she has sewn and bandaged my side. She packs away the first aid kit and carries it into the kitchen, looking anywhere but at the dead man.
River hired him, his words made that clear. I have to think that River suspected I might get the better of him and that’s why she didn’t come herself. I try and think how she found us, but that’s a fruitless endeavor, I know. There are countless ways she could have found us, but knowing it won’t change the fact that she has; she’s acted, and her purpose is clear. Just because I can’t kill her, it doesn’t mean that she has the same qualms. She wants me dead, now. Anna, too.
I stand up, go to the body, and reach down and take the man under the armpits.
“Wait in there,” I call through to the kitchen. “I’ll get rid of this.”
“Uh
, okay,” Anna mutters. “Sure.”
I drag the man outside into the icy air, drag him across the yard of the cabin and into the woods, the darkness. I drag him over twigs and stones, the sounds of nature all around me, until I have been dragging him for five minutes and am completely engulfed in darkness. Then I drop him and make my way back to the cabin, leaving him there for the animals. The wound in my side aches, burns, but it’s not crippling; nothing that will stop me doing my job.
I’m more worried about Anna.
When I return to the cabin, she’s sitting on the couch, knees drawn to her chest.
“Are you okay?” I ask uncertainly.
She nods. “Yes, I think so. I’ve just never seen a dead person before. I’ve seen dead animals, of course, but never a person.”
“It won’t happen again,” I tell her, sitting next to her and resting my hand on her knees. “I won’t let it.”
She leans into me and I hold her, but I’m not sure if she believes me. After all, I said we’d be safe here.
“We have to go through with the plan,” Anna says, her voice firm. “We have to sort this out, and then we can . . .”
She lets the sentence hang, but I know what she means. Then we can get on with our lives.
The two of us our bound together, inextricably, bound together like castaways drifting through a tortuous ocean.
Chapter Twenty-One
Anna
The helicopter ride back into the city is somehow colder than the ride we took a few days ago. I don’t reach across and touch him and he doesn’t reach over and touch me. The weight of what we’re going to do sits between us. I don’t recall ever having been so nervous, so scared. The helicopter thrums through the air, trembling and gliding, and I try to imagine a future in which Samson and I are together, but none of this craziness is happening around us.
Because, I reflect, that’s what I want. I want for Samson and I to be together. Already, I struggle to imagine a life he is not a part of. I want to back to the veterinary center and I want to go on with my ambitions and I want to fulfill the dreams I’ve worked so hard for, but I want Samson there with me along the way. I come back to the field and the turnstile and the yapping, jumping dogs. I come back to it in my mind, but I’m not alone anymore. Samson and I walk into the field together. He gathers the dogs up in his arms and smiles over the head of a Jack Russel as it laps at his face. He laughs, and I laugh, and for a moment the sound of the helicopter falls away, the reality of the plan falls away, and we are in that field, we are at peace. I wish was there now, wish I was there with him and the dogs and the nature and the peacefulness of it all. I wish instead of landing back in the city, we landed somewhere far, far away, somewhere people weren’t trying to hurt us, somewhere things weren’t so complicated.
And then my mind moves from this precious image to Dad, and my blood runs cold in my veins. Dad always interfering, always doubting, always hurting. It’s a confusing coldness. I know that if Dad had not hired Samson, Eric would’ve killed me. But that’s the thing about parents. You can be thankful for them and hate them at the same time, wish them closer and wish them farther away. He saved me, in a roundabout way, and yet I resent him for it. I try to find a way through this jungle of thought, but I fail. He loves me; I tell myself that again and again. He obviously wants to protect me. But in doing so he declared loudly and without hesitation that I am wrong, that my decisions are wrong, that everything I do is wrong. He makes me into a teenager again, as I sit here lost in thought, a teenager who lives in constant fear of his knife-sharp words.
