by Kat Catesby
The lodge is a ten-minute walk from here, which at the rate I move, is a five-minute run. However, Ash is on his way here; should I wait it out or make a run for it and meet him partway between the house and lodge?
The bedroom door creaks dangerously on its hinges as David slams into it from the other side, making my decision easy; there’s no way that door will still be standing by the time Ash gets here. A few more blows like that and it’s had it – I’ll have had it.
I bolt for the window and squeeze myself through it and land on the wrap around porch with a loud thud that echoes through the empty night. The sun has disappeared behind the mountains, casting long, obscure shadows into the darkening twilight. The dimming light makes it difficult to see, but I don’t have time to worry about it – I can hear the clunking of the locks on the other side of the front door. David must have heard the window sliding open and my heavy landing onto the wooden porch and figured he would have more luck with the front door than trying to squeeze out of the window after me.
I sprint along the porch, down the couple of steps and into the inky night, not pausing to mourn the fact that I’m barefoot. I’m not a shoes-in-the-house kind of girl, but I’m starting to regret that decision each time my soft pedicured feet hit the rough grass and dirt of the ground and gravel track connecting the house with the lodge. My life depends on my ability to reach Ash before David reaches me; my feet are just going to have to put up with it.
The muscles in my legs scream as I push myself as fast as I can go. My lungs heave with the exertion of sprinting uphill to the lodge, which is hidden behind the gentle curve of the hill I’m running up. The lights of the lodge illuminate the surrounding area, giving me a spot to run towards through the encroaching darkness.
My heart beats frantically as I hear the sound of heavy footfalls gaining on me. David was always faster than me. His long stride no match for my shorter frame, but I’ve got undiluted adrenaline and panic on my side and that drives me forward. Forwards to safety. Forwards to Ash.
David’s heavy breaths creep ever closer. He doesn’t scream or shout. There’s no sound but for our labored breathing and pounding footfalls.
I keep my eyes fixed on the spot of the dirt track where Ash will appear from behind the hill. Any second now. Any second now.
He has to be there.
He’s going to appear.
He will save me.
I can make it to him.
“AAARGH,” I shriek as white-hot pain slices through my right foot. I don’t know what I’ve stood on but it’s sharp and it hurts so fucking bad that I stumble to the ground, unable to weight bear on it. Whatever it is has jaggedly torn through my soft flesh to leave a deep wound dripping blood. The burning pain radiates from the point of impact, nauseating me as my body fights to deal with the shock. Dizzy, stomach-churning and clammy skin from a cold sweat. I try to scramble forwards and attempt to get upright.
I didn’t have much of a chance before and now I can’t run, but I refuse to give up without a fight.
Just hold on.
Ash will be here soon.
Just as I make it to my toes, a brick wall of a body collides with mine, lifting and slamming me in a full-body tackle to the solid ground, knocking the air from my lungs and bruising me from impact. My head cracks against a rock and powerful fists begin to repeatedly connect with my sides. I feel as well as hear the sickening cracks of my ribs fracturing, my re-inflated lungs having the air forcibly beaten out of them again.
I curl into a ball as best I can. Shrinking away from the onslaught of punch after punch after punch. My legs thrash and kick at any part of him within reach while my arms wrap around my torso and head, trying to protect my vital organs.
“Stop! Please stop!” I beg as I gasp and force air back into my lungs, my sides splintering in pain as I do.
David’s eyes flash with fury and menace. The look is cold and murderous. His face contorted with contempt. There’s no sympathy or empathy to be found in his soulless gaze. This man never loved me. I’m in a real-life ‘Sleeping With The Enemy’ situation. The man I shared my bed and my life with was a controlling psychopath; capable of faking love long enough to snare his victims before revealing the monster beneath. How could I have been so blind? I know it’s not my fault but I’m still angry with myself that he could fool me and angry with him for being the worst thing to ever happen to me.
“Naughty girls who run away need to face the consequences of their actions,” he sneers. “Your punishment stops when I say it does; when I’m satisfied you’ve learned your lesson, Katie.”
A fist drives into my face like a brick. The asshole’s been working out that’s for damn sure. The hits are definitely harder this time – and they were bad enough last time to land me in critical care.
Shit.
I start to mentally catalog my injuries:
Head injury and likely concussion. Check.
A black eye, split lip, and a bloody nose. Check.
Foot laceration. Check.
Broken ribs. Check.
My rage boils over, the adrenaline mercifully numbing some of the pain, and I start to fight back in earnest. Clawing and scratching at his face and arms. Screaming and thrashing wildly. Sinking my teeth into any bit of him that’s stupid enough to get close.
He grunts and groans with the effort of fighting through my defenses, wrestling with me in the dirt and gravel that scratches at our skin. Dust kicking up around us. Veins popping in his neck and forearms, his face red with fury.
Just hold on.
Help is coming.
And that’s when I make the error that will end my life.
I wince as my injured foot scrapes across the gravel, shooting spikes of fire up my leg, causing my guard to drop a fraction. That’s when David back-hands me across the face, stunning me and forcing dark splodges into my vision. In that dazed moment, he straddles my torso, putting painful pressure on my damaged ribs, grabs hold of my wrists and pulls them above my head. He pins them both with one of his brutal hands while the other snakes around my throat and squeezes. Not a warning squeeze. A squeeze intended to close my airway.
