Skin Deep (34 page)

I knew what he was hinting at and there was
no way in hell I was going there, but then it hit me. If I could
get him close enough I could possibly take him by surprise. He’d
left my hands untied, and my feet weren’t bound either.

Taking a deep breath, I whispered, “Whatever
you want.”

I heard his breath quicken, could imagine the
thoughts rolling through his nasty mind, and swallowed back the
bile that started to rise in my throat.

“For starters, I think that I’ll fuck that
traitorous little mouth of yours. How about that, little one?” He
stepped toward me again, the scrape of his boots giving him away,
allowing me to brace myself. I heard the rasp of a zipper being
released and a small whimper escaped through my lips. “Now, I gotta
tell you, sweetheart, you try anything funny and you’ll regret it.
I’ve got a knife with your name on it right here, and while I’d
hate to mark up that gorgeous face of yours, I won’t hesitate to do
it. Bring your hand up here and hold my dick, bitch.” He laughed as
he reached for my arm, jerking it up until my fingers brushed hot,
turgid skin.

Fighting against the nausea, I allowed him to
wrap my fingers around that insignificant part of him, holding my
fingers tightly in his grasp as he thrust himself against my hand.
He finally dropped his hand after a minute, his hips moving in a
stuttering see-saw motion. As soon as he dropped his hand, I closed
my fingers around him in a punishing grip, digging my nails into
his most tender flesh and bringing my other hand up to grab, twist,
and yank down violently on his balls.

I heard an inhuman scream and my ears rang as
his hands flailed wildly, landing a solid hit against the side of
my head, thankfully on the opposite side from where he’d hit me
earlier. I jumped to my feet, shoving against him with all my might
and trying to do as much damage as possible before he fell
backwards, and I let go, turning to run as I ripped the blindfold
off.

He’d dropped the flashlight when he’d caught
me and I’d ended up kicking it when I jumped up, so now it was
spinning wildly on the floor and I tried desperately to catch a
glimpse of the stairs in the rotating flashes of light. Knowing I
had only seconds, I took off across the room, hoping that I could
find the stairs and make it up them before he got up again.

By some miracle I found them and pounded up
them at breakneck speed, throwing myself through the door at the
top. I lost my balance and fell, scrambling to my feet as I heard
him bellow down below, his heavy footsteps sounding like
thunderclaps as he hit the bottom of the stairs. Whirling, I took
off again and found myself in a kitchen, but I couldn’t see a way
out. My heart was pounding and I was gasping for air, but I tamped
down the panic threatening to overtake me and reached for the
butcher block of knives sitting in plain view on the counter.

As soon as the blade I chose cleared the
wooden block it was sitting in, I heard him step into the room. He
stopped in the doorway, his face a mask of fury. He’d neglected to
shove himself back into his pants…either that or he was in too much
pain to do it…and I could see with sickening clarity the damage I’d
wrought. It hung there, already bruising, a bloody and limp
mess.

I raised the knife, holding it tightly in my
hand. “You. Little. Bitch,” he growled at me. “You will pay for
that. And oh, oopsie! You’ve seen my face now, so do you think
you’re getting away from me now? Uh-uh…I don’t think so,
sweetheart. Drop the knife and get over here.”

I stayed where I was, the knife wavering
slightly in my trembling hand. I forced myself to study his face,
memorizing every inch of it, forcing myself to think…where had I
seen him before?

I straightened a bit as it hit me, my hand
steadying as I still held the knife up. “John Frank.”

“Oh, ho ho! Look who finally figured it out!
What do we have for her, Johnny?” John yelled.

“Why, John? You were a client of Floyd’s, he
helped you out!
I
helped you!” My voice rose with every word
and I fought to calm myself, not wanting to set him off. Out of the
corner of my eye I saw a cell phone lying on the microwave stand
not five feet from me. God, if only I could get to it…

“You were so nice to me, Emma. You know, I’d
just lost my mom and my brother to that fucking car accident. I
didn’t know what to do. I called every attorney in the book almost,
trying to find someone who would give me the time of day to help me
out. Everyone…all them bitches…just pushed me to the side, take a
message, take a message, blah blah blah…but you were nice. You
explained things to me.”