Then, as the helicopter surges over the glittering nighttime lights of New York City, I think of River, Samson’s ex-girlfriend and the woman who orchestrated our meeting. Even my feelings toward her aren’t as cut-and-dry as they should be. I should hate her, unflinchingly. She wants me dead, she wants my man dead. But when I think of her, it’s not a bloodthirsty killer I see, but a wounded woman, a woman tortured and raped for two years by a psychopath. If I had gone through what she did, I don’t know if I could have come out the other end unchanged.
All of it is confusing. Nothing about it is simple. I find myself wishing I could feel just one way, anger or resentment or hate or love, just one of them, instead of this confusing medley.
Then Samson is setting us down and we’re climbing from the helicopter, one step closer to our plan, which will, if all goes well, banish River from our lives forever.
Our lives, I think, and I know that will never change, not now. It will be our lives forever.
###
“The queen hath returned!” Elle cries when I enter the changing room.
It’s odd to think that it’s been only a few days since I last saw her, it seems like a lifetime. So much has changed. I feel like a different woman as I walk past my fellow cheerleaders, smiling and returning their greetings. Samson has become an integral part of my life, has changed me, and walking into these familiar surroundings highlights that in a way nothing else could. I join Elle at the end of the room, standing near our lockers.
“So,” she says, and the roar of the crowd filters into the room, loud, shaking, “you’re back.”
She smiles and I return the smile. I have to pretend like everything’s alright, I know. Samson’s words echo in my mind. I’ll know what to do. I have to trust him, and yet I can’t believe that I’m back here when there’s a psychopathic killer out there gunning for me. And soon I’ll be out in the court, cheering, smiling like a loon and waving my pom-poms.
“I’m back.” I smile, as I undress and begin changing into my cheer outfit. I wonder if they’re up there now. I know that Samson is, watching, waiting. I’m bait, I think. He’s using me as bait. But I agreed, didn’t I? I’m not going to back out now, no way. I’m going to see this thing through to the end, soldier on, march confidently out there and pretend that everything is fine.
“Are you okay?” Elle asks quietly. She puts her hand on my shoulder.
For a moment I am confused, and then I realize. To the other girls, it must seem like I took time off because of the corpse, the shock of finding my ex-husband in the trunk of my car. Even now, the girls are uncharacteristically quiet. I feel their eyes on me, all of them watching, trying to be subtle and failing. They’re listening, I know, trying to figure out if there’s any drama or gossip to be had.
“Oh, fine.” I laugh, and wave a hand as though nothing is wrong. “It was just a shock. That’s all. I’m over it now.”
“But the police interrogated you, didn’t they?” Elle presses.
I sigh, and then immediately regret it. Sighing makes it look like there’s something wrong. I turn to her and smile my brightest, fakest smile; the smile of a cheerleader. “Oh, that was just a mix up,” I say. “They got the wrong idea. That’s all. There’s nothing to worry about.” My voice is artificially cheery, but that’s nothing new in this room. Most of the women in here are artificially cheery, it comes with the territory of being a cheerleader.
“Well, that’s good to know,” Elle says, taking her hand from my shoulder.
Soon, we are all changed into our cheer gear. The crowd roars and cheers and claps and chants and I know that somewhere, up there, Samson stands among them. He stands among them and he watches, watches for River and her goons, watches and waits for them to reveal themselves when they see me. That is our plan: dangle me before them like bait and wait for the killers in the crowd to break cover.
I’m nervous, it’s true, but I also trust Samson. I know that he is skilled at what he does and that he cares for me. That brings me more comfort than anything. Samson cares for me and he’d never let anybody hurt me.
But what if he can’t stop them? A voice whispers. I don’t want to listen to it but I can’t ignore it, either. Despite my trust in him, I know that he’s a man. A brilliant man, a strong man, a deadly and skilled man, but a man all the same.
Just be brave, I think, echoing his words to me in the cabin. Just be brave and patie
nt.
I take a long, deep breath, clearing my mind, and then Elle taps me on the shoulder. A sense of déjà vu grips me; it wasn’t so long ago she was tapping me on the shoulder to bring me out of a different reverie.