Endurance - Jack Kilborn [26]
John grunted, jerking to the side, dragging the tip of the blade across Felix’s chin and cutting to the bone. Felix flinched away, but John’s hand was too big, his hold too tight. He cut again, the jagged back of the hunting knife catching Felix across his scalp. Felix reached out with both hands, his fingers wrapping around the cruel, sharp steel.
John bent down and pulled. Felix felt it cut into his fingers, but he refused to let go. He swung his head upward, fast. His scalp rammed into John’s chin, snapping the larger man’s head backward.
John jerked up to his full height, did a half-turn, then fell like a redwood, banging his forehead into the asphalt when he hit the road, his knife clattering beside him.
The pain hit Felix all at once. His neck. His head. His fingers.
Oh, Christ, my fingers.
He held them up but couldn’t see much in the dark except for blood. Then he reverted back to self-preservation and scurried over to the knife. He was able to pick it up, albeit painfully, and then slowly approached John.
The giant’s eyes were closed. Felix heard a low, rumbling sound, and he realized John was snoring.
Is he faking it?
Felix placed a foot on the hunter’s shoulder, shoved him from his side onto his back. In the high beams, he could make out the growing knot on John’s forehead.
Felix could also make out the injuries to his hands. It looked like he’d stuck them in a blender.
Seeing the cuts made them hurt even more. Felix hurried to the car, threw the knife in the back seat, tucked the 9mm into his waistband, and then dug the first aid kit out of the rear compartment where he kept his car jack and toolbox. He slathered his hands with a full tube of Neosporin, then began to wind them with gauze. Halfway into wrapping his right hand he had to stop and redo it, leaving his index finger free so he could still shoot the gun if needed.
Then Felix yanked out his toolbox, searching through it until he found the handcuffs. An impulse purchase he’d made at the same time he’d bought the gun, on the off-chance he might run into whoever had done Maria harm.
He stuck the keys in his front pocket and rolled the big man onto his belly—a difficult task with someone so heavy. The cuffs just barely fit around his thick wrists. Then Felix managed, with even more difficulty, to pull his cell phone out of his pocket.
Felix used his index finger to dial 9 and 1. Then he paused.
John hadn’t said Maria was dead.
What if she was still alive?
And what if John could take him to her?
“It’s a police matter,” Felix said aloud.
But what if the cops couldn’t get John to talk? What if they weren’t persuasive enough?
Felix stared at the snoring giant.
The man who knows what happened to Maria. The man who sliced up my face and fingers. The man who almost cut off my head.
Felix hit the end call button and tucked the phone away.
I’ll get him to talk.
Felix walked over to John and gave him a hard kick in the ribs to make sure he was still out. The hunter didn’t so much as flinch. Then Felix collapsed into the driver’s seat and adjusted the mirror to look at his injuries.
It was ugly.
His shirt was soaked to the skin with blood. His head looked like he’d dunked it in the stuff, and his hair was plastered to his scalp. Not quite as bad as Sissy Spacek at the end of Carrie, but damn close.
Felix mopped away the blood with a stack of paper napkins acquired during his last trip to McDonald’s, paying special attention to wiping off his eyes, where the blood stung like chlorine.
His chin seemed to be the more serious injury; gentle manipulation revealed the jaw bone in the slit. Stitches were needed, but Felix could barely hold the gun, much less a suture. Luckily, in his toolbox was a tube of cyanoacrylate. Superglue. Felix pinched the ends of the wound together and ran a seam of glue across it. The gel set immediately, knitting the edges, forming a tough scab.
The scalp was more complicated, both hard to see and reach. Not worrying about the mess he was making of his hair, Felix alternated between a napkin compress and dabs of glue