I nodded, saying, “Well, that’s what I’m
there for, John. You came in and we started the process, didn’t we?
Getting everything probated and working on the personal injury side
of things from the accident? You remember, right?” I tried to keep
my voice steady and my breath caught as he closed his eyes for a
second.

I took that time to silently step to the
side, closer to the microwave stand where the cell phone was. I
stopped again as his eyes opened.

“You did. You helped me, you made me feel
special.” His eyes flashed and his face hardened again. “But I was
just another fucking job to you. I asked you out after everything
and you laughed at me.
LAUGHED
!”

I winced and tried to calm him down again.
“No, John, I didn’t laugh at you. I smiled at you.
Smiled…remember?”

He shook his head but I could see that he was
confused. “No, you laughed. You told me that you wouldn’t go out
with me and I wanted you. No, I fuckin’ needed you! I didn’t have
anyone else and once you were done and everything was settled, you
chalked me up and moved on to the next. We had something special,
you dirty, fucking bitch!” He was screaming now, bouncing on the
balls of his feet, and I could read the intent in his eyes just as
he lunged toward me.

I moved quickly, jumping to the side and
swiping the cell phone from the stand with one hand as I blindly
struck out with the knife in the other. I screamed as my arm was
caught in a vice grip, fingers digging painfully into the pressure
points in my wrist until my fingers went lax, releasing the knife
to clatter to the floor. I don’t know how but I managed to hold on
to the phone and keep it tucked out of view as he backhanded me
across the face again. I felt my skin split on my cheekbone, and
then my mouth filled with blood as he hit me again, my teeth
tearing into the tender inside of my cheek and lips.

The second blow spun me around and knocked me
down to the floor. I saw him bend down to grab me again and kicked
out with my foot, grinning maniacally as my heel connected with his
nose, a spray of hot blood splattering my face. While he was dazed,
I shoved my hand under the microwave stand with the cell phone in
it, thanking God that it was an old flip phone with actual buttons
to push. I started yelling, trying to cover up any sounds the phone
might make while I blindly felt for the correct buttons to push,
praying that my fingers found 911.

I felt John’s hand slam down on my thigh,
tightening as he tried to pull me to him as he knelt on the floor
where he’d dropped. I rolled, scrambling for purchase on the tile
floor and finding none, but I managed to get my face close enough
to see under the stand where the phone screen was lit up with 911.
I hit send and let the phone go, leaving it hidden beneath.

I felt strangely disconnected from myself
during the rest of the ordeal. Like I was watching myself, not in
my body; I’d retreated to a safe place inside myself where I
couldn’t feel the blows raining down on me.

I watched, dazed, as my mouth opened and I
screamed the monster’s name over and over and over again, screaming
and sobbing and begging all the while, but I was doing it in a
calculative way. I knew that the dispatcher would be listening. I
knew she’d begin tracing the number, looking up the name that I was
sobbing and screaming.

Just as I knew that she would run to the
bathroom and puke her guts up, crying into the toilet at the
horrendous things she had heard afterward.

Facts of life. You know, like one and one is
two. The sky is blue. A can of camouflage spray paint has only one
color in it, so its not really camouflage. The camouflage only
comes together when you have one can of each color of camouflage
paint. Dogs have fur. The dispatcher puking and crying was one,
too. That’s how I knew she would.

What I didn’t know, though, was how I was
going to survive what was happening to my body so far below me. The
monster was on top of me, beating me with his fists and ripping my
clothes away. He wanted to rape me, but I’d effectively made sure
that wouldn’t happen when I maimed him in the basement. His fury
exploded and I watched in horrified numbness as he grabbed the
knife I’d dropped on the floor and impaled my side, the blade
sliding through my flesh and lodging in the floor beneath me, while
his other hand circled my throat and pressed down.

I watched as my blood pooled beneath me and
began to spread, making macabre designs on the tile. I watched as I
floated…away…and the darkness swallowed me down.

Chapter 24

A steady beeping was the first thing to break
into my consciousness. I heard it faintly, a constant sound in my
ear before the darkness claimed me again. Then, low voices…voices
that sounded vaguely familiar…pulled me up from the depths, and I
struggled to get to the surface, to see who they were, but pain
washed over me and I let the darkness pull me back down. It was
safe there. Nothing hurt there.

