by Evelyn Glass
The clapping of the crowd grows louder, and the announcer says in a cheery voice. “Maybe that old man got a bit too friendly with this particularly feisty cheerleader, Michael?”
Elle leans in and whispers in my ear. “What the hell was that about? That was your dad, wasn’t it?”
“Unfortunately,” I say, voice still shaking. The Jumbotron moves away from me, back to the game, and I let the smile slip from my face. “Don’t worry about it,” I go on. “It’s just family business.”
It’s then that my gaze turns to the opposite side of the court, the side I didn’t spot before because I was dancing. And there she is, sitting in a ridiculous wig and an even more ridiculous dress. My gaze rests on her coldly. I only know what she looks like from a photograph Samson showed me before we arrived here, so that I could spot her. But it’s unmistakably her, beneath the façade of an attractive young woman just here to enjoy an NBA game.
She must feel my gaze on her. She turns, faces me, and then a smile spreads across her face which would look more appropriate plastered to the face of a jackal. After a moment, I return the smile. This catches her off-guard—maybe she expected me to flinch—and she shakes her head.
I smile, thinking, don’t get too comfortable, bitch. You think you have us right where you want us? Big mistake.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Samson
The third quarter is well underway but still nothing has happened. I watch River, The Gent, The Pistol, The Butcher and The Bear. I only half-watched when Anna slapped her father on the face. I wish the circumstances were different and I could go down there and give her a hug. Strange, but the prospect of giving her a hug fills me with warmth, whereas before it would’ve filled me with nothing. But I can’t go down there and give her what comfort I can offer. I have to stay here, waiting. I don’t know what I’m waiting for, not exactly, but I will when it happens.
River constantly leers at me. A twisted leer, the kind of leer I imagine her sadistic torturer turned on her daily. Perhaps she’s taken some aspects of him into her own personality. Perhaps she’s become changed, warped, by what he did to her. Perhaps, I think, and almost chuckle to myself. There’s no perhaps about it. The River I knew is long dead. I should’ve killed her when you had the chance.
The thought that I should’ve killed her returns to me again as I sit here, waiting for the drama to start. And yet I know that if the chance were presented to me again, I wouldn’t be able to take it. I know it’s a surefire way to end things, but I can’t. I just can’t. I’m surprised by this weakness. Not for the first time, I find myself wishing that River was a man.
Every chance I get, I glance over at Anna and the other cheerleaders. They stand in a huddle just beside the court. Anna looks up at me and offers up a small smile. I return the smile and then go on with my watching of River and her cronies.
None of them make any movement that tells me they’re going to do anything. I find myself wishing that they would just act, act now, to end this tortuous waiting. Use her as bait, draw them out, and then end it. But that was when I’d assumed River would come alone, maybe with one other person, not a four-person army of some of the deadliest men in New York City. The worst part is, I don’t even have a gun, just this dart-shooter I picked up before coming to the game.
I’ve never questioned myself like this before on a job. Everything is usually planned and planned again in advance. I’m in new territory. All I can hope is that when the time comes, I act decisively. I have to keep Anna safe. That’s the main thing. Keep Anna safe. I wonder, if it came to it, if I’d be able to kill River to save Anna’s life. I’m shocked when I realize that I don’t know. I’m unsure.
If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being unsure.
###
I know that something is up by the way the player goes for the loose ball. He doesn’t jump for it, reaching, as any other player would. This player—and my suspicious is raised because I don’t know his name—throws himself through the air as though diving, right toward the cheerleaders. And as he dives, he reaches into his sock. The knife glints in the light, winking at me, and I can see what’s going to happen as clearly as if it already has. I see the man pull the knife from his sock, lurch into Anna, and stab her brutally in the neck. There will be screams, outrage, the man will be apprehended by security. But not before Anna dies.
The man flies through the air like a torpedo, whooshing toward Anna, hand already closed around the grip of the knife. I don’t have time to think.
I grip the edge of the railing and launch myself over, knocking a coach and a substitute player to the floor. People shout at me, jeering, and the Jumbotron is immediately filled with my image. I barely see it, sprinting through the fray toward the cheerleaders. All of them, except for Anna, flinch away from me, screeching. Anna watches me with a confused expression on her face. And then the player whips the knife from his shoe and thrusts at me.
“Duck!” I roar.
The only thing that saves her life is that she does what I say straightaway, without questioning me. She ducks and the knife slices through the air above her head. The player is tall, reed-thin, with wispy stubble around his jaw. I guess he must be under twenty, a kid. They sent a kid to kill her.
I’m aware of the security rushing the player. And rushing me, too, because to them it must look like I’m part of the attack. But I ignore them all and charge at him. He jumps at Anna. Anna lurches back, all the way into the side of the rails hands covering her face. I run and for a long moment it’s like I’m in a nightmare where, no matter how fast I run, I’m destined to remain in the same spot. I imagine that I run and run and then Anna is killed in front of me anyway. Her blood pools out over the court and I collapse beside her, defeated. It’s now, in the madness of the fray, that I realize without a doubt that I love Anna, have loved her since the night I showed up at her door. Only she can distract me during a job, only she can make me lose my killer’s center.
