2. Gilli
Gilli
I ’m gonna die .
I’m a single twenty-year-old living alone. I’m not suicidal, no matter how many risks I take.
I’m no stranger to this kind of shit, either. People used to break into my family’s mobile home occasionally, and even at a young age, my sisters and I banded together and ended up confronting what usually turned out to be a drunk in the wrong place.
Tonight feels different.
Locks have never stopped the most determined, and apparently whoever is crashing through my front door is extremely determined.
Keeping a close watch on the bedroom door, I blink the dryness away from my eyes and reach beneath the bed. My hand wraps around the familiar wood of a baseball bat and I draw it from out.
My heart races.
Whoever it is hasn’t reached the bedroom yet. My door is closed. A perfectly false safe haven .
I keep my movements light even though my body weighs as much as a ship’s anchor. Sweat beads along my hairline, the tank top and yoga pants clinging to my skin, and the air in the room so heavy every breath becomes a struggle.
I creep to the door.
Hesitating could cost me. If I want to get the jump on whoever is out there, then the element of surprise counts. I have to make it count.
I steel myself and suck in a breath that scalds my lungs. Okay, Gillian . Let’s do this .
I’m not planning on dying because some asshole junkie thinks I’ve got good stuff in here. I definitely don’t.
Pulling open the door, I rush down the small hallway, a few steps ahead of my self preservation. My room is at the end and the combination living room and kitchen are ahead.
The front door is shattered like some kind of huge animal clawed through. A shadowy figure is already inside.
The distance might give me away before I reach them.
Caterwauling, I get close and swing the bat through the air. Adrenaline will do strange things to a person. Make you feel like you’re ten feet tall when you don’t even top the charts at 5’ 5”. It makes you feel invincible when you’re breakable.
I swing again and this time the bat connects with the intruder’s elbow. Not the best place to hit but the closest.
“Get the fuck out of my apartment!” I shout.
I swing again, landing a hit against the man’s hip.
He’s most certainly a dude, and tall. One of those big bruisers you kind of expect to hang out with Vin Diesel and talk about cars and motorcycles and family.
He’s got on a leather jacket but the cuffs and the neck can’t hide the lines of tattoos decorating sun wrinkled skin.
The man turns, eyes shadowed in the dim light from the dingy front windows.
“Didn’t you hear me, asshole?” My breath catches.
I swing for him again but this time he knows what I’m doing and grabs the end of the bat before I connect. Air evaporates inside of me and a sharp pain splinters between my eyes when the dude yanks the bat right out of my hands.
He shakes it side to side like a warning as another set of meaty arms wraps around my waist and hauls me backward off my feet. My legs kick out against open air and I try to scream, but the second dude squeezes, cutting off the sound before it squeaks past my lips.
Shit .
My back molars grind, my head at an odd angle. Before I have a chance to wiggle free or do a little donkey kick to his testicles, he throws me down.
My hip cracks against the coffee table and the cheap material folds underneath my weight. The hit leaves me breathless.
I somehow scramble to the side, hands scraping over the broken shards of the table. Both men round on me and their fury is the fourth presence in the room.
The air goes thick as I struggle to my feet.
The first dude tosses my bat over his shoulder and it lands against the counter, scattering dishes I had drying in the rack. His friend reaches for me and I haul my ass to the side to stay out of his grip.
He has a much longer reach than I do. He grabs me by the wrist, wrenching me forward so forcefully I cry out. Pain ripples up from the area as tears burst from the corners of my eyes.
“What do you want?” I demand, not expecting an answer but certainly not expecting a backhanded slap.
Skin connects.
Stars dance in front of my eyes and I’d have fallen if the dude hadn’t held me up. Pain has nausea painting bitterness over my throat.
Goddamn, did he have to hit so hard?
I lift my free hand to my jaw and the already swollen area where he made contact. These guys don’t know me but they hate me. Or maybe they hate all women and I happen to be the unfortunate one they’re looking at tonight.
