“Life is ultimately terminal,” he said. “You could move across the country tomorrow, and the moment you landed you could be hit and killed by a bus. There are no guarantees in life, except that one day we all will die. It’s up to us to decide how to live with the time we have.
“But my advice is that we should leave town,” he said. “At least for a while. Why don’t you come to New York with me? I need to go there anyway to meet with my editor. Come with me.”
Kate stirred what was left of her moo goo gai pan as she considered.
“Monday is John’s funeral,” she finally said in a quiet tone. “I need to go to his funeral.”
“That wouldn’t be very wise. It’s likely that some of these killers are going to know about the funeral. They are going to know where it is and when it is. Talk about standing on the X.
“They will have seen your photos so they know what you look like. You don’t have any idea who they are unless you can see their eyes. They could drive by in a car with tinted windows and gun you down. They could be wearing sunglasses. They could simply spot you and then stay out of sight to surprise you.”
“I need to go,” she said.
Jack was growing impatient. “Why do you ‘need’ to go? After everything I’ve told you? How is it going to help anything?”
Kate’s eyes lowered as she answered, not wanting to see the look she knew would be on his face. “What was it you said about Rita? You wished you could have buried her? That it would have at least been something to have been able to lay her to rest?”
Jack didn’t say anything. The room turned dead quiet. Kate didn’t look up at him.
“I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I don’t have any right to bring that up.”
“No,” he said with a sigh. “You have a point. I was only thinking of how best to keep you safe, that’s all. I wasn’t thinking of what it meant to you …”
“You’ll go with me?”
“Of course I will—if you want me to.”
She looked up at him from under her hooded brow.
“Sometimes safety isn’t in running.”
Wrinkles bunched between Jack’s eyebrows as he watched her. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been teaching me to defend myself, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, what are you teaching me to defend myself from?”
Jack squinted with a puzzled look, as if he wasn’t sure she was suggesting what he thought she was suggesting.
“What are you getting at?”
“These people aren’t ever going to stop, are they?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“So instead of waiting for one of those random, unexpected times when one of them shows up out of the blue and surprises me, catches me unaware and maybe unprepared, and I suddenly have to try to defend myself or be murdered, why not instead put them on the X.”
He was still frowning at her, as if he still wasn’t sure she meant what she was suggesting.
“Put them on the X?”
“Sure. You said that any of the predators who read about the funeral on the Scavenger Hunt site will likely look for me there. If they do, and we’re expecting them, if we know they will be attracted to me at that time and place, that puts them on the X.”
“There is no way for us to know how many of them there are. There could be several who visit the site and know you will be at the funeral.”
She dismissed his objection with a flick of her hand. “Every one of them who dies is one who doesn’t make it up the food chain to come after me later.”
Jack finally bit off a piece of shrimp and chewed as he watched her. “I’ve never helped anyone before who thought to switch roles on them like that. Turn the hunter into the hunted. That’s always just kind of been my specialty.”
“Seems pretty obvious to me. You and me working together increases our chances. They can’t come to kill me if we kill them first.”
His expression was unreadable. “We’re talking about killing human beings. Not in the desperate act of self-defense, but deliberately. Are you prepared to do that?”
“If I think about my brother’s body lying there in a pool of blood, his eyes carved out of his face, if I think about AJ half naked, lying there in a pool of blood, if I think about her husband Mike sprawled on the bloody stairs, if I think about her son Ryan’s brains splattered against the wall, if I think about what that Victor character did to your friend Rita, another woman with vision like mine … if I think about those photos of me on the Scavenger Hunt site, with all my personal information posted there so that a killer can hunt me down and murder me for a reward, if I think about what it felt like to realize that a killer had been standing in my bedroom fondling my underwear, and if I think about what it felt like to have that guy coming after me in the dark, intent on killing me, then yes, you bet I’m prepared to do that.”
“Avenging angel indeed,” Jack said quietly.
CHAPTER
FIFTY
“I’m not an avenging angel,” Kate said as she set the nearly empty container on the coffee table. “I’m just a person who wants to live. I’d like to die of old age, not …”
“I understand,” Jack said quietly.
“So, you’ll teach me, then? You’ll teach me what I need to know to stay alive?”
“I already told you I would. You need to practice getting those blades out, getting those knives opened in an instant, but in the meantime it’s still early. If you’d like, we have time to practice some moves you need to know in order to use those knives effectively.”
“I’ve got some extra lipsticks. We can use them, right?”
“Perfect,” Jack said.
Kate got up and went to her suitcase to retrieve several tubes of lipstick while Jack pulled something out of his own suitcase and handed it to her.
“Keep this with you along with those knives.”
She looked at what he put into her hand. “A little flashlight?”
“It’s less common to be attacked in broad daylight. It can happen, but predators prefer the cover of darkness.