Then the nightmare passes and I’m on him. I grab his wrist as he lifts it to take another swipe at her, and squeeze with every shred of strength I have. I squeeze until I feel the bone crunch in my hand, until he yelps and drops the knife on the court. He turns to me with an expression I had not expected. Not anger, or rage, but bemusement. It’s like he can hardly believe what he’s doing. He’s just a boy, I think, wondering how River managed to get him to do something so drastic. But the answer is plain, isn’t it? He’s just a boy, and River is skilled at capturing men with her body.
I tilt my head back, aim, and butt him hard in the nose. Blood gushes out and sprays over my face and he slides to the floor, collapsing onto his side, curled up in a ball and holding his hands to his nose.
I turn to Anna, my chest heaving. Not from tiredness, I know, but from fear: fear for Anna. “I made a mistake,” I say. “We should never have come here. We need to—”
A solid bodybuilder’s arm wraps around my neck and drags me backward. I crane my neck up, my legs kicking, and see one of the security guard’s tough faces glowering down at me. I grab him by the forearm and wrench at it, trying to yank him free. He grunts, but holds onto me, his grip solid.
“You don’t fucking understand,” I growl.
He just shakes his head and keeps dragging me backward. Now that the knife-wielding basketball player is no longer a threat, my focus expands and I see that the entire arena has erupted into madness. The crowd is jostling with each other, shoving and fighting, as though it only takes one small thing to make turn them into rioters. The announcer is screaming above the mayhem, but his voice is lost deep within the din. Everyone is screaming and shouting. I watch as Anna is gripped by the shoulder by her ginger friend and tugged toward the tunnel that leads to the cheerleaders’ changing room.
No, I think. No, no, no, no. Don’t let her out of my sight. Don’t do it.
I try to shout, but there’s a hand over my mouth. I thrash and kick, but there are three security guards on me now, one arm w
rapped around my neck, the other around my midriff, and another gripping my legs. They pick me up and carry me toward an aisle opposite to the one down which Anna has just been dragged. I look around, trying to find River or one of her cronies. I see the men, The Gent and The Bear and The Pistol and The Butcher. They sit in their seats as though nothing has happened, and I know that they won’t move until River gives them a signal. Or maybe all of this was planned beforehand, right down to me stopping the assailant. Maybe it was the mayhem they counted on.
But if that’s the case, they’ve already failed. After a brief explosion, the crowd begins to settle down.
But that doesn’t help me. I’m carried down a tunnel, the court growing smaller and dimmer, and as much as I struggle, I can’t get free of the security guards.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Anna
I don’t think I’ll ever understand how Elle and I get cut off from the main group of cheerleaders and end up at the rear, alone in the tunnel which leads to the changing room. Maybe it has something to do with the way I constantly search behind me, looking into the court, trying to search for Samson. I want to be with him more than I’ve wanted anything else in my life. My heart is out of control and my head is heavy and no matter how hard I try, my hands won’t stop shaking. He was so close, I think, remembering the knife, the way it cut inches above my head, the way it would’ve cut right into me had Samson not screamed his warning. I remember the feeling when I realized what had happened, when I realized that I’d been close to death. For a second I had accepted that I was going to die. I had come to terms with it before it had even happened. And then the chaos, and the running, and . . . Where is he? I think. Samson! Samson!
Elle tugs at my arm, trying to lead me to the changing room. I look into her face and see that she has no clue what she’s doing. She doesn’t know why she’s dragging me to the changing room. She just is, dragging and dragging. Maybe she thinks, for some bizarre reason, that I’ll be safer in the changing room than out there. But she doesn’t know about Samson, does she? She doesn’t know that the only person who can keep me safe is Samson.
“We have to go,” she says.
“I can’t,” I mumble.
We’re alone in the tunnel, halfway between the court and the room in which the cheerleaders now hide. Their panicked voices filter down the tunnel to us, mixing with the announcer’s voice and the crowd. But the crowd is getting quieter now. Fewer people shout and it seems that everybody has returned to their seats, waiting for the announcer to explain what’s going on.
“What do you mean?” Elle says, tugging more insistently on my arm. “You have to. I don’t know what happened, but—Goddammit, Anna, it’s not safe out there.”
“What, and it’s safe in here?”
Both of us turn toward the voice, the footsteps, but I don’t have to turn to know who it is. She has taken her wig off, but she still wears her dress. In her hand, she holds a pistol. She prances toward us, a sickening smile plastered to her face, until she is standing within a meter of us. I pull away from Elle’s hand and face her as bravely as I can.
“You won’t kill me,” I say, hoping like hell that it’s true. “You wouldn’t have gone through all this effort to get me alone if you just wanted to kill me.”
“Maybe that’s true,” she says, pointing the gun at us and walking around to where Elle stands. “I won’t kill you—yet. First I need to make some things clear to you.”