The one holding me lifts his hand for another round of assault and battery but I duck low, avoiding the hit. He swings and grabs my hair.
Time for the knee.
I bring it up and he twists out of the way but the movement throws him off balance. I crack down on his wrist with mine, bone grinding over bone, and it’s enough to get him to loosen his grip.
I’ve made a terrible mistake by engaging. Rather than wait for it to cost me everything, I fumble for one of the broken table legs and come up ready to channel my inner Van Helsing. The jagged piece scrapes against the side of the guy’s neck.
His roar of pain is gratifying.
But his friend wastes no time before grabbing me again. I’m not fast. I’m not athletic or graceful. I’m just scrappy.
There are things you have to learn, growing up the way I did, and one of those things is resilience.
I will always come up swinging.
I will always do what I need to do in order to survive.
Both men move in tandem like twin snakes prepared to strike. I face off against them with the table leg between us, the end dotted with something dark. At least I’d drawn blood.
My eyes water at the creases. “What do you want? Huh?”
They say nothing.
A whisper of fabric sounds from the front door and I make the mistake of turning in that direction as a third man steps into the apartment.
The sight of the newcomer turns my stomach and sends an instant freeze through my blood.
There's no way to win against three of them. Especially if they get tired of my games and pull out the literal big guns .
They’ve got the door blocked now. My adrenaline surges again.
Where else do I go? What should I do?
Panic threatens to crash and short-circuit me but panic isn’t going to get me out alive, not with these odds.
I square my shoulders. Their gazes track the movement but they’re not sure which one of them I’ll strike at first.
Using their confusion against them, I feint to the right before ducking as the man on the left makes his move. His arms catch the air above my head as the third man moves into place.
I roll to the floor and make myself as small as possible before swiping out a leg to kick the newcomer.
He trips over me and goes down into the second man. Without wasting time, I chuck the table leg at the first dude, who already has blood streaming down the side of his neck.
I’ve got to get out of here. Got to get somewhere safe.
My cell is plugged into the outlet in my bedroom. The door is open, but they’re probably expecting me to go that way. Doesn’t matter. It’s my only option.
I make a run for it with the dudes hot on my heels. The first one is only a few feet away when I slam the bedroom door in his face and twist the flimsy lock. It won’t last long against their muscles. My wrist still throbs where he’d grabbed me.
Whoever they are, they aren’t playing around, and they’re not here to steal from me.
Phone first .
The thin carpet scrapes against the soles of my feet and my lungs are so damn tense they hurt. My heart is going a million miles an hour, my fingers numb. I fumble for the cell and throw it in my pants pocket.
The window .
The fire escape outside has always been way too close for comfort and a perfect way for people to break in, or so I thought. I’d lined the window with things to make noise if anyone ever decided to break in, and kept a piece of wood lodged across it to make it tougher for any would-be thieves.
The wood jams and screeches through the paint when I drag it out. The latch has been painted over with a landlord's special. I glance over my shoulder at the splintering door. Fuck, I’ve got to go faster.
Much faster.
Oh, god, what am I going to do?
I break a nail and more pain knifes through me. Finally the wood pulls free, the window is open, and I fold my body through the opening. One heartbeat, two.
My pulse thunders in my ears. I make it onto the rusted bars of the fire escape before the bedroom door opens, angled on bent hinges.
The first man runs through and I slide down the ladder.
I slam down on the ground and take off at a run with my arms pumping. Stray stones and broken glass don’t matter.
These are my streets. Loud, obnoxious, packed with people.
And I’ve got to make sure I get far enough away that they won’t find me. I’m not a sprinter; my body is made for lying on the couch and eating donuts rather than doing any kind of physical activity. But when it comes down to life or death, you can surprise yourself.
My bare feet slap against the pavement and the chill night breeze cools the sweat along my spine.