I can’t breathe.
The pressure increases and my lungs pound in my chest, straining for oxygen. Tears spring from my eyes, my whole body strains against David’s body trying to loosen his grip. My throat feels crushed, my mouth dry. The world is eerily silent as I slowly suffocate.
I have one last burst of fight in me and I channel it all into my hips and, ignoring the pain in my foot, I brace against the ground and buck my hips with all my might and roll to the side to dislodge David.
It works for a brief moment and I’m able to draw a ragged breath through my raw throat but David is too big, too heavy to roll completely off me. He mounts me again but this time he grinds his weight down harder, pinning and suffocating me worse than before.
With what little air I have left I try to do the math. Do I fight and burn through my oxygen quicker or do I go still, conserve the air and hope that Ash gets here before it’s too late?
How long does it take to asphyxiate?
How many minutes away are we from the lodge?
I didn’t get very far before David caught me, which means Ash has to run nearly the full distance to get to me. I imagine I’ll be unconscious within a couple of minutes and dead a few after that.
In theory, Ash should be able to get here in time, so I stop fighting and try to control my rapidly beating heart. My panicky pulse is burning through my oxygen reserves.
David’s vice-like grip tightens and the burn for air amplifies. Black spots start dancing before my eyes while the edge of my vision goes blurry. I’m not in pain anymore and that’s how I know I’m in trouble.
Pain is good. It means you’re still alive.
All I feel is fear.
Fear that this truly is the end. Fear that I’m dying alone with this monster. Never to see Ash or Maddie again.
My throat strains a
nd tries to gulp. It feels like trying to breathe underwater. Drawing a breath and getting nothing. Lungs empty and confused.
Oh god. This is it.
No one came.
But I will fight to the end and even though I don’t want the last thing I see to be David’s maniacal face, I force my eyes open and look him in the eye. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of seeing me broken and afraid so I stare that motherfucker down with a grin on my face.
You can take my life but not my spirit asshole.
You lose fucker.
A loud noise cracks like thunder through the silence and a millisecond later, the light in David’s eyes vanishes as part of his head explodes. The sadistic satisfaction replaced with nothing but glassy emptiness. A dark red hole blown into his forehead oozes thick blood. An inhuman wound not conducive to life dominates David’s face. His expression distorted, pupils blown, slack-jawed, body slumping forwards and covering me with the blood spilling from his split-open head.
I’m able to breathe again as his hand slips away from my neck; it burns and stabs sharply, like trying to swallow a large, angular rock that’s stuck. I cough and gasp and my vision clears just enough to see Ash rising from a crouch about twenty-five meters away with a sidearm in his hands. I can just about see him through the murky twilight, which means the shot he just made was more than impressive.
Ash knows how to handle a weapon.
I see his lips moving as he sprints towards me but the sound is distorted by the buzzing in my head and the pounding of my heart. My whole body shakes with it. The pain is returning and it’s everywhere. Breathing is still labored and hindered by the body smothering me. I kick my trapped legs at the slumped dead David-corpse just as Ash reaches me and shoves his foul carcass the rest of the way off, freeing me.
Ash freed me.
In more ways than one and I think he knows it.
He brushes my hair from my eyes to better examine me, his fingers delicately tracing my cheek as the world fades to black with the soundtrack of approaching sirens.
Chapter Fifteen
Asher
This night will go down in history as the most traumatic of my life. Not even losing my parents came close to the terror of seeing that fucker squeezing the life out of the woman I love.
There was just enough light that I was able to make out their bodies tussling on the ground as I rounded the hill but I was too far away to do anything about it. I couldn’t take the shot from that point as it was too dark to see clearly and I could’ve hit Katie, especially given how hard she was fighting back. At that moment, I was simultaneously the proudest and most scared I’ve been in my life. Scared of losing her. Proud of her strength to fight back like a ferocious hellcat.
I had never sprinted so fast; fear of losing her pushing each step faster than the last. I got close enough to take the shot just as her body stilled and gave up the fight.
That moment.
That’s the one that will haunt me forever.
Because it’s the moment I thought he’d killed her.
You’d think that in the height of panic, everything would be a blur.
You’d be wrong.
It’s not.
It’s crystal clear, the harsh reality stamping itself irrevocably in my mind. I will remember those moments in painful high definition for the rest of my life.
I remember crouching to take the shot, trying to make myself as steady as possible despite the tremor in my body. I know I’m a good shot, but there’s nothing like knowing you forfeit the life of the person most precious to you if you fuck up, to make you doubt your own skills.
Every second that I hesitated felt like a lifetime of torture. Until finally, I had him right between the eyes. A slow exhale of breath, gentle pressure on the trigger, the heart-stopping moment before impact and then it was done. Like flicking off a light switch, David’s life was over.
But the worst night of my life was just beginning.
Shoving David’s dead weight off my woman, we lock eyes and I stroke her hair from her face before her eyes roll back into her skull and she falls unconscious.
She doesn’t wake.
