I watched, horrified, as Detective Pierce laughed and then licked the tears off her face. “Stop it!” I shrieked, while Angela began to sob.
I couldn’t hold back my own tears any longer, but instead of panic overtaking me, my fear turned to rage. I shifted my weight onto the balls of my feet. I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do, but no way was I going to let that creep hurt my sister.
“Careful, Ellie,” Detective Pierce warned. But the way his voice purred, I think he was hoping I would try it.
“Let her go.”
Detective Pierce let out a harsh laugh.
“You’ll never get through us both,” I said, trying to sound stronger than I felt. “You know I’m not just going to stand here and wait for you to finish with her, and she’s not really the one you want.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Detective Pierce said, though he couldn’t hide his desire. Angela definitely wasn’t who he was after. He wanted me so bad that he could hardly stay focused. “I’d hate for Angela to miss out on any fun. After all, I’m very grateful to your sister. Your stupid, imaginative, ridiculous, silly, brilliant sister.” He kissed the side of her head and sighed. “When you filed that report, you gave me a gift. Two gifts.”
Angela gasped at his words. “It’s my fault,” she sobbed. “All of your victims have had criminal records. That’s how you were finding them. You never would have found Ellie if I hadn’t called the police about Seth.”
“Not in a million years,” Pierce agreed conversationally. “But she’s so deliciously perfect. Seth, too—with his accident, his parents’ deaths, a violent temper, and a personality disorder? I couldn’t have created a better scapegoat if I’d conjured him out of thin air.”
“Ellie,” Angela sobbed. “I’m so sorry!”
“Don’t be sorry,” Detective Pierce told her. “You’ve saved lives. Who knows how many other girls I would have gone after if you didn’t give me such a beautiful way out?”
This didn’t exactly make Angela feel any better. She began to cry so hard that Detective Pierce could hardly hold on to her. I tried to ignore her. I couldn’t afford the distraction. I figured if I could just keep him talking long enough, Seth would wake up and call the police. Or maybe kill the psycho. Either option was fine with me.
“You attacked Travis,” I said, putting the pieces together. “After Seth got in trouble for threatening Travis, you attacked him to make Seth look guilty.”
“How could I resist? With my knife connecting Travis and the Saturday Night murders? Once they find the two of you in the morning, no jury in the world will let Seth walk.”
Detective Pierce was starting to get restless. His knife was falling away from Angela’s neck as he resisted the urge to attack me. I saw an opportunity to distract him. Of course, that meant provoking him into coming after me. I just hoped Angela had good sense enough to run for it as soon as he did.
“You talk a big game for a guy who only goes after starving runaways and crack addicts.”
The danger I’d seen flash so often in Seth’s eyes was now overpowering Pierce’s stare. My defiance was exciting him. “True,” he said. “Which is why this is going to be very, very interesting.”
I looked into his wild eyes. His pupils were dilated so large that all I could see was black. My heart raced. There was so much adrenaline coursing my veins, I don’t think it was physically possible to feel panicked. I knew that would come when it was all over. In fact, I bet I’d be more screwed up than Seth if I survived this. But right now I could only focus on the game. And this
was
a game. A sick, twisted game.
Well, I wasn’t going to let the Saturday Night Slasher beat me any more than I’d ever let Dave beat me in a game of one-on-one. I channeled all the crazy energy my fear was giving me, squared my shoulders, and pulled my shaking hands into tight fists. “Bring it.”
Okay, I’ll admit I’m not always the smartest person in the world, and I had a feeling what I was about to do was just about the stupidest thing I could have possibly done, but I figured rushing him would be the last thing he expected me to do.
Before I could chicken out, I ran at him. I was right that it surprised him and he had to shove Angela out of the way in order to fend off my attack. He threw my lightweight-of-a-sister so hard that she slammed her head into the front door and landed in a heap on the floor. She was in shock and probably had a massive headache, but at least her throat hadn’t been slashed.
Things, however, weren’t looking quite so good for me. I’d managed to get my sister out of harms way, but I’d also managed to get grabbed from behind. “I hope that’s not all you’ve got, Ellie.”
It’s not
.
Detective Pierce was a huge guy, but he obviously hadn’t taken the same self-defense classes that Seth had been taking for years. He hadn’t lifted my feet off the ground the way Seth always did, making it possible for me to stomp down on his foot, and he’d wrapped his arms around my shoulders instead of at my elbows, giving me more than enough wiggle room to throw my elbow back into his ribs. The blow was enough for me to break away from him and I took off through the house, headed for the back door.
“Ellie!” he shouted, and just like I’d hoped, he forgot all about Angela and came running after me.
If it weren’t for the stupid kitchen table that stood between the sliding glass door and me, I would have been outside and able to make enough noise to alert the cavalry. I started to go around the table, but Detective Pierce caught up to me. “You’re going to have to do better than that,” he said, grabbing me by my hair.
As he yanked me backwards I was able to grab hold of a chair and I swung it around as hard as I could. Unlike any of the times I’ve seen Chuck Norris smash someone with a chair in the movies, the thing didn’t shatter into a million pieces—which was totally disappointing—but it did leave a giant gash on the side of his face. Judging from the look he gave me, I was definitely the first Saturday Night girl to bloody him up.
I got to the back door, but it was locked, and before I could slide it open, a very pissed off serial killer picked me up and slammed me down onto the kitchen counter. My head hit in almost the same spot I’d busted it at the beginning of the summer, and those floating black spots in my vision came back for a visit. My eyes rolled for a moment, but snapped into focus when I burst into searing pain so hot that I thought I was being lit on fire.
For a minute I couldn’t think. All I could do was scream from the pain as Pierce dragged his knife across my stomach. It wasn’t deep enough to spill my guts or anything, but that’s how this guy operated—he’d make it last.
“That’s right, Ellie,” he cooed. “Scream for me, my little fighter.”
His voice brought me out of the pain and I realized he was on top of me. I became frantic—thrashing as violently as I could, even though it caused my stomach to catch fire all over again. I got one of my arms free and punched him. But thanks to the muscles in my stomach being sliced up, I couldn’t get enough force to knock the man twice my size off me. The sicko liked it when I hit him, though.
I tried a new tactic and started feeling around my head for something on the counter, but the only things within my reach were a stack of mail, Angela’s purse, and the keys to my Jeep.
The keys to my Jeep
!
My tiny pink Swiss Army knife had never looked more beautiful. Seth told me when he’d given it to me that it would never ward off a serial killer, but I was willing to test the theory. I snatched it up and pulled the blade open with my teeth, then jammed it as hard as I could into whatever part of Pierce’s body was the closest. The little inch-long blade jabbed all the way into his forearm, and though it wasn’t exactly a fatal wound, it had to have hurt like freaking hell.
I had completely thrown him off his game. When he stumbled back, I did the only thing I could think of to do, which was to pull the knife out of his arm and start stabbing him again. “How do you like it, you psycho!” I screamed as I jammed my knife into his arm a good two or three more times.
Um, apparently he didn’t like it, because he called me the B word—the real B word, not the one I occasionally call Seth—and stuck his much bigger knife into my stomach for real this time.
It’s funny, because I felt it, and I knew exactly what was happening, but it’s like the pain was so intense that it simply stopped hurting. The stab wound hadn’t hurt nearly as bad as the slice job he’d done a minute ago. I didn’t even scream. I just sort of gasped and got really cold.
I waited for something more—for him to pull the knife out and stab me again, or at the very least say some creepy comment, or put his slimy fingers on me—but none of that came. Instead, there was the sound of a skull cracking and Angela’s blood curdling scream.
I opened my eyes as Pierce dropped to the ground, and there was my sister, holding a frying pan with smears of blood on it. She was shaking so hard that she could barely hold onto it. “Ellie!” she cried. “Just hold on. I already called the cops!”
