My right ankle was pudding. I kept my weight on my left foot and clutched the metal railing.
“I thought you were third dan,” I said through the new gap in my front teeth. “You fight like a yellow belt.”
Holly wiped the blood from her eyes and fell into her cat stance, her palms flat and fingers extended for pyonson keut.
“And that wedding dress made your ass look huge.”
She yelled, “KIYAA!” and struck with her fingertips at my neck. I pivoted my head around and her fingers met the steel bar supporting the giant shelf.
The shelf won.
I executed an elbow strike, cracking her across the cheek. An illegal move, but hey, no refs.
Holly hit her head against the shelving unit, and I grabbed her hair and helped her hit her head two more times. There was no tae kwon do name for that maneuver, but it felt great.
I was going for thirds when her hand grasped my wrist and she dropped all of her weight down to one knee, flipping me onto my back.
Before I could get my hands up, she used the knife edge of her good hand to break my nose.
I’d never had my nose broken before, but I know she did indeed break it because I heard the snap and the pain brought fresh tears to my eyes.
Again, using blind instinct, I rolled away. The rolling intensified the pain and dizziness I felt, and when I came to a stop I titled my head to the side and threw up.
“Jack!” I heard Latham yell, but he seemed very far away. My vision was a kaleidoscopic mess, but I could make out Holly stumbling toward me, looking like Sissy Spacek at the end of
Carrie,
bloody and murderous and out of her freaking mind.
A foot away from me, still in his cat carrier, was Mr. Friskers.
“Hang on,” I told him.
Holly lunged.
I picked up the carrier and thrust the corner into Holly’s face. She staggered back, and the door popped open. Mr. Friskers hopped out, gave each of us a disappointed look, and ran off into the shadows.
I switched my grip to the carrier handle, got to my knees, and hurled it at her.
She ducked it, and came at me again.
Standing up wasn’t going to happen for me. It looked like I had a small pumpkin growing out of my foot. My nose made even the tiniest movement of my head pure torture.
Holly looked to be faring better. Her right hand was mangled, and she had some visible bumps on her head, but that didn’t seem to slow her down.
“Enough of this bullshit.”
She reached into her back pocket and pulled out the hunting knife. Charles Kork’s knife. The one I’d so cleverly tricked her into bringing along.
How quickly things could go from bad to worse.
I got onto all fours and crawled away as fast as I could. Harry was the closest thing to me, so I headed for him, reaching out my hand for his chair, and then I felt Holly’s iron grip on my bad ankle.
That pain was bad enough. But when she slashed the blade across my thigh, I thought I’d died and gone to Pain Hell.
I twisted around, the pain giving me superhuman strength, kicking out at Holly with my good foot and knocking her off me.
I stretched out my hand, fumbling for Harry’s lap, my fingers locking around the handle of a what looked like a hairbrush, but when I pulled it out McGlade yelped and I saw that instead of bristles it had a dozen nails sticking out of the end.
Holly jumped at me, bringing down the knife.
I let out a war cry, my reptile brain screeching with rage and fear and pain, and my left arm blocked the downward arc of the knife while my right swung the hairbrush with everything I had, digging into Holly’s face, and tearing much of it off.
Holly spun in a semicircle and hit the floor.
I sat there, clutching the brush, breaths coming out in ragged gasps, waiting for her to get up so I could give her a second helping.
She didn’t get up.
“I wet my pants again,” Harry said.
I crawled over to her, not looking at the ruin that was once a gorgeous face, not listening to the gurgling coming out of the hole that was once a beautiful mouth, taking the knife out of her hand, digging around in her pockets until I found my handcuff keys.
Dragging myself across the floor, I uncuffed Latham, who hugged me gently and kissed my fingertips.
“Nice job, Jack. I forgot how exciting life with you was. We’ve been apart for months, and not one person has tried to kill me in all that time.”
“So you’re taking me back?”
“You couldn’t keep me away if you tried.”
“Hey lovebirds!” Harry yelled. “Can you save the kissy face for later and get me the fuck out of here?”
Latham ran off to get help. I stared at Phin, and he gave me a weak thumbs-up.
Returning to Holly, I cuffed her hands behind her back and pulled off her shirt to try to stop some of the massive bleeding coming out of her face. It didn’t help much.
“Use a tourniquet,” McGlade suggested. “Put it around her neck.”
I crawled over to Phin, not wanting to move him in case of a spinal injury. He had two bullet wounds in his left shoulder. Holly hadn’t wanted him to die, probably because she wanted him around for a while to torture.
I slipped off Harry’s belt and tied it around Phin’s arm to slow the bleeding. Then I picked up some tin snips off the table and crawled to Harry, setting him free just as the sirens howled in the distance.
Harry hugged me.
“Thanks, Jackie. I owe you one.”
“Just take me off that damn TV show.”
“Take you off? Do you know what kind of amazing episode this would make? Shit, Jack, we’d hit number one in our time slot.”
“Harry . . .”
“Fine. You’re off.”
The sirens got closer, and Latham came back in, toting my cell phone. He sat beside me, holding me tight. And I began to sob. But it wasn’t from pain, and it wasn’t from shock. It was from pure relief.
A purring sound made me turn around. Mr. Friskers was sitting in McGlade’s lap, a dead rat in his jaws.
“Good kitty,” Harry said. “Good fucking kitty.”
And he continued to pet him until the ambulances arrived.