“Emma? Sugar, its time to get up. You’ve been
out long enough. Come back to me now. Emma!”

The voice was deep, rich…sensual. And so damn
familiar it made my heart ache. I forced myself through the
fuzziness, blinking my eyes slowly. The room was mostly dark, a dim
light casting a glow across the face of the man sitting beside my
bed, his head resting on the mattress beside me. God, he was so
beautiful, even looking like he hadn’t shaved for a month, let
alone slept.

I tried to speak, but couldn’t force any
words past my lips. A small gasp did come out and that was enough.
Luke’s head jerked up, his eyes going wide.

“Oh, God…you’re awake! Emma! Baby, I love
you, hang on…I gotta get someone-” he jumped up and ran for the
door, throwing it open and yelling, “She’s awake!” before running
back to me, kneeling at the side of my bed.

I looked around for a minute, taking in the
hospital room around me. I was hooked up to all kinds of monitors
and foreign looking machines. An IV was slowly dripping fluid into
my arm, and I figured that was the only reason I wasn’t screaming
in pain. Luke shifted, bringing my gaze back to him.

He was watching my face, his eyes shining
with so much love and excitement and…pain. He sat back as a nurse
dressed in cheery looking scrubs bustled in, a woman in a white lab
coat hot on her heels. They stopped on either side of my bed,
checking machines, smiling, and talking a mile a minute.

“Emma? I’m Dr. Hart and this is your nurse,
Sarah. You’ve been in a coma for two weeks and we’ve been trying to
get you back. Don’t try to talk, because you’re throat has had some
trauma and is still pretty bruised. Are you in any pain?”

I shook my head slightly, wincing at the
pinch of pain I felt in my neck. I opened my mouth, intending to
ask exactly what injuries that psycho monster had inflicted, but
sighed in frustration when the doctor shook her head at me.

“Okay, I’m sure you have some questions, and
then we’ll leave you to your reunion with lover boy over here. He’s
not left your side the entire time, and the waiting room is full of
people who’ve been camped out for days waiting on you to wake up.
Since I don’t want you talking just yet, I’ll ask the questions,
and you can blink once for no and twice for yes. Got it?”

I blinked twice. The nurse moved away from
the bed to check on something and Luke slid his chair back to my
side again, gingerly taking my hand in his.

“Do you remember what happened, Emma?” Dr.
Hart asked.

I blinked twice, and then once. I knew what
happened, but there was some parts that was fuzzy. Like, what
happened when everything went black? I assume the cops came because
I woke up in the hospital, very thankful to be alive, now that I
think about it. But when did they get there? Had he…had he done
anything…? I shut my eyes tight against the thought.

Dr. Hart cleared her throat and I opened my
eyes to look at her again. “Do you remember how you were taken?”
Two blinks.

“How about how you got to the kitchen where
they found you, remember that?” Two blinks again.

“Emma, do you remember him stabbing you?” Two
blinks.

“How about calling 911?” Two blinks
again.

I really wished she’d get to the parts that I
didn’t remember. I hated not knowing what had happened, but at the
same time, I was relieved…and almost wished I didn’t remember the
whole ordeal.

“Emma…do you remember him choking you?” Two
blinks.

“What about after that? Did he do anything
that you remember after that?” One blink.

“Okay. It might be hard to hear, but do you
want me to tell you what happened?”

I hesitated for a second, and then blinked
twice. Luke’s chair scraped the floor as he stood quickly, shoving
the chair back from his legs. He leaned down and lightly touched
his lips to my forehead, murmuring that he’d be back in a minute. A
frown furrowed my brows, but I nodded slightly and he strode out
into the hall.

Dr. Hart perched on the edge of the chair
that Luke had just vacated and took a deep breath. She flipped open
my chart and proceeded to tell me what had happened after I blacked
out.

From what they could tell, I had passed out
from oxygen deprivation and loss of blood. Once my 911 call had
come through to dispatch, they had traced the number to the address
and the police, fire, and squad were sent out. Apparently the
dispatcher was able to hear everything that was going on because
Creepy was very talkative, even when I was out. She was able to
radio the first officers on scene and tell them everything that was
happening.