But I knew the moment I fired the gun, George and the others would come rushing in to savor my suicide. I’d have barely seconds to reach the ax over in the corner before Fillmore and his henchmen intervened. I could use the second bullet to take down the Russian with his snubnosed pistol. Then it would be Engel’s blade against my ax. Three against one. Not great odds. But better than sitting here burning to death.
I looked at Rae, saw my own desperate hope mirrored in her big pupils.
She reached out and touched my hand. “Gabe, you can do this. We can do this. I believe in you.”
I shuffled my feet underneath my buttocks, so that I was folded like a frog – poised to hop to it the moment the link broke – then put my full weight against the chain.
“Do it,” Rae breathed.
Gritting teeth, I squeezed the trigger.
Like stapling Christmas tinsel to a wall, right?
___________________________
Wrong.
To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Up close, bullets hit harder than jackhammers. No way to fully anticipate which way they’re going to jump.
The force of the impact sent vibrations zinging up the bones of both arms. Jolting teeth. The Glock vaulted vertically out of my hand by about a foot, sailed through the air and clanked onto the floorboards behind Rae. Felt like it had wrenched my thumb from the socket on the way out. I straightened my legs and heaved – only to realize with horror that the link was still intact and unbroken.
Adrenaline flashed through my system.
Instinctively, I threw myself sideways to grab the gun. In the same moment, George rushed into the room, closely followed by Engel and the others. I hit the floor and the chain went taut with a
twang
, tugging me back. Fingertips less than an inch from the weapon. I saw Rae snap to and go for the gun. Saw a boot crush her hand against the boards before it got there. I heard her release an agonized scream. I twisted to see Engel grabbing Rae by the hair and yanking her head back. The vicious combat knife was against her throat in a heartbeat.
“Don’t!” he bellowed at me.
I froze.
Rae’s eyelids were peeled back with fright. Neck sinews tight as wires. Veins throbbing. Chest palpitating as she resisted Engel’s hold on her hair. One slip and it would be game over.
“Yet another disappointing result on your behalf,” George mocked. “How on earth do you ever hope to save the day when you can’t even kill yourself properly?”
Fillmore’s impatient voice, from the doorway: “Let’s be done with this; we have a deadline to meet.”
Engel’s wrist flicked as the blade came clear of Rae’s neck.
Just like that.
Not a sweeping slash as I’d feared, but something just as deadly.
A surgical incision.
I saw a half inch red line appear on her skin where the knife had nicked her jugular. Saw the red gash blossom as pressurized blood spurted from the slit.
___________________________
Then everything happened in slow-motion.
Engel stepped away. Rae began to slump to the floor, her eyes fixed on me with fear. I reached out, screaming my own blood-chilling scream, as her hot blood fountained in my face.
“This is all your fault,” I heard George say on his way out. “Her death is on your hands, Dad. Have a Merry Christmas!”
I was too busy gathering Rae into my arms and aiming to stop her blood loss to think about George’s twisted sense of parity. I clamped a hand over the pumping cut. Blood squirted between my fingers. I applied pressure, trying desperately to seal the wound. I knew that I had to pad it with something, anything to keep the vein closed and Rae’s precious blood from leaking out.
I heard the door slam shut and a bolt being slid.
We were alone. Imprisoned in the house on the shore of Deadman Bay. Minutes away from being burned alive.
And Rae was dying in my arms.
I swapped hands, quickly. Hot blood jetted into the air. I applied more pressure. Felt her pulse thudding against my fingers. Her whole neck had become sticky and slippery, her breathing erratic. I reached into my inside jacket pocket and pulled out the evidence bag with the nickel inside.
Rae was staring up at me with big unblinking eyes. “Gabe.”
“Rae, don’t speak. Save your energy. It’ll be okay. I promise. Just hold still. I can stop the bleed.”
I’d done it before: stem the blood loss with wadding and keep the pressure applied with a tourniquet. Keep the victim alive until the emergency services could get on scene and take over. The only stumbling block here was getting the tourniquet to work without strangling her.
A whole other ball game had Engel sliced the carotid artery feeding blood to her brain.
“Too much information,” Rae breathed. “I do think I’m about to pass out.”
“It’s the shock.” But privately I was hoping her brain wasn’t already being starved of oxygen.
I shucked the sports jacket over my head so that it hung down the front, inside-out. Tore a strip of the silk lining away and bunched it up to make a thick gauze pad.
Speed was critical, I knew. The more I messed around with the pressure, the more she bled out.
“Hold still.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I lifted my hand just long enough to slap the plastic bag over the wound, followed by the silk wadding. Pressed the makeshift dressing onto the gash. Then I ripped more lengths of the jacket lining and wrapped it around her neck like a scarf. Pulled it as tight as I could without cutting off the blood supply to her brain. Knotted it over the wound.
