Catherine Nelson - Zoe Grey 02 - The Trouble with Theft (29 page)

I felt a scream in my
throat and choked it back.

“Just scream!” she
cried.

I glared at her and
knew hate burned in my eyes.

I felt the skewer
pierce the bottom of my arm, and she whacked it with the hammer again and
again, driving it into the arm of the chair. Then she stared at me, her hand
wrapped around the skewer. Slowly, with deliberate malevolence, she pulled on
the skewer, working it around inside my arm. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and
my jaw ached from clamping down on my screams.

She laughed then
grabbed the skewer with both hands, working it back out. It took her some
effort, because she’d driven it so far into the chair. Then it slid out of my
arm, covered in blood.

“I think it’s only
fair to warn you,” I panted through clenched teeth. “I’m going to stab you with
that fucking thing!”

She laughed again.

She placed the tip of
the skewer on my left thigh.

“Just scream!” she
cried, more demented than I’d seen her since this began.

I just glared at her.

She whacked the skewer
with the hammer, driving it in. Her fury was hindering her. Twice she missed
the skewer and brought the hammer down on my leg. Both times I felt it strike
the bone, the impact radiating along my femur in both directions. That was a
pain I never want to experience again. Finally she got the skewer through. I
felt it come out and go into the chair.

She stood back,
panting, and looked at it, madness gleaming in her eyes plainly now. Then she
looked up to my face, searching for any sign of the scream she demanded.
Finding none, she spun around and grabbed the pruning shears off the towel.
Brandishing them in her left hand, she marched over and grabbed my right pinky.

For the first time
since this whole thing began, I was truly horrified. I suppose it was my
upbringing, but I’m not unfamiliar with pain or damage inflicted upon my body.
But, generally speaking, my body is intact. The thought of having a piece of it
lopped off was more than I could take. This was barbaric.

I opened my mouth to
ask her again what information she wanted from me, just to engage her in
conversation, however brief, to buy myself more time, but before I could form
the first syllable, the lights winked out.

“What the hell?” Dillon hissed,
releasing my finger. “Lyle! Lyle!”

Already I could hear
footsteps on the carpet in the hallway.

“What the hell
happened to the lights?” she snapped at him.

“I don’t know,” he
said, slightly short of breath from either exertion or fear. “The power just
went out.”

I heard him walk to
the patio door and could then see his silhouette against the glass.

“The neighbors still
have power!”

“Figure out what’s
going on!” Dillon snapped. “Now!”

He turned and hurried
across the kitchen toward the front of the house.

Dillon walked over and
pulled open a drawer beside the refrigerator. A moment later, a flashlight
blinked on. She used it to rummage in another cupboard and came up with a
second flashlight and several candles. After arranging the candles on the
island, she used the lighter she already had handy to light them.

I’d heard the front
door open, but then Young was back.

“Hey!” he called.
“Hey, Dez!”

“What?!”

Young returned to the
kitchen in a hurry then pulled up short. With the kitchen now lit, he looked
from the skewer sticking out of my leg to the blood oozing out of the new hole
in my exposed abdomen, and he seemed to wobble slightly. He certainly looked
green. Apparently Desirae hadn’t been exaggerating; Young didn’t do well with
bleeding.

“What is it?” Dillon
snapped, drawing Young’s attention away from the skewer and back to her.

He shook his head and
tried to focus.

“Uh, she’s here.”

Dillon stared at him,
irritation rolling off her in waves.

“
Who’s
here?”

“Your sister.”

Desirae found this as
surprising as I did. We both stared at Young like he’d announced aliens had
landed. Desirae was the first to recover.

“What the hell are you
talking about?”

Before Young could
answer, a woman walked into the kitchen and stopped beside him. She was an
identical copy of the woman standing beside me covered in blood. She was
Danielle Dillon.

Danielle was dressed
in denim capris and a flowery top with ruffles and capped sleeves. Everything
she wore, from her clothes and shoes to her jewelry and makeup, was expensive. For
a woman on the lam, she was well funded. Her long hair was down. It was as long
as her sister’s, though Danielle’s was layered with more framing around her
face. She also had brown eyes, but hers were bright, clear, and sharp, unlike
her sister’s that had become increasingly dark and hollow over the course of
our time together in the kitchen. She was obviously just as tall and slim, but
she was slightly larger through the hips, and I attributed this to the fact that
she’d had a baby.

“Dezi,” she said. Her
voice was so similar to Desirae’s it was hard to tell them apart.

