Authors: Crystal Hubbard
He’d reach her quicker on foot.
***
Michael had dragged her out of the auditorium, through the wooded area abutting the parking lot, across Prescott’s playing field, and into someone’s tennis court. He had pushed her through the sprawling, landscaped backyards of private homes, forcing her farther and farther from school. She had wanted to know where he was taking her, but she didn’t dare ask. She hadn’t opened her mouth for anything other than breathing. Interrupting his breathless tirade of invective hadn’t seemed like a smart thing to do.
She had already lost one shoe tripping over her own feet, trying to maintain Michael’s relentless pace. She lost the other one after he pushed her headfirst over a split rail cedar fence. She landed on the gravelly earth, fire spearing her right side. Michael yanked her up and half dragged her forward even faster. She was out of breath and dizzy with pain by the time she recognized her surroundings.
Michael had brought her to Camden’s house.
***
Camden picked his way effortlessly over the darkened terrain. He and Michael and every other Prescott student living in White Fir Court had taken this shortcut to and from school hundreds of times before getting licenses at sixteen. His house was about a half mile from Prescott, as the crow flies. By car, there were two main thoroughfares, a few smaller streets, traffic lights, stop signs, and the maze of roads within White Fir Court. A trip that took less than ten minutes on foot might take twenty by car, traffic permitting.
Camden vaulted the weathered split rail cedar fence marking the boundary of the northernmost estate in White Fir Court. A glint of silver at the base of the fence caught his eye. It was the tiny silver buckle on the strap of shoe. Siobhan’s shoe.
***
Michael shoved her into the treehouse. She tripped over a warped floorboard, impaling the heels of her palms on splinters when she tried to break her fall. On her hands and knees, she scrambled away from Michael, her injured side on fire. The trunk of the tree was the center of the structure, the floor and tinted glass walls curving around it. She staggered along the wall, distancing herself from Michael even as she knew her present course would only deliver her to him. Hope glimmered when she found a pronounced seam between two wall panels. She ran her hands over it and realized she’d come upon a window. She quickly found its latch and swung it open. She leaned out, head and shoulders, and her stomach sank.
“You’ll break your legs if you jump,” Michael sang in broken notes. “It’s a twenty-seven foot drop.”
She turned around and dragged her gaze back to the doorway.
Michael stood there, panting, his skinny frame silhouetted against the night sky.
She got her first good look at him. His head looked like a red light bulb. Dark purple bags, likely vestiges of the blow Camden had given him the night before, deadened the eyes beneath his bare brow ridge.
He closed the door and slowly approached her. Siobhan backed away. Michael stopped to shut the window, and Siobhan broke for the door, circling the opposite side of the tree. Michael intercepted her, meeting her at the door with a blow to her face that sent her flying into the tree trunk.
Blind with pain, she slid to the floor, a hand cupped over her bleeding nose. A sob tore from her when Michael grabbed her hair and dragged her around the trunk, splinters ripping her trousers and her flesh along with them.
He dropped her by a table. On her backside, she scurried from him as far as she could. He took a book of matches from his pocket and struck one. He stared at the tiny flame before lighting a pair of candles propped on the table. The uneven tapers provided a weak golden light somehow more frightening than the dark. The flames flickered crazily but remained alive as Michael fussed with the items on the table. It had been set for two, the plates laden with partially eaten egg rolls, crab rangoon, white rice, and samples of the other dishes she had prepared in Camden’s kitchen.
Decapitated heads of gardenias, chrysanthemums and tiger lilies littered the floor, their aromas a heady addition to the overwhelming scents of mold and mildew permeating the tree house. He had draped her
chi pao
over the back of a chair, propped on the seat were the earrings and shoes she had worn to dinner.
Centered atop the dress—a single perfect lotus blossom.
“Like what I’ve done with the place?” Candlelight threw long shadows across his face. “It’s a little too rustic, but it’s cozy in its own way. No one will bother us here.” Each word brought him closer to her. Trembling, she turned her face into her shoulder. “I thought of everything. The candles, the food, the flowers.” He slapped his palm against his forehead. “Damn, I forgot the stockings. I gotta tell you, I really liked those stockings. That seam up the back was so hot.”
Pulling herself to her bloody feet, she pressed her body into the unforgiving wall. He rushed her and slammed his palms against the glass, trapping her in the cage of his arms and chest. Her stomach lurched violently as Michael spoke into her face. “That play meant a lot to me, and you took it away. But that wasn’t enough, was it? You had to take everything—my girlfriend, my school. My best friend.” His voice was low, calm, almost hypnotic.
Siobhan didn’t realize she was holding her breath until he stepped back and she could finally exhale. “You shot Brian.” She shook her head to clear it of the haze muddying her thoughts. “And you hurt David. You didn’t have to hurt them. I’m the one you—”
Michael spun with the speed of a striking cobra and smashed his fist into her face.
A sunburst of pain exploded between her right eye and nose. She fell to her knees, her hands cupped over her face. Blood oozed between her fingers. She gagged on its coppery wetness at the back of her throat.
Michael dropped beside her and jerked her head up by her hair. “That’s payback for last night,” he sneered. “Camden could’ve broke my nose!”
He bounced her head against the wall as he let go of her hair, and he shoved her toward the table. She almost fell again when a jagged splinter pierced the ball of her right foot. That pain paled compared to the agony in her nose and the heat throbbing just above her right hip.
