Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Iswear time slows down. My ears ring from the pain of having my head smashed into a sink, and more than anything I just want to drop onto the stiff carpet, close my eyes, and pretend none of this is happening.
Not for the first time tonight, but probably for the last, I wish to God I stayed at the farmhouse. Was it really so bad? Did I really have it so terribly, when all in all, neither man did anything to hurt me?
Because this, I think ruefully to myself as the man’s knife catches in a ray of light from the fixture above us, is infinitely fucking worse. My eyes slip closed, no matter how much I don’t want them to. I want to stare this man down, to let him know that even now, he hasn’t won.
But I can’t stop myself. Spread out and aching on the carpet, I can only wait and wish and kick myself for not having done things differently.
However, a sound on the stairs, which are only feet to my left, pulls my eyes open again, and my heart races as I desperately hope for it to be Pearl about to be my guardian—or avenging—angel.
Her taste for blood has never been more welcome, and as I open my mouth to call to her, my eyes fall on a very familiar pair of boots.
When Fox’s gun goes off, the muzzle flash is sharp and bright as the sound deafens me. For a moment I can see his face, set in deadly lines, and he doesn’t stop moving until he’s kneeling beside me.
“Can you get up, Sadie-Rae?” he asks quietly, his eyes flitting from my face to my hands and then my legs. “How bad are you hurt?”
“I’m sorry,” I gasp, unsure why I say it. “Fox, I’m sorry, I—”
Movement catches both of our attention, but this close, Fox’s gun is too slow.
The man tackles Fox, his knife somehow gleaming even in the weak bathroom light.
His movements are sluggish, but he’s easily twice as big as Fox, and it takes everything in the sheriff to pull him off me instead of letting either of them collapse on top of my legs.
“Run!” Fox orders, hand gripping the man’s wrist where he’s holding that deadly, serrated knife. “Sadie, run! Now!”
“Run,” the man snarls, looking at me. “But it don’t fuckin’ matter none, you dumb slut—”
His attention is forced back on Fox when the sheriff nearly clocks him. They struggle to their feet, and I see the knife on the ground as they scramble for bear hug-like grips on each other.
Run. The word whispers over and over in my head, and my legs tremble with it. I need to run.
Without another thought, I take off down the stairs, though I end up falling down the last few and landing on my hands and knees at the bottom of the staircase. With a pained gasp, I force myself to my feet again, pushing to the area of the theater where I last saw Pearl.
“Please don’t be dead,” I gasp, shoving the door open. “Please, God, don’t be—”
She meets me on the other side, one paw held up but otherwise looking alive and bright-eyed in the dim light. I can’t see much else of her, but a pang of guilt goes through me at her injuries.
It’s my fault.
This is all my fault.
“We have to go, Pearl,” I pant. “Th-this is the only chance we’re gonna get, okay? We have to go and…”
And what?
Where the hell am I going to go? The only people who have shown me kindness—who aren’t dead—are here in Wolf Lake.
One of them is upstairs, fighting against a man who wants to kill me, and here I am, ready to run and leave him here.
He has a gun, a weak voice tries to argue in my head, while another part of me drones on about the statistics of guns being less effective within twenty-five feet or something.
But he’s the sheriff.
Pearl whimpers, like she can hear my thoughts, and I tell myself again that I will only have one fucking chance to get out of here. To make it somewhere home free.
The yell of pain from upstairs, and the rage that follows it, is undeniably Fox. My gaze goes toward the other side of the theater that’s shadowed and dark, but I know the hall back there will lead me out to the lobby, where Carl and the door—
I don’t even finish thinking about it. I simply turn and sprint back up the dimly lit stairs.
The wall sconces are like a line of observers as my legs burn and I keep my eyes fixed on the two figures still struggling at the top.
One of them gets slammed into the wall, then thrown back toward the bathroom.
Somehow, even without being able to see them clearly, I know it’s Fox.
I know in my fucking bones that he’s the one in trouble, and Deacon isn’t here to help.
No one is here to help him, except for me, especially with Pearl whimpering and barking from the bottom of the stairs as she limps on three paws.
My dog is hurt.
Fox is hurt.
This is all my fault.
Before the man can follow Fox back into the bathroom, I slam into him, knocking him sideways but not down. He snarls and turns on me, fingers curling in my hair, and I’ve never missed Sally more than I do right now.
A cry leaves my lips as he wrenches me off him and throws me to the ground, so I land in an undignified heap at the top of the stairs.
“Stay,” the man spits before turning back to the bathroom. Opening my eyes, I’m just in time to see him swoop down to pick up the knife, grip it in his hand, and fucking smile.
He’s going to kill Fox.