If Danielle found
anything strange or upsetting about her sister’s appearance or activities, she
gave no indication of it. I thought she could tell her sister had finally
snapped, though.

“So you finally come
to see your sister,” Desirae said.

Danielle looked away
from Desirae, focusing on me and the rest of the kitchen. She shrugged as she
moved toward the opposite end of the kitchen on the other side of the bar,
keeping the counter between her and Desirae.

“I heard you wanted to
see me.”

Desirae laughed. It
was the laugh of madness. It sent shivers down my spine.

“Precious Dani. Precious,
perfect Dani. Always a step ahead of me, always smarter, always faster, always
better. Yet here you are. Because I finally won.”

I had no idea what
Desirae was rambling about. None of it made sense. I had serious doubts she’d
ever make sense again, with the damage she’d sustained. It seemed to me Desirae
had finally reached her breaking point.

As Danielle continued
to walk across the kitchen, she drew Desirae’s gaze. Desirae turned to face her
and finally had her back to me. With Desirae having finally cracked, I didn’t
think there was much hope of things getting any better. I had no idea why
Danielle was really here, but it had been her Desirae had wanted. If she had
her, she wouldn’t need me anymore. Or Priscilla or Natalie. And the longer I
sat here, the more I’d bleed.

Without any real idea
of what I was doing, in a move born out of total desperation, I flung myself
backward in the chair. The momentum caused the chair to rock back on two legs,
teeter, then fall back and crash against the floor. Young and Desirae both
cried out and whipped around to see what had happened. As if my life depended
on it, because it did, I kicked my right leg and ripped the chair leg free of
the chair with strength I didn’t know I had.

Desirae, nearest me,
was armed with only a flashlight. Seeing me topple over, she flung it down and
ran to the island, snatching up the long knife. She ran toward me, gripping the
knife in front of her with both hands. I raised my leg and kicked, sinking my
foot into her belly. She doubled over as her grip on the knife slackened. I
kicked again, striking at her arms. The knife flew out of her grip and
clattered to the floor. I kicked a third time, lunging at her head. My goal was
to incapacitate her. I still needed to get free from the chair before she could
get it together and grab another knife. My heel connected with her nose, and I
felt the telltale crunch. She stumbled backward, clutching at her face with
both hands, then fell to the floor.

Young had taken a
minute to figure out what to do. When he had, he came hurrying around the
counter, trying to grab my gun out of his waistband. I struggled against the
chair, jerking up on the arms. With a grunt and an extra boost from the surge
of adrenaline, I ripped my right arm free. Young finally got his hands on the
gun. I reached out for the knife that had fallen from Desirae’s hands. Stretching,
straining against the skewer still painfully nailing my thigh to the chair, I
got my fingertips on it. Pulling it toward me, I finally got it close enough to
grab. I picked it up then swung my arm back toward Young, who was now standing
over me.

He was holding the gun
in both hands, pointing it at my head. I noticed his hands were shaking as he
did so; this really wasn’t his bag. But he pulled the trigger.

The gun clicked
harmlessly. Confused, he pulled the trigger again. Swinging the knife toward
him, I brought it down on his hands and the gun. I felt the knife connect, and
an instant later Young was screaming. The gun clattered to the floor, and there
was blood everywhere.

“Safety’s on,” I said.

I didn’t waste any
time trying to assess the damaged I’d done to Young. Using the knife, I freed
my left arm from the chair then closed both hands around the skewer. I cried
out with the pain I felt in my forearm and then again as I pulled the skewer
free of the chair and slid it back through my leg.

“Oh, you
bitch
,”
I hissed between breaths.

I sat up and freed my
left leg, then I got to my feet.

Danielle Dillon was
beside me now, having run around the counter. I picked up the gun and held it
in my right hand, the knife and skewer in my left. Young was slumped against
the cabinets, holding his hands to his chest, sobbing and bleeding. Desirae was
gone.

“Are you okay?”
Danielle asked me.

“Shit, where’d she
go?”

“That way.” She
pointed to a doorway at the back of the kitchen. “You don’t look so good.”

“I’ve felt better.”

I started walking.
Well, limping might have been more accurate. The pain in my leg was horrendous,
and the lemon was still burning.

“Do you have a phone?”
I asked Danielle as I made my way to the guest suite.

“Yes. Why?” she asked,
hurrying after me.

“Why? To call 911. I
need help, and these two need ambulances.”

Hello! Keep up!

I pushed open the
bathroom door and saw Priscilla was awake. She was sitting on the floor in front
of the tub beside Natalie. An empty, bloody chair sat in front of them. There
were nail clippers on the counter, and I guessed Priscilla had snipped Natalie
free of her bindings. The girls sat with their arms and hands entwined, their
knees drawn up to their chests. Both were bloody and crying, their mascara
streaking down their cheeks.

“Oh, my God!” Natalie
sobbed when she saw me.

I looked at my
reflection in the mirror above the sink. I didn’t look great, but I’d certainly
looked worse. Of course, to Natalie, to whom nothing bad had ever happened, I
probably looked like death warmed over.

“Are you two all
right?” I asked, moving the chair out of the bathroom.

There were mumbled
answers through the sobs. I didn’t understand any of them, but I took them as
affirmatives because both were sitting up, awake and breathing. I turned to
Danielle.

“Stay with them. Lock
the bedroom door and this door. And call 911.” I held the knife out to her.
“Here’s this. Just in case.”

“You want me to stab
my sister?” She looked at the knife, not reaching for it.

“If your sister
manages to get through these doors, she’ll intend to do much worse to you. I
want you to have something to defend yourself with. I know you’re a fighter.”

Her eyes snapped up to
mine. Then I saw them fill with determination. She took the knife.

“Where are you going?”
she asked.

“I’m going to find
Desirae.”

__________

When I returned to the kitchen, the
house seemed unnaturally quiet, aside from the pot still boiling on the stove.
I cut through the kitchen, picking up the flashlight Desirae had dropped. Young
was no longer crying on the kitchen floor. I made a mental note to keep my eyes
peeled for him. It was possible he’d be upset about what I’d done to his hands
and want a little payback.

In the beam of the
flashlight, I could see drops of blood that had fallen from Desirae’s nose.
She’d run into the family room that opened to the front of the house on the
other side of the kitchen. I followed the blood drops to the front door. It was
standing open, and the blood drops trailed out over the threshold. From the
other way, I could see a much heavier blood trail, and I guessed this to be
Young’s. His led up the stairs.

I had to make a
decision, and I chose to follow Desirae. It was a very real possibility Young
would arm himself with another weapon and take a run at Danielle and the girls
in the bathroom, but it was a risk I was willing to take. From what I could
tell, Young wasn’t a killer. He didn’t like violence, and he wasn’t hard to
overcome. I also thought Danielle would have fewer qualms about using force
against Young than she would her sister.

Trusting my instincts,
I darted out the front door. I could see now only the power to the guesthouse
had gone out; the rest of the property was still lit. No doubt Danielle had cut
it before going inside. Smart girl. I was beginning to like her.

I followed the dark
drops on the pavement around the garage and to the main house. They led right
through the front door, which was standing open. I climbed the steps onto the
front porch, listening hard. I had a fair measure of trepidation. This was a
big house, and Lyle Young had claimed to have an open-door policy. I knew of at
least one other person who resided on the property, and there could have been
any number of others. Of those others, I had no way of knowing who was in on
what. It didn’t escape my attention that I could very well be walking into an
ambush. The smart play would be to go back to the guesthouse and wait for the
police, then let them get Desirae.

That was the smart
move. But Desirae had spent the last however long torturing me. And my
boyfriend’s sister, which I was upset about, of course, but she’d stabbed me
with that stupid skewer and ripped off my fingernail! Not to mention she had
doused me with lemon juice, which was still burning. No, the smart move wasn’t
for me—not this time. I had some unfinished business with Desirae.

Inside, I could see
the blood drops moved away from the threshold, in the same direction Young had
led me when I’d interrupted his lunch. I put the flashlight down on the porch,
tucked the skewer into my back pocket, and held the gun in front of me with
both hands, then I stepped inside. I pushed the door open all the way, making
sure no one was waiting behind it. Satisfied, I moved into the house carefully,
my senses on high alert.

The house was big and
open, and I’d only been in one small part of it one time. Here, Desirae had the
home-court advantage. Given she had already bested me once, I would have to be
extra cautious.

The blood drops led in
the direction of the kitchen. Knowing Desirae’s fondness for kitchens and their
utensils, I thought this was a likely place for her to go. Especially since
she’d left all her weapons in the guesthouse. I was hoping she didn’t have a
gun. The only guns I’d seen were mine, but I didn’t want to make any
assumptions. The game would be much different if she had a gun, and my anxiety
about following the crazy woman into a huge, foreign house would be much higher.
If she was sticking to knives and the like, I wouldn’t be so worried.