Experimentally, I eased off on the pressure, watching intensely for signs of blood seeping out into the silky bandage.
“Looks like it’s holding,” I said. For now.
Rae’s eyes were shut.
A pang of fear sliced through my chest.
Quickly, I checked her pulse. It was weak, but steady. Breathing shallow. I examined the bandage again: no signs of blood other than that already soaked up.
I dragged a deep breath and let it rattle out.
My nerves were jangling like a bag of spanners. Sweat pouring down my sides. Senses flayed and crying out for comfort.
I flipped the ruined jacket back over my head and wiped gooey blood from my face.
Rae was unconscious, but alive. Even so, I was all too aware that without the proper medical attention she could easily continue to bleed out internally. The makeshift dressing would only last so long. No saying when it would rupture. I had to get her out of here, summon help, somehow.
But we were stuck.
Something shifted in the corner of my vision: a ghostly whisper of smoke, curling up through a crack in the floorboards. It was followed with a smell of burning timber.
The house was on fire!
I had to get Rae out of here.
A certainty that the propane cylinders would soon explode, blasting through the wooden beams supporting the upper floors. When that happened, the building would come crashing down like a house of cards.
We had to be out of here before that happened.
I strained against the chain. No give. No chance. The bullet had taken a sizeable nick out of the link, but it was still too sturdy to snap with brute strength alone.
Longingly, I looked at the ax over in the corner of the room. No way to reach it, and nothing else nearby to use as a crowbar against the chain.
I stretched for the Glock and came up woefully short. I changed my approach and kicked out a leg instead. Managed to hook the toe of a sneaker over it and scooted it to within reach.
I checked on Rae: still breathing shallowly. Chest rising and falling. Her brain had gone into hibernation mode, conserving valuable energy.
Hand shaking, I held the gun in my bloodied fist and weighed up my options.
One bullet left.
One shot at freedom.
One chance to break the chain and escape before the fire consumed the entire building, and us with it.
I sensed a sinister warmth pervading the floorboards. Smell the acrid wood smoke as varnish bubbled and paint peeled.
Only one chance.
I looked at Rae. Sleeping beauty. Critical, but stable.
Her life solely dependent on me and my choices.
I sucked in a breath and held it. Placed the manacle against the floorboards. This time, hovering the muzzle of the Glock about an inch above the weakened link.
This was it.
Do or die.
The demon in my chest was pummeling my ribs.
I blew a droplet of sweat from the tip of my nose, took careful aim and squeezed the trigger.
___________________________
Incredibly, the bullet seemed to pass completely through the chain and take a splintered chunk out of a floorboard. For a heart-stopping moment, crazy fear plumed inside of me. I’d doomed us to die a horrible death, here in the house on Deadman Bay.
Then, as I lifted my wrist, the chain fell away from the manacle and I realized I was free.
Fear almost gave way to frivolity.
No time for celebration.
I picked myself up and rushed for the ax. Came back and flattened Rae’s chain out on the boards. Took a long swing, struck it cleanly and shattered a link.
I couldn’t believe my luck.
I levered the ax out of the boards, giving vent to more smoky phantoms rising from the depths.
I tried the door: locked. I hefted the ax and kept swiping at the wood until I’d smashed a panel away. Jack Nicholson eat your heart out. I groped a hand between the splinters, found the big bolt and slid it back.
There was white smoke in the hallway. Boiling along the floor and ceiling. Denser to the right where the stairwell acted as a chimney stack. Lights flickering. I went to the head of the stairs and peered over the handrail. Smoke as thick as Atlantic fog. Swarming with burnt paint flakes. I wafted at it, coughed. Through smarting eyes I caught a glimpse of fiery demons skittering around in the bowels below. Timbers cracking and splitting. The constant crackle of fiery teeth as they gnawed through wood.
The first floor was completely ablaze, with fire spreading rapidly through the second. The building’s sheet metal exterior was acting like the wall of an oven, keeping in the heat. Gas cylinders nearing ignition point.
No way down. Not here. No signs of any fire extinguishers or a hose reel. No other option but to go up, away from the raging inferno.
I ran back down the hallway, leaving swirls and eddies in the gathering vapor. The attic hatch was closed-up. I pushed at it with the ax and it yawned open. A block of cold air slid out and spooked the smoky specters. I reached up and extended the folded ladder down to the deck.
Long flames were visible in the stairwell as I headed back for Rae. The air was getting uncomfortably hot, itchy. Hard to breathe. It’s not the smoke that kills, it’s the invisible fumes that eat up all the oxygen. I coughed and blinked away tears. Rae was lying on her back where I’d left her, surrounded by a shallow sea of moving mist. Carefully, I rolled her over my shoulder, firefighter-style, and prayed that her bandage would hold.
I took one last look at Snakeskin’s cremated corpse sitting cross-legged in the corner, then made my way to the aluminum steps and up into the cold attic space.