Not that I expect her to, given what I know of her medical history and previous head injury, but as the sirens grow louder and nothing changes, I really start to panic.
I keep checking her pulse and watching her chest rise and fall with jagged breaths but I can’t shake the feeling that something is really wrong. That I wasted too many seconds retrieving my gun and calling 911. The latter was obviously a necessity, but I keep thinking maybe I should’ve taken him on regardless of whether I had the gun. He wouldn’t have bested me in a fair fight but I had no idea from Katie’s phone call whether he was armed with a weapon or not.
Christ, the sound of her screaming when the call connected is going to give me nightmares for years.
Chilling. Desperate. Afraid.
No matter how logically I think through my actions since that fateful phone call, none of my justifications work. I still can’t shake the feeling that I’ve failed her. The one person I swore to protect, the one life I value above my own, is lying in the dirt, broken and slipping away from me.
Her injuries gut me as I sit beside her with the sirens of a patrol car bearing down on me. The wound on her foot looks nasty and like something stabbed her. Katie’s face is mottled and swelling from the bruises forming, her lip split, a patch of dark blood in her hair, no doubt from another trauma to the head. Countless other injuries I can’t see because it’s getting darker or because they’re internal.
I’ve never regretted living a rural life and living so far from town…until now. It’s clear that Katie has been hurt and hurt badly; these are the situations where every second matters and I can’t bear to think how far away an ambulance is. I know emergency services drive faster than the rest of us but even at twice the legal speed, they’re still a good fifteen minutes away.
A firm hand lands on my shoulder scaring the shit out of me. I turn abruptly and notice a patrol car a few feet away, lights flashing but siren now switched off.
A local deputy takes in the scene before him and listens while I tell him everything, my voice working on autopilot because my mind sure as hell isn’t in the conversation. It’s with the woman whose hand lies limply in mine.
The deputy, Elliot I think he said his name was, turns to his radio and has a conversation with the dispatcher. He told me he was told to patrol near here due to David’s sighting earlier in the day. I’m thankful that he was able to get here so quickly but there’s little he or I can do until someone with medical training arrives. I look between Katie and Elliot, picking out a few words of his conversation.
“Gunshot…David Marks…Miss Morgan…critical…urgent.” I stop listening then and turn my focus back to Katie’s lifeless form while Deputy Elliot steps around us to check David for a pulse and confirms to the dispatcher that he’s deceased.
I killed a man.
The stark truth of that hits me in the chest. It was justified; he was trespassing and trying to kill the love of my life so I’d do it again without a second thought. But that doesn’t change the gravity of knowing you ended someone’s life, no matter how much they deserved it. In the blink of an eye, he went from drawing breath to an empty shell of dead flesh, bleeding out over my hillside.
I did that.
If Katie makes it through this, will she be afraid of me? She’s suffered enough violence at the hand of one boyfriend, could she stay in love with a man who was just as capable of causing harm? I never thought David and I would have something in common, but we do…we’re both murderers.
No matter the justification, I murdered him. Because I’m a good enough shot that I could have hit him in the shoulder or leg but I didn’t. I chose to shoot him in the head. Because he deserved it, because it was justified after everything he’s done and because I wanted him gone from Katie’s life forever. No trial, no jail time or possible parole, no chance that h
e could ever find her again. She deserves a life free from him, free from looking over her shoulder. We deserve a life without fear. In the second I pulled the trigger, I saw our future flash before my eyes and there was no way in hell I was letting him live so that he could come back to haunt or hurt us in the future; what if we had kids and he threatened them? No. I chose. I chose to kill him and I have to face the consequences of that.
“Hell of a shot,” comments Elliot.
“What?” I realize he’s no longer talking on his radio.
He nods in the direction I said I took the shot from. “Quite a shot to make in the fading light. Quite the marksman, if I had to guess.”
“I am. I aimed at his head, pulled the trigger and hit my mark,” my voice is emotionless and I’m bracing for the backlash of my actions.
“Don’t look so worried. You took his life in defense of another and it was on your land. He was a wanted man, trespassing and inflicting harm on another. There isn’t a DA in a hundred miles that would take up David Marks’ case against you.”
I register a flicker of relief in my stomach before more sirens blare, lights flashing on the hillside. An off-road vehicle from the Aspen fire department comes careening to a stop next to the patrol car. I knew they were quick but I had no idea they could move that fast over this terrain. The doors fly open and two medics rush towards us, followed by Max Cooper, my friend and Dix’s slightly younger, firefighter brother.
“Ash,” he yells and runs to me. I’m so grateful to see a familiar face as the medics move me aside and start assessing Katie’s condition.
“Max,” I give him a one-armed hug on autopilot.
“Don’t worry man, she’s gonna be fine. Smith and April are the best medics in the county. A chopper is on route to airlift her to hospital.
“We need to intubate, radio the pilot and tell him they’re going to have to take her to Denver. She needs an intensive care unit,” April calls to Max. “Then radio dispatch and get a patch through to Denver. Tell them she’s unresponsive following asphyxiation, her esophagus is swelling, bruising around her torso indicative of internal injuries and blunt force trauma to the head.”