Michael tucked the gun into the waistband of his slacks. He took off his jacket, his gaze never leaving Siobhan, who stared at the gun. Her life was the most important thing he could take from her, and she meant to keep it. That meant getting rid of the gun. Gingerly touching her injured side, she wondered if she could reach the gun before he could use it again.
“Get dressed.” He nodded toward the clothes on the chair.
“I am dressed,” she said defiantly, the words bitter with her blood.
He rushed her and grabbed her throat. He pinned her to the tree trunk, closing her airway. “Do you want to die right now?” He squeezed tighter, digging his fingernails into her neck. She plunged her hands into her hair. “It’s time you realized who’s calling the shots.”
Siobhan swung her stickpins at him, stabbing him in the neck and cheek.
“Bitch!” Michael threw her aside to pick the sturdy wooden skewers from his flesh. Siobhan lunged for the gun. He stopped her with an awkward kick to her gut, forcing a scream from her. She tumbled to the floor, her consciousness wavering. He stood over her, kicking her and spattering her with drool and his blood.
Electric and silvery bright, pain short-circuited her senses, and she vomited.
God, help me!
she pleaded desperately. His final kick connected with her right cheekbone, snapping back her head, her unconscious body whipping after it.
Gun in hand once more, he used his foot to roll her onto her back. “Get up,” he demanded. “We’re just getting started.”
He paced before her, his chest thrust forward. The flowers released stronger aromas as he trampled them beneath the thick rubber soles of his steel-toed boots. “You think you’re so smart,” he spat, “so smart, and so much better than everybody else!”
Siobhan lay still amidst the injured blossoms.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” he whined pitifully. He squatted and plucked the most salvageable flowers from the floor. “See?” he muttered feebly. He ripped the flowers apart and threw the petals over her, aping the way Camden had lovingly sprinkled her with petals in the pool. “I can be like Camden. I can be just like him!”
He kneeled beside her and dabbed a fingertip at the puncture wound just below his ear. “I should have brought some rope,” he sighed, his gaze lighting on the front opening of her tunic. “I should have known the gun wouldn’t be enough.”
He used the gun to brush aside a lock of hair laying across her face. He wiped blood from her nose, chin, and cheeks with the cuff of his sleeve shirt sleeve.
“I hate you,” he whispered, stroking her hair. It was so soft, softer than Chrissie’s, softer than he had imagined. He set the gun on the floor and pulled his straight razor from the neck of his left boot. Opening it, he bent over her.
The gleaming blade easily sliced through the three frog closures fastening her tunic. After he severed the middle closure, the right side of the tunic slipped aside, exposing the flat expanse of her stomach and abdomen.
A gleeful giggle of surprise burst from him.
A few inches to the right of her navel, a small black hole pulsed with its own heartbeat, and with each pulse, blood coursed from it.
“Your blood is black too,” he laughed, knowing full well it was a trick of the light.
He folded the razor and stored it in the neck of his boot. He touched his right index finger to her wound. His fingertip came away with a cap of warm, thick blood. He pushed his finger into the hole, hoping to touch the bullet.
Siobhan violently came to with a guttural cry. She clapped a hand to her side and jerked out of Michael’s reach before passing out again. Her tunic had ripped along its back seam, and its two halves separated and fell away, like the covering over a ladybug’s wings.
He unhooked the black strap of her bra and it sprang free. He lightly dragged his fingertips from her nape to her waist. Cool and soft, like the petals of the flowers he had destroyed, her skin enthralled him. “I killed Brian,” he said softly. “I wanted to kill you too.”
Her eyes sluggishly opened. The right one watered profusely and was beginning to swell, but it didn’t mask her stubborn resolve. She was clearly in pain and surely afraid, but he saw plenty of fight left in her.
He sat back on his heels to stare at her. She was so damned pretty! And so damned soft. He traced the angle of her shoulder blade with the nozzle of the gun. “You’re gonna be nice to me, like you were to Camden in the pool house.” Merely thinking about what he had seen in the pool house sent his blood straight to his groin. Enough blood remained in his brain to formulate a different plan.
Why use her once? Why can’t I
keep
her
?
“Brian,” she whimpered, rising on her hands and knees. She scarcely heard her own voice over the pain in her head. “You shot him.”
“I shot you, too,” he told her.
“The police will find me.”
“You think so?” he chuckled. “You’re a little too old and too dark for an Amber Alert. No one’s gonna look for you here anyway. By the time Camden gets home, we’ll be on our way to my grandpa’s lake house.”
She fell onto her right side, shaking. Her eyes, large and dark, like twin pools of bittersweet chocolate, looked sleepy. He leaned forward and touched her lower lip with the gun. She had a great mouth. Her full lips looked good enough to eat. Without doubt, she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen.
“What are you doing to me?” he yelled, his stinking spittle spraying her. She worked some kind of spell on him every time he looked at her! “Black magic,” he mumbled grimly. He raised the gun and she flinched. “Oh, you finally figured out who’s in charge.” He pinched her chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing her to look at him. She shivered in revulsion. “You’re not so eager to punch a guy in the face this time, are you?” He brought his face closer to hers. “I’ll be so good. I promise. I know how you like it, precious. I’ve
seen
it.”
She was scared and in pain, but her anger grew stronger than the two combined. She was so angry, she itched to give him a solid head butt to his wounded nose.
Prescott alumni Taryn Wyndham, a national tae kwon do champion, taught a self-defense class as a PE elective every fall. Siobhan had learned that a head butt was an effective weapon against an unarmed assailant. Words were her only weapon as Michael had the gun.