Client Privilege (31 page)

Lily. She had come back. I started to speak to her but, for some reason, weakness, probably, or curiosity, I didn’t. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep and waited for her to come to me.

The hand on my mouth was hard and callused. A light shone in my eyes. I closed them against it. I felt an elbow on my chest and I could smell harsh breath. I tried to gather my knees to shove at this weight on me, but he was strong and he had me pinned.

I tried to yell, but his hand covered my mouth.

‘Keep quiet or I’ll kill you,’ said a deep muffled voice.

I squinted against the blinding light. There were two of them, I realized. One holding a flashlight, the other pressing his weight on me. They wore something over their heads. Ski masks. I felt something sharp pressed against the side of my neck, and it took no imagination to know it was the point of a knife. I closed my eyes again, waiting.

‘Say a word and this goes in to the hilt.’ He took the knifepoint away from my chin and pressed its sharp edge against my collarbone. ‘I mean it, pal,’ said the man. Then the blade broke the skin, a sudden, hot, tugging pain. I felt blood ooze and begin to dribble down my chest.

He removed his hand from my mouth. He moved the point of the knife into my nostril. ‘Should I rip off his nose?’ the man said to his companion. The other guy laughed. I remembered what had happened to Jack Nicholson in the movie
Chinatown.

‘Just don’t move,’ he said.

‘OK,’ I managed to say. I hated the fear I heard in my voice. I hated the man for creating my fear.

He wrapped a wide strip of tape over my mouth and completely around my head. He taped my wrists to the bedposts. I twisted and tugged at them, but the tape was too strong. Duct tape, I thought vaguely. That’s what I’d use.

‘I think I’ll kill him anyway,’ said the voice conversationally.

‘Why not?’ said the other man, the first time he had spoken.

I felt the knife edge across my Adam’s apple. He moved it a millimetre and again my skin split open. The blade was as sharp as razors I had cut myself with shaving, and the sensation was the same. Except I could picture the glittering blade and how easily it could slice through tendons and muscles and cartilage.

My heart pounded. I felt an almost irrepressible urge to urinate. I swallowed against my gag reflex. I couldn’t seem to get enough air through my nose. With the tape over my mouth, I thought I would suffocate. Never had I felt such fear. I stared wildly into the darkness, but outside the cone of light from the flashlight all I could make out were the intruders’ fuzzy grey shapes.

I waited for that blade to slice across my throat, to sever all those tubes and tendons that connected me to my body, so that my life would spill out on to my pillow. I expected to die, and the thing that made me angriest was that if I died, I’d lose the chance to rip the eyeballs out of the heads of those two men.

When one of them slugged me on the side of my head with something hard and heavy, I saw lights for an instant, brilliant, exploding flashes like a silent fireworks display, reds and yellows and greens bursting and cascading inside my head.

They faded as quickly as they had appeared. Then the darkness became absolute.

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T
HE AUTHOR IS GRATEFUL
for the wise, tolerant, and informed counsel provided by the Middlesex County A.D.A.’s, especially Jane Rabe, who showed me around, answered my naive questions, and introduced me to her colleagues. Errors or distortions here are mine, not theirs. Rick Boyer helped me get the story straight, as usual. Jackie Farber and Jed Mattes were more patient with me than I deserved.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1990 by William G. Tapply

Cover design by Kathleen Lynch

978-1-4804-2741-9

This 2013 edition distributed by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media

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