“This may be little, but it’s a damned expensive little flashlight. It turns on with a push of the button on the end and puts out a high-intensity beam. Turn it on suddenly in the dark and you can light-blind an assailant. Blinding someone, even if it’s only with light, gives you an advantage.
“If you’re inside, say it’s night and you’re in bed. You wake up to the sound of someone coming into your bedroom. Grab your gun, turn on this flashlight, lay it on the bed pointed toward the door, and then roll off to the side and take aim. The light will draw his attention and it will be so bright he won’t be able to see where you are in the room.
“The surprise of bright light like this will make a person freeze for an instant. In that instant they are the one on the X. Pull the trigger. Don’t give them the opportunity to make a move toward you. You might only get one shot. Take it.”
Kate nodded as she stuck the flashlight in a back pocket. She opened two tubes of lipstick and held them the way she would the small knives. “Okay, what do you want me to do?”
“Well, the first thing that you need to keep in mind is your goal. You want to put the guy down as quickly as possible and in a way that he doesn’t ever get up again.
“Sounds obvious, but most people who get in a knife fight are running on adrenaline and frantically thrashing and slashing. They can certainly kill you that way, but unless they get you down and really go at stabbing you, they oftentimes end up inflicting a number of wounds that may be serious but aren’t necessarily life-threatening—as long as you get away from them in time. Unless they’re practiced killers, they will often try to fight with brawn, like the guy you fought, even with a knife.
“You can’t afford to fight like that. You don’t have the strength they will have, and you can’t afford to slash it out with them. A big guy can take more injuries than you can. If they have a gun, you need to dea
l with it immediately. If they have a knife, that’s a different kind of problem and you may have to deal with that in a different way.
“If they want to grab you like that guy outside AJ’s house was trying to do, you can’t afford to let him get in a blow or to get you on the ground where he will be in charge of what happens, because it won’t be pleasant. Don’t forget, your friend Wilma was killed with one punch. Even if it doesn’t kill you, or do a lot of damage, it could knock you out or knock you senseless and then you’re at his mercy.
“You want to fight in much the same way you did, the way you trained. You’re doing the same things—going for vulnerable spots, but with a blade.
“You need to always keep in mind what it is you need to do. It sounds obvious, but it’s hard to remember in a lethal encounter. You need to keep your targets in mind.” He touched both sides of his throat. “The carotid artery is probably the fastest way to put a person down, and it’s lethal.”
Kate grasped the lipstick tubes as if they were knives. “I guess I know what you mean.”
“It’s like going to the grocery store. You don’t walk around and randomly pick out things and throw them in the cart. You have a list of the things you need. Think of it that way.
“You have a list of targets on the guy that you want to cut. And, just like when you’re in the grocery store, if you see something along the way that’s not on your list but it’s useful, take the opportunity when it presents itself. Make the hit hard and fast so you can then go back to the kill zones.
“Keep uppermost in your mind that cutting him isn’t necessarily the goal. To stop him you want to bleed him to death, so you want to slice big arteries. If you need to, at least disable him. Slice tendons at the inside crook of his elbow and his arm will be useless. Make a quick jab into his eyes, then you can get in and sever an artery.”
Jack unbuttoned his shirt. “I don’t want lipstick on my white shirt,” he said as he pulled it out of his pants and tossed it on his bed.
Kate hadn’t been expecting that and the sight momentarily stopped her. It was distracting, to say the least.
He pointed a finger at her, like he was pointing a gun at her. Before he could tell her what he wanted her to do she knocked his gun hand off to the side with the back of her left fist and immediately slashed down the inside of his wrist with the lipstick in her right hand.
As he leaned toward his gun hand the way an assailant in real life would have, Kate immediately thrust a hand in toward his throat, aiming for the jugular. He blocked and trapped her arm under his. He spun around and slammed his back into her before she had time to react, and swept a leg around, taking her feet out from under her.
Kate blinked up at him. He had her pinned with a knee in her abdomen.
“Pretty good,” he said. “You disabled my gun hand by cutting the tendons. Unfortunately, I could have just killed you in about six different ways.”
“How did you do that?” Kate asked up at him.
He stood up and extended a hand down to help her up. “Because in trying to use the knives you were forgetting what you know. You were trying to fight in a different way. You need to remember to fight the way you know.”
“What do you mean, I’m forgetting what I know?” Kate asked when she was on her feet again.
“When you slashed the wrist of my gun hand, what did I do?”
“You flinched back and—”
“I wasn’t flinching back. I was getting fighting distance to disadvantage you. You have shorter arms. I made you stretch to go for my throat. That let me capture your extended arm because you weren’t controlling me; by gaining distance I was controlling you.”
Angry at her herself, Kate made a face. “You’re right. I know better.”
“Then do better. Here I come again.”
Jack lunged at her to capture her in his arms. She slashed his abdomen, then as he looked down at what she had done, she drove the lipstick knife up under his chin and pulled it down, leaving a nice red trail down his neck.