She smashes the butt of the gun across Elle’s jaw. Elle slams into the wall and slides down it, eyes closing. Then River lurches forward and shoves the barrel of the gun into my belly, looking deep into my eyes. I look back at her and see only madness. Any sorrow I felt for her is extinguished in my own need for survival, in my own desire to get out of this situation alive.
“So,” she says, smiling her deranged smile. “We finally get to meet.”
I look down at Elle, but she’s dead to the world. She’s breathing, and that’s all I can be thankful for. River pushes the barrel of the gun fiercely into my chest, cruelly twisting it and grinning when I wince from the pain. She smiles, an ear-to-ear, psychotic smile, and when I turn from Elle back to River, I know that I’m looking at an insane person.
I remember a dog we brought into the veterinary clinic a few weeks ago. The dog was in good physical condition, unharmed, but it had bitten its owner on the arm and as we tried to apply a muzzle, it twisted and tried to bite at us, too. In the end we had to tranquilize it and put it down. It was a horrible day, the kind of day that makes you question if what you’re doing is what you really want to do. I remember the look in its eyes well: the crazed, ferocious look, the look that said it would bite anyone and anything it could. The look of an animal that had lost some essential part of itself and had reverted to its wolf ancestry. Looking into River’s eyes, I see the same madness, the same desire to do harm.
“You’ve done something truly amazing, Miss Prissy Blondey Anna,” she says, and not once does her grin slip from her face. “Do you know that? Yes, something truly incredible. You see, when I was with Samson, he never opened up to me like it seems he’s opened up to you. He was never close with me, never loving, never affectionate. Oh, we had some good times, don’t get me wrong. There was one time when I woke up and his head was between my legs, licking like mad!”
I growl from deep in my throat, a growl which surprises me. It’s unlike any sound I would normally make.
“Ooh, yes, feisty!” she grins. She takes me by the shoulder and leads me down the tunnel and turns me away from the changing room, shoving me deep into the recesses of the arena until we are completely alone. Above us, I hear the echoing of the crowd, quieter now, less raucous, probably just wondering what the hell is going on.
I know how they feel, I think.
“He was licking like mad,” she says, her voice casual, as though we are two friends having a friendly chat over coffee, as though she doesn’t have a gun buried in my stomach. I look down the tunnel, but I don’t know where we are. Some unused branch of it, somewhere private, somewhere I won’t be found until the gunshot is heard. “That’s what I never understood about Samson, you know.” My only solace is that she’s talking as though she has all the time in the world, perhaps I can hope that her madness has made her overconfident. “He went down between my legs and licked like a champion, he touched me, kissed me, caressed me, and yet after all of that, he could never love me.”
I try to ignore her words, but I can’t fight the images that spew into my head as she talks, images of Samson doing what she describes, going down there and pleasuring her, touching her. I know it was long before we met, long before he even knew who I was, and like she said, he never loved her, but the images are strong and they make me feel sick. I can’t stand to think of Samson with another woman, even now, even when my mind should be on other things.
Isn’t anyone looking for me? Hasn’t Elle woken up? Isn’t there a search for me? Goddamn, can’t Samson get free? I’m going to die here and there’s nothing I can do about it!
I feel the pressure of the gun against my belly and I wonder if I’ll be able to grab it and misdirect the shot before she fires. But I know it’s an absurd thought. I’m a veterinary student, not a ninja. The only thing I can do, I know, is to try and keep her talking for as long as possible. Stretch out her words and distract her until something—though I have no clue what, exactly—stops her from killing me.
“The man with the knife,” I say. I’m shocked by how steady my voice is. I feel oddly calm now I’ve decided on a plan, now I have something to focus my energies on. “You knew he wouldn’t get to me, didn’t you? This was all part of your plan to get me alone.”
“Well—I had many plans,” she says, her eyes lighting up like a child excited to share her most recent school project. “But yes, you’re right, this was one of my plans. I have contingencies. Did Samson tell you what happened to me? I’m sure he did. Well, let’s just say, being kept prisoner and to
rtured has done little to affect my ability to plan and fight.”
“It’s a good plan, I have to say.” I offer her a smile. A fake smile, but I’m good at fake smiling. I’ve had lots of practice.
For a moment she doesn’t seem to know whether or not to accept the fake smile. She tilts her head at me, biting her lip, studying me the same way I’ve studied animals in the center so many times before. I don’t flinch under her gaze, though the desire to is almost overpowering. I just stare back at her, straight into her eyes, and wait for her to talk.
Then she giggles. At first, it’s a soft giggle, almost innocent, and I’m taken aback by the innocence of it. If I heard a giggle like this in the street I’d turn my head and expect to see a little girl, no cares in the world, laughing her troubles away. I wouldn’t expect to see a deranged wig-wearing killer. The giggle grows darker, a chuckle, and by the end she’s laughing a full-throated man’s laugh. Pinpricks dance up my spine, linger on my neck.