Dismember (21 page)

The blade ripped into Mike’s side just above his left hipbone. He felt heat and electricity, as if he’d been wounded not by a hunting knife but with some futuristic ray gun. The intruder pulled the knife back, grinning. It dripped Mike’s blood.

He tried to stay on his feet, but the combination of shock and agonizing pain brought him to his knees.

So this was it. The man swung the second knife into view, and Mike wondered how many cuts it took before you stopped sensing the pain.

When the slender young boy came running through the door with his own gleaming blade poked out in front of him, Mike wanted to scream,
No. Get away, Trevor
. 

Except he wasn’t Trevor. He wasn’t his son. Mike didn’t know
who
in the hell he was.

Zach felt the butcher knife glance off Davy’s rib and knew he’d screwed it up.

Davy still screamed, but when Zach tried sticking the man with the knife again, Davy knocked the knife out of Zach’s hand and grabbed him by the front of his shirt.

Mike screamed.

Dave screamed.

Zach screamed.

And that’s when things got really crazy.

T
WENTY-ONE

L
ibby wasn’t exactly petite, but Marshall still had an inch or two on her and at least twenty-five pounds. Unfortunately for him, what he also had was a weak spot, the same weak spot every man had, a weak spot that didn’t currently
realize
it was weak and jutted into her hip instead of retreating turtle-like into Marshall’s pelvis like it should have.

Libby rammed her thigh into the man’s crotch so hard it hurt
her
; the ensuing crunch sounded very much like what you get when you stomp a cockroach.

Given the way Marshall had pawed at her breasts and dry-humped her leg, someone who’d missed the blow to his testicles might almost have confused the look on his face for one of orgasmic pleasure. His mouth opened into a wet, perfectly round
O
, and his eyes rolled up into his head as if looking for his own brain.

Nothing up there
, Libby thought and pushed the pervert away.

Marshall stumbled back, and his facial features drooped to reveal the pure agony hiding behind the mask of ecstasy.

“Hhhhnnnnnn,” he said, rasping harder than an octogenarian. His hands found his groin and cupped it gingerly. He shifted from side to side, looking less like an old man than a little boy who needed to use the restroom, and although she would rather not have associated thoughts of her son with this disgusting situation, she couldn’t help but think of Trevor. Is this how he’d looked during his dash to the Mountain View restrooms? Had he danced uncomfortably before rushing away from the carousel?

Libby moved away from the counter, still holding the water-damaged paperback, feeling better, safer, though still not safe enough. She wiped a hand across her face and felt Marshall’s sticky saliva. Although he was no longer standing within arm’s reach, Libby still felt the man’s fingers on her breasts, his erection on her hip, his tongue in her ear and probing her lips. This sort of thing had never happened to her until today. Before Mike, she’d only ever kissed two other men (two other
boys
), and since the divorce nothing had gotten
that
far. No one in her life had more than
looked
at her inappropriately. Nausea, fear, and fury combined to create a single, horrible sensation. Her heart thumped more wildly than it had when she’d lost Trevor, and she had trouble breathing with any sort of regular rhythm.

Marshall had stopped his dancing but still clutched at himself and gasped. Libby circled around behind him. She’d had a scary thought. She’d hit him hard, but
how
hard? What if some of this was just an act, a ploy to lower her defenses while he prepared another attack? She’d never hit anyone in the crotch, except maybe for a cursory bump or two in the marital bed, and really wasn’t sure how much it might hurt. She’d seen a guy take a football to the groin on TV, had once heard a secondhand story from an elementary school friend who’d accidentally pushed her little brother into a doorjamb, but she’d never
been
there, never heard the groans and seen the doubling over and the swaying.

She wouldn’t take any chances. She sidled over to the knife drawer and slid it open far enough to get her hand inside, never taking her eyes off Marshall, simultaneously expecting him to stay where he was and preparing for him to spin around and lunge at her.

