Now You See Her - Michael Ledