Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [39]
But Rudy’s fist was already in her face, the heel of his hand pushing the underside of her jaw back, back, exposing the soft, vulnerable flesh of her throat. She heard a deep, guttural growl that threatened to turn her insides to water. She fought the desire to close her eyes, to let go, to release herself utterly into the undertow of his fury-fueled power and strength. There was a terrible, enervating moment when she experienced the female’s sense of acquiescing in the face of the male’s overwhelming brute physicality, both of body and personality. But then, remembering who she was, how close to both death and madness she had been, she shook herself awake, shook herself alive, and drove her forefinger straight up Rudy’s left nostril, pushing farther even as his head whipped back and forth like a bronco trying to unseat its rider. The soft, moist flesh of his sinus yielded to her fingertip, the arc of her nail slicing through tissue. Up farther into the bone of his skull, searching for the cavity that would end the threat to her life.
With a herculean effort, he threw her off him, clear over a hedge of azalea bushes. She rolled into a thick stand of pitch pines just beyond, the needles sweeping across her face like bony fingers. She could hear him snorting and moaning, flailing to regain his feet.
“I know where you are, little bitch! You’re beginning to believe you’ll get away, but fuck if you will!”
Rolling through the bed of fallen needles, she reached behind her for the .38, but it was gone. She must have lost it when Rudy had tossed her. Rudy began to crash through the azaleas, dragging his left leg behind him. Then she remembered the cell phone.
Pulling it out of the pocket of her jeans, she saw to her immense relief that there was a signal, now that she was outside the house. Her heart hammered wildly as she punched in Jack’s cell number.
She groaned as it rang and rang. She prayed for him to answer. Instead, she got his voice mail. “I’m at my Uncle’s Hank’s hunting retreat in Virginia. The guards he hired are after me.” She recited the address. “I’m out back with a fucking ginormous dirtbag on my ass. Please, please, please get me the fuck out of here.”
* * *
HOW OLD are you? That was what Jack had asked.
“Shtatëmbëdhjetë,” Thatë said. Seventeen.
“Ju jeni shqiptar.” You’re Albanian.
“Si nuk ju flas shqip?” How do you speak my language?
Jack smiled and tapped the side of his head. “You’re going to take me to the Stem.”
All the color drained from Thatë’s face. “No.”
“Yes,” Jack insisted.
“Ju lutem, mos bëni mua.” Thatë began to shiver. “Ata do të vrasin mua.”
“Who’ll kill you?” Jack asked. “Who are you so afraid of?”
But the teenager was in a panic, shaking his head back and forth, and Jack suspected he’d gotten everything out of him he could.
“All right.” Jack handed him a pad and pen. “Don’t say another word, just give me the Stem’s address.”
Thatë’s hand shook as he wrote a line on the pad. Jack took the writing implements back, then he asked for the teen’s cell. He took note of the number, then added his own cell number to the other’s phone book. “Now we know how to get in touch with each other. Mirë?”
“Mirë.” Thatë nodded weakly.
The vibration of Jack’s cell had become too insistent for him to ignore any longer. He hadn’t wanted to be disturbed, especially by Dennis Paull, who he was concerned might be calling him to move up tomorrow’s departure time. Jack needed every hour he could get in D.C.
But it wasn’t Paull; it was Alli. Shit, he should have picked up the call right away. Even as he was listening to her desperate message on his