She cut the first knuckle on her index finger, then the tip of her pinkie, both shallow wounds hardly worse than paper cuts, before finding one of the knives’ handles and wrapping her hand around it. The drawer slid out another couple of inches when she pulled her fist through the opening, bumping into her rump and startling her. She almost dropped the thing in her hand, which turned out to be, much to her dismay, not a knife but a potato peeler.

Marshall turned around, and whether he’d exaggerated his injury or not, he’d apparently recovered fast. He had one hand still cupped around his dangly bits and an incongruous grin on his face. His glasses had slipped down to the tip of his nose, but rather than reach up and straighten them, he simply peered over the tops.

“You cunt,” he said, and coming from his lips, the word sounded almost unbelievably wrong. In his slightly rumpled three-piece suit and thick glasses, he looked like a university professor or a used car salesman, not like someone who assaulted you and then called
you
a cunt.

When he saw the things in Libby’s hands, his grin expanded, and he said, “What are you gonna do, read me to death or peel me?” He took a step in her direction.

Libby considered tossing the peeler back in the drawer, replacing it with something at least semi-dangerous, but she knew if she did that Marshall would be on her in a second. The potato peeler had a pointed tip at least. If nothing else, she could jam it in his throat. 

She held the makeshift weapon between her breasts, felt her fluttering heartbeat against her clenched, white-knuckled fingers. He lunged at her one-handed, never letting go of his groin, and she moved without thinking. She twisted her body to the side, dropping the book on the floor at her feet, and although it would have been a simple thing to ram the peeler into his exposed temple, maybe get a little bit of brain, she used her elbow instead, clipped him on the back of the head and sent him flying into one of the cupboard doors.

The door was solid wood. So when she heard breaking glass, she knew it must be his glasses and hoped against all common decency that he’d get an eyeful of shards.

Not that Marshall deserved any decent thoughts. No, he deserved to be blinded so that he could never ogle another woman in his miserable, disgusting life.

Libby backed away, not wanting to, wanting to rush him and stab him and kick him in his thing again but unable to control her legs. Marshall turned to her and glared from behind fractured eyepieces. Despite the cracked lenses, Marshall’s eyes looked fine. Wide, angry, almost predatory, but uninjured.

His nose, on the other hand, was a disaster. It only made sense, she guessed. Unless you were moving backward, your nose would always be the first part of your face to arrive, even if you were headed flat into the door of a kitchen cabinet.
Especially
if. Marshall’s nose favored his right side by about half an inch, and the bridge had become red and distorted. He’d bled a little, just a trickle that ran to his lip and then down the lip’s upper rim.

“You’re a worthless tease,” Marshall said, sounding like he was in the middle of a two week cold. “I never should have come here.”

No shit
, Libby thought, but she said, “Leave. Right now.” She hefted the potato peeler, and Marshall grinned. He moved, not toward her but in the direction of the door.

“Cunt,” he said again and hobbled out of the kitchen.

Libby wanted to stay where she was, or maybe drop onto the floor and cry, but she had to be sure he was actually leaving, watch the door slam behind him with her own two eyes, otherwise she’d never feel comfortable at home again. Thoughts of a bloody-nosed Marshall leaping out at her from a dark closet while she changed her clothes or from behind the shower curtain while she sat on the toilet sent shivers through her body, and she hurried to the doorway.

She caught just a glimpse of his inappropriate suit when he exited the house, but that was enough.

Before she let herself do anything else, Libby took a tour of the house, potato peeler still in hand, locking all the doors and windows and pulling the drapes tight. By the time she’d finished, her heart had slowed to normal speed and she could breathe regularly again, but she still felt dirty and more than a little scared.

Stupid
. She had nothing to be scared of. He hadn’t actually
done
anything except slobber and feel her up a little. Besides, she’d fought him off, kicked him in the nuts and broken his nose, for God’s sake. If anything, she should have felt powerful, proud.