Once I’ve gone a fair amount of distance, I stop, slamming against the scratched plastic side of a bus stop to catch my breath. Trying to because there’s no room inside me for air. My legs are shot, my feet sore, and my throat scraped raw from exertion.
Holy fuck. What just happened to me?
I fumble for the phone and almost drop it. I don’t need a shattered screen right now. Somehow I manage to press the numbers for 911 and swallow hard as I wait for the call to go through .
“911, what is your emergency?”
I gulp down a sob and anxiously check over my shoulder. “Three men broke into my apartment just now. 6700 Row Street, apartment D. I used the fire escape to get out, but they’re after me.”
“Ma’am, calm down.” The mechanical voice isn’t worried. “Do you know where you are?”
Shit, no. I’ve got no clue.
Did I get a good look at the perpetrators? No, I didn’t. Not outside of the tattoos, and those patterns might have been drawn on anyone or inked in prison for all I know.
I suck at this game.
I always thought I was observant, but guess what? When it comes down to it, terror makes you stupid.
I’m stupid.
My sluggish mind churns and the cogs click into place. I straighten, my nostrils flared.
“There was a dude earlier who made threats against me. He, ah, he offered me a large amount of money to do something for him and I refused. He said he would find me.” I gasp, swallowing hard. “He said it would take some time to find me, but he would.”
The operator pauses for a moment. “Do you know the identity of the man?”
What the hell should I say in this case? That I’m basically a porn star for cash? They’re never going to take threats like this seriously.
Are the two instances even related? I have no evidence to know and I’m not going back to my place to ask the dudes if they’re connected to Maxxx8U.
“Ma’am? Are you still there?” the operator presses, slightly more concerned.
I end the call.
Whoever this guy is, if he’s behind the break-in, then he’s serious about coming after me. And with the kind of money at his disposal to just throw around twenty-five grand, he’s got the resources to do what he wants.
Including paying off the local cops. What happens if the police come and they deliver me to him on a silver platter?
“What have you gotten yourself into, Gillian?”
Hearing my own name spoken out loud helps steady me. The cool scarred bus stop bench isn’t much but it’s sturdy.
I've got to prioritize my safety. I need some time to figure out the identity of the dude, to see what I’m dealing with. If this is even related. I’d have to be an idiot to think they aren’t connected.
My gut tells me some pretty fanciful stories.
So where do I go to lay low?
My mouth is dry again and I run my tongue over my teeth. The movement only emphasizes the dull ache in my cheek from the slap and the dried tear stains.
I’ve never been hit before, not so hard.
There have been plenty of smacks from Ma or from my sisters during arguments but never with the kind of force that man used on me.
If he wore rings, I’d have cuts and loose teeth.
My phone is a useless dead weight in my pocket as I trudge back the way I came, only vaguely aware of the rawness of the soles of my feet.
The odds are good someone’s waiting for me at the apartment, but the odds are better the police will be on their way as well, to investigate. They have my address.
If I can get inside and grab some money and car keys, then I’ll be set. I’ll leave.
Where the hell do I go?
I shiver, the adrenaline leaching away and the cold biting my exposed skin.
Going back to the trailer even for one night is nowhere close to a permanent solution. Not to mention it’s a four-hour drive and I haven't been there since the night before my high school graduation .
It’s not the kind of place you want to stick around. Especially after Ma abandoned us.
She left her children to fend for themselves like we were a pack of wild animals.
Survival of the fittest.
The cold from the ground rises through my ruined feet. My knees lock and I stumble, losing my balance. A dog barks from a nearby yard and someone yells in a slur for the goddamn animal to shut the fuck up. Walking alone in Baltimore, at night, is just as stupid as staying in the apartment.
Cash, car keys, shoes, clothes. Then I’ve got to get on the road and not look back. At least until I can figure out a way through this mess.
The money isn’t worth this .
Will my dream job erase my painful memories? Overwhelmingly no, but I’m in this now and there is only one way out.
To get through it.