It’s not a question, and judging by the pained pants and curses coming from the small bathroom, Fox doesn’t have it in him to put up much of a fight. I wish I had his gun, a chainsaw, or really anything—
I lurch forward across the carpet, closing my fingers around a sharp piece of wood from when the man splintered the door. Everything in me aches and protests, but I force myself to my feet again.
“This is your fault,” the man is saying as he rounds on Fox and brandishes the knife. “God, you and your stupid brother are always getting into shit that don’t concern you, aren’t ya? This isn’t the seventies, Sheriff Shaw,” he sneers. “Your family ain’t what it once was.”
“Maybe not,” Fox pants, having dragged himself to the far wall under the window and sitting up.
“But God, at least neither of us looks or smells like you.” He grins, his eyes dark and wicked with a taunting acceptance.
He knows he’s going to die here, and fuck if it’s not hot as hell that he wants to go out swinging.
My hero, really, in more ways than one.
The man doesn’t get a chance to raise the knife before I leap onto his back, one arm going for his throat and slipping from both sweat and blood.
I drive the piece of wood downward, aiming for the junction of his neck and shoulder.
I don’t miss, exactly, though the sharp end of the wood slides askew once before I do it again.
The second time, amidst his cursing and yelling, I manage to drive it home.
The piece of door sinks into his flesh, not all the way, but deep enough to pull a bellow from the man’s chest. He whirls, hands up and reaching for me, and I barely notice the knife clattering to the floor before he backs up to slam me into the wall.
Once.
Then again, until my head spins and I have to fight to stay conscious while clinging to him like a monkey.
“Fuck you!” he snarls. “Fuck you, you fucking—”
“God, can you—” In a moment I’m not proud of, I lift the splintered wood like a chisel and drive it down, over and over, another blow hitting with every subsequent word out of my mouth. “Get—a—better—damn—vocabulary!”
The last word becomes a shriek when he slams me into the wall again, hard enough to stun me, and I slither down it like an unfortunate pile of ooze with the world’s worst headache.
With a sick sense of satisfaction, however, I look up through dazed, hazy eyes to see the splintered wood is still embedded in the man’s neck.
The wounds are pouring blood, and as I watch, he makes the bold choice to yank it out.
The result is immediate.
Blood sprays in a few arcs before he claps his hand over it, and his eyes shine at me with all the hate in the world. He steps over me until his shoes are on either side of my weak, shaky knees.
“Should’ve started with you first,” he pants. “I thought about it. I should’ve fucking—”
I barely see Fox move. One moment he’s against the window, the next he’s up with the man’s knife in his hand.
He grabs him by his hair, yanking him back and away from me.
As I watch, his mouth curls into a sharp, bloody grin.
“Didn’t you hear her?” he purrs, his chest heaving from exertion as every breath that leaves him is a wheezing effort. “Get a better vocabulary.”
With that, he reaches up and easily, smoothly, drags the blade across the man’s throat, causing the flesh to gape and the muscle underneath to spew blood like a fountain.
Blood sprays my face and clothes. All I can do is watch and throw one hand over my mouth to keep it from going between my lips while I breathe heavily, my head spinning.
Fox lets go of the man, kicking him so he falls to the side instead of straight down, before going to his knees in front of me as the last of his strength slides from his body with the motion.
The knife clatters to his side, and he leans in to look at me, eyes bright with concern.
“You’re hurt,” he pants, bloody hands coming up to cup my face. “Sadie—”
“Me?!” I yelp with indignant disbelief. “Fox, y-you’re—” With shaking fingers I reach out to mirror his action, smearing blood across his skin as his lip bleeds freely and a cut above his eye drips a rivulet of blood.
I can see the way his shirt sticks to his skin where his department-issued body armor didn’t quite cover, and a pang of guilt goes through me.
“Fuck, Fox, you’re bleeding. H-he stabbed you and—”
Fox’s dark laugh cuts me off, and his eyes dance with morbid amusement.
“Oh, Sadie-Rae,” he sighs. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been stabbed.
Doubt it’ll be the last, either.” He runs a thumb over my lower lip, and I shudder.
“You came back.” The words are soft. Reverent.
Disbelieving in a way that makes guilt stab through me.
“I told you to run. You did run,” he points out in disapproval, making me roll my eyes instinctively.
The words I’m sorry perch on the edge of my tongue, so close to existence that I can taste them. So close that my lips are parted just as I hear footsteps thundering up the stairs, seconds before Deacon appears, panting, in the doorway.
“Fuck,” he snarls, looking between the two of us, then at the dead man on the floor. “For God’s sake, Fox. Couldn’t you have tried not to get fucked up?”
The brunet looks up at him, his brown eyes bright with amusement and pain before he chuckles, blood bubbling to his lips. “And make your life easy?” he teases. “Absolutely not.” And with that, he falls against me in a faint, his hands sliding from my face as consciousness leaves him.