Jack smiled. “Good. That was good. Again.”
This time when he lunged at her, she wasn’t exactly sure how he did it, but he slipped around her and held her up against him with one arm around her middle, and his finger at her throat, as if holding a knife.
Kate didn’t move. She really didn’t want to move. She found him distracting to the point that she could feel her face turning red.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he said at seeing her red face. “I kind of tricked you into that move.”
“Yeah, I guess you kind of did,” she said as he released her. She didn’t really want him to let her go. With all the frightening things she was learning, she ached for something as simple as being held.
Kate reprimanded herself for letting herself be distracted. She reminded herself to put her mind to what he was teaching her. This was life and death and she couldn’t afford to be a bad student. A bad student was a dead student.
For the next several hours, they sparred back and forth through the bedroom and sitting room. He coached her on what she was doing, refining her techniques. He showed her how to make moves to get the knife where she wanted it and how to make a cut instead of delivering a blow.
They moved the coffee table aside to give them room. He had her put the lipstick tubes in her pocket, then pretend to walk past so he could attack her from behind. She had to throw him off her and pull her lipstick knives from her pockets to counterattack.
At one point, he had her lie in bed as if she were asleep, leaving her knives on a side chair to simulate them being with her clothes. As she lay there, pretending to be asleep, he jumped on her, planting his knees on both sides of her to hold her down under the bedspread. He looked down at her, his face mere inches away.
When she didn’t move, he said, “How are you going to get out of this?”
“Well, I could show you, but I think you’d be sorry.”
“Okay, I get the point.” Jack smiled. “But I’m afraid that your legs are trapped under the blanket. Try it.”
She did, but she didn’t have any slack in the blanket, so she couldn’t move.
“You can’t use your knee the way you would like. You don’t have your knives on you. What are you going to do?”
Kate momentarily gave thought to kissing him. That would certainly surprise the hell out of him.
She thought better of it, though, and instead elbowed the inside of his arm at a pressure point to make his arm fold. When he lost his balance she was able to flip him on his back, reversing their positions. She simulated strikes to his face and throat with her elbow, then dove for her knives. As he threw himself on her, she marked his carotid artery with a nice red lipstick stripe.
He praised her moves, which pleased her, then had her start again with another scenario. Over and over he attacked her and she tried to cut him in a lethal way.
Before it was over, they were both sweating. Strings of hair stuck to her face as she panted.
Jack went to the thermostat and turned it down. “I guess I should have thought of this before,” he said as he, too, panted.
“You’re hard to kill,” Kate said.
That made him laugh. She liked his laugh. She remembered AJ saying how much she liked his laugh.
“How about we call it a night. I’d like to take a shower.”
“Me too,” Kate said, still catching her breath.
“Tomorrow is Sunday. We have all day to practice.”
Monday was John’s funeral. “Only if you promise to be harder on me tomorrow. I think you were holding back tonight.”
Jack only smiled. He gestured toward the bigger bathroom. “You take that one. I’m pretty tired. I’m going to take a shower and get some sleep.”
Kate offered him a smile. “Sounds good.”
By the time Kate finally finished showering, washing and then drying her hair, and putting on a nightgown, all the lights in the bedroom were off. The room finally felt nice and cool. Onl
y the other bathroom light was on and the door was mostly closed to provide enough light not to fall over furniture.
She saw that most of the burner phones had been taken out of their packages. They were lined up on the nightstand between the beds. Jack was sitting on the edge of the bed programming numbers into one of them.
He looked up when she came out. “You’ll have to put all the numbers you need in a few of these. You’re going to have to get rid of your cell phone.”
Kate remembered him explaining how he had hacked AJ’s phone. She hated to have to get rid of her phone, but she understood the necessity. She supposed that as long as she could make calls, that was all that really mattered. She could give people at work a new number.
She could see him looking at her in the near darkness. If he wanted to say something, he must have thought better of it.
He had his shirt off, and the lipstick was all washed off. He wasn’t sweaty anymore.
As Kate crawled under the covers, out of the corner of her eye she saw him take a blue pill off the nightstand and swallow it with a drink of water. Kate knew that it was one of the Valium he took so he could sleep.
That thought made her feel profoundly sad. What kind of world must he have to endure? What kinds of things must he have seen? How many people had he tried to help who only ended up being murdered because they wouldn’t listen to him? How could he stand knowing what was coming for them, and have them ignore him?
Kate lay awake, listening to him breathe. She was having trouble sleeping herself. The mock battle had her keyed up. Within thirty minutes she could hear his even breathing as sleep took him.
She slipped out of bed and sat on the edge of his bed.
Looking down at him asleep, she thought that he was the most perfect man she had ever met. She had never had the kinds of feelings for anyone she was having for him.
But she knew, too, that the things he had seen, the things he had been involved with, made him put a defensive wall up around himself. She knew he was reluctant to let himself get any closer to her. It was his barrier against any more pain.
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