“Where’s Seth?” I asked, but when I spoke I coughed up a tiny bit of blood and Angela went into hysterics again.
A minute or so later, everything turned to chaos as a million cops swarmed my house. Angela was whisked away, as well as the unconscious serial killer. I was surrounded by a team of paramedics. Whatever they injected into my body, bless their hearts, didn’t just take the pain away, it was going to let me sleep through the part where they took the knife out of my stomach. I’m fairly certain that was a good thing. I was already drifting off as they put me on the stretcher, but I could just barely recognize the person being helped down the stairs as I was carried out the front door.
Seth’s eyes locked with mine for the briefest moment. The only word I could think of to describe the look on his face was ‘haunted’. I tried to call out to him, but I had this stupid mask on my face, and I just plain didn’t have the energy to do anything more than whisper. Anyway, I was sure he didn’t hear me. I drifted off into unconsciousness after that.
I was sure Seth was never going to speak to me again, but hoped I was wrong when I woke up and felt a hand locked on mine so tightly that I couldn’t feel my fingers.
“Seth?”
“Ellie!”
Nope. It was Angela. Not the person I’d hoped for, but surprisingly she was better.
“Hey, sis,” I said, happy to see her unscathed. Well, relatively unscathed. Her eyes were all red and puffy, her nose was swollen with snot running from it, and she had this tiny gash above her eye that was taped shut with a butterfly strip. The sick part was, she still looked gorgeous. No doubt she’d have the entire male population of Canton—possibly all of Michigan—falling all over themselves to nurse her back to health. “You look like crap.”
Angela let go this half-hysterical laugh/cry thing and very weepily said, “I’m so sorry. All of this was my fault.”
“And yet I’m the one who got skewered, while you walked away with just a bump on the head. Where’s the justice in that?”
I felt like a total jerk when Angela burst into tears. “Oh, my gosh, Ang, I was totally kidding!”
“But it’s true!” she wailed.
“Maybe,” I said, taking on a serious tone. “But you were only trying to protect me, and, in the end, you did save my life.”
Angela looked up at me and frowned.
“Detective Pierce was huge, and you took him out with one blow,” I explained. I didn’t even have to fake the pride in my voice. “We need to get you in a game sometime. I’ll bet you have a brutal slap shot.”
Angela was startled, knowing the depth of the compliment I was giving her. I laughed at the expression on her face and said, “You may be girlie, but you’re still a Westley.”
Angela sniffled, but her face looked hopeful. “So then, you don’t hate me?”
“You’re my big sister. Of course I hate you,” I said, but I cracked a smile.
“You’re such a liar.”
Angela and I had a good laugh and she leaned over my bed to squeeze me—this hugging thing was getting easier for us.
“Speaking of lying,” I said after a moment. “Have you talked to Mom and Dad?”
Angela cringed. “Oh, yeah. We’re toast. The FBI sent a helicopter to their cruise ship to get them. If I were you, I’d play up the traumatized victim angle as much as possible, because the FBI told them that we’d been talking with Detective Pierce behind their backs for a couple weeks now. Their plane lands in about two hours, and then we’re pretty much grounded indefinitely.”
“It’s a good thing we came now, then.”
Angela and I were startled by the intrusion—guess we’ll both always be a lot more jumpy now.
I was really surprised to see Dave standing in the doorway to my hospital room, considering he hadn’t spoken to me since Travis’ attack—none of the guys had. Even more surprising still was when Greg and Sanchez followed him into the room.
Dave came up to my bedside and pulled a giant bouquet of roses from behind his back. Red ones. My jaw dropped at the sight and I pulled my eyes up to meet Dave’s smirk. “For the love of—do not tell me you’re hoping for another shot.”
“Relax, Westley. I learned my lesson the first time.” Dave turned to my sister and handed her the flowers. “These are actually for you,” he said, shrugging. “I was—I’m glad you’re okay.”