W
E WERE ALL
taken to Alexian Brothers Hospital in Elk Grove. Latham got stitches. I got stitches too. I also had my nose set and packed, which hurt worse than when Holly broke it, and had a cast put on my ankle for a bad sprain. Phin needed five units of blood, but came out of surgery in good shape.
And Harry—I actually felt sorry for Harry. He had to have his ruined right hand amputated.
“Don’t let them do it, Jackie,” he pleaded as they wheeled him into the OR. “That’s half my sex life.”
I patted his shoulder. “You’ll get one of those cool robotic hands, like on James Bond.”
That made his eyes light up.
“I’ll be able to crush cans and shit like that?”
“Yeah.”
“Do women like those things?”
“They’re sexy,” I told him. “You’ll have to fight the women off.”
Alex Kork, whom I knew as Holly Frakes, also needed surgery. She had skin removed from her buttocks, her hips, and her stomach, to try to reconstruct her face. From what I heard, it wouldn’t help much. She’d spend the rest of her life looking like a patchwork quilt.
I also finally got through to Herb, and spoke with an exhausted Bernice.
“Everything went fine. He’s doing great. I’m watching what’s happening on TV. Are you okay?”
I squeezed Latham’s hand.
“Never better.”
“Herb wants to talk to you.”
“He’s awake?”
“He’s still a little dopey. But then, he’s always a little dopey. Here he is.”
“Jack! I’m watching you on TV. It was Harry’s wife all along?”
“Yeah. How’s that for a shocker?”
“Well, at least now it makes sense why someone would marry that moron. For a while there, I thought there was something seriously wrong with the universe.”
“How are you doing?”
“Good. Just like an oil change. You gonna come visit?”
“Hell yeah.”
“Bring donuts.”
Latham and I were discharged at around three in the morning. As expected, my apartment was a full-blown crime scene, infested with cops.
Bud Kork, gut-shot and burned, had died on my kitchen floor next to his common-law wife.
I picked up some essentials and spent the night at Latham’s new condo. With the cat, of course.
“I bought this king-sized bed with you in mind,” he told me.
“Might be a while before I’m ready to break it in.”
“We can take as long as you need.”
Between the two of us we had three black eyes, twenty-three stitches, a nose full of cotton, and a twisted ankle, but we managed to break it in that night.
I fell asleep wrapped up in Latham’s arms, a goofy, chipped-tooth smile on my face.
The next few days were spent playing catch-up. I visited the office and finished my reports, and Captain Bains told me the superintendent was considering a promotion for me. I visited Herb and brought him Cinnabons. I visited Mom and told her everything that happened. I visited Harry, and he showed me his stump and moaned about the tetanus shots he had to get. I visited Phin, who thanked me for a wild weekend. And I visited Alex.
She had two armed guards at her door, and another one that sat inside her room. She lay on top of her sheets, bandages covering most of her body from the many patches of skin they’d harvested trying to reconstruct her face. Her head was swaddled in gauze, mummy-style. Her hand was cuffed to the bed frame. A single blue eye peered out through the cotton, fixing on me when I entered.
“Hello, Jack. Thanks for coming.”
Her voice sounded weak, muffled by her dressings. I sat down in the chair next to her.
“I hear you’ve been cooperating with police. Telling them everything they want to know.”
“Just listening to my lawyers. They want to use an insanity defense, obviously. Poor abused child grows up confused and alone. Some bullshit like that.”
“Do you think you’re insane?”
She shrugged. “What do you think?”
“I think there’s something seriously wrong with you. Maybe you’ll be able to get some help. Professional help.”
“I doubt it. I killed my last four shrinks.”
I leaned forward.
“Why did you want to see me, Alex?”
“You can call me Holly if you want.”
“Why did you want to see me?”
“The doctors, they didn’t want me to see my face yet. But last night I got up and went to the bathroom and took off my bandages in the mirror. I look like someone stapled some raw pork chops to my face.”
If she wanted sympathy, she was preaching to the wrong choir.
“I’ll be scarred for life, Jack.”
“You already were,” I said.
Holly didn’t seem to have anything else to say, so I got up to leave.
“Jack.”
I stopped. Waited.
“You beat me this time. But it isn’t over.”
I gave her a final glance.
“It’s over,” I said, and left the hospital.
That night, in Latham’s bed, I had a strange dream. I was at the shooting range, and no matter how carefully I aimed, I couldn’t hit the silhouette.
But rather than frustrate me, I found it funny as hell. Every time I missed, I laughed like crazy. It was one of the most wonderful dreams I’d ever had.
My cell phone woke me up.
“Ms. Daniels? This is Julie, over at Henderson House.”
Henderson House. The long-term care facility where my mother lived. I checked the clock, saw it was three in the morning.
The fear washed over me like a wave. I’d been expecting the worst for so long, but found myself unable to handle it.
“Is it Mom?” My voice quavered, my eyes filling with tears.
“Yes, it’s your mother. It happened just a few minutes ago. She’s come out of her coma.”
Had I heard correctly?
“Mom’s out of her coma?”
My talking woke Latham up. He hugged me in the darkness.
“Not only is she awake, but she’s completely lucid. Can you come over here, Ms. Daniels? She’s asking for you.”
Several Months Later
T
HE ALLEY WAS
dark, and I shouldn’t have gone in there. It was just plain stupid.
But into the alley I went, following McGlade, gun drawn and moving in a crouch.
“I see something.” Harry had his gun out as well, a much larger gun than mine. “Cover me.”
“No.” I tugged his arm back. “It’s my turn to go first. You cover me.”