by Claire McNab
Blood was pouring down his face. "I'll kill you, you fucking bitch."
He was staggering, dazed but still terribly dangerous. He slashed at me and I leapt backward to avoid the blade. If I could make the door and escape…but he was blocking the way.
I made a silent apology to Fran, picked up my prized pottery teapot with both hands, and brought it down on his head.
The teapot shattered. Rich fell with a crash to the floor at my feet, lying motionless in a pool of tea and tea leaves.
The police, sirens wailing, arrived the same time as the paramedics. Then Ariana. Then Bob Verritt. Then Harriet.
I'd been perfectly calm up until then, but this was like my family arriving to support me. This thought made me sniffle a bit, but fortunately no one knew why.
I blew my nose and answered the cops' questions as best I could, until I was drooping with the combination of shock and lack of food. That reminded me of poor Julia Roberts, who had never got her chicken dinner. Bob grinned at me and said he'd take care of it.
Rich had been carried out on a stretcher, alive and swearing and accompanied by a cop.
While Ariana and Bob dealt with the situation, Harriet took me to the nearest emergency hospital, where we waited for hours until a harried young doctor had time to dress my wounds.
It was daylight by the time Harriet drove me back. Ariana was the only one there. "I'll look after her," she said to Harriet. "You go on home."
"I'm fine," I said, once we were inside. "I'm starving, though. Lunch was the last meal I ate."
"I'll scramble you some eggs. Can you face being in the kitchen?"
"No worries." Even so, I peered around the door before I entered. I thought there might be police tape, but everything had been cleaned up. There was no blood on the floor, no tea or shards of pottery. I looked mournfully at the spot on the counter where I'd kept my teapot.
"Fran will buy you a new one," said Ariana.
"It won't be as good," I said. "They never are."
She was smiling when the building shuddered. "Whoa," she said. "Earthquake. Get in the doorway. It's the safest place."
Oh, jeez! This was much worse than the tremors I'd felt at Chantelle's. It was as if some gigantic animal had the building in its jaws and was shaking it violently.
It was almost impossible to stand. Ariana and I clung together while the ground bucked and groaned and rolled beneath our feet.
The sounds of the earth tearing itself apart faded, and the shaking stopped. I was suddenly conscious of Ariana's arms around me. Of mine around her. Our first embrace? Maybe our last. The shaking was beginning again.
"Oh, no," I said. "One's enough."
Rending sounds, a deep roar bursting from the depths. The earth in pain. I looked into Ariana's blue, blue eyes. "Could be curtains," I said, thinking I might die in her arms.
She smiled. "Not likely, Kylie."
The grinding, the rolling, the terrifying instability slowly faded. There were a few final tremors, then everything was unnervingly quiet.
I could hear my own breathing, fast and furious.
"Don't be frightened," said Ariana.
"It's not fear," I said.
She gave me a long blue stare.
And then she kissed me.
ABOUT CLAIRE MCNAB
Claire McNab is the author of the Detective Inspector Carol Ashton and the Undercover Agent Denise Cleever series. Like the star of her new series, Kylie Kendall, Claire left her native Australia to live in Los Angeles…a city she still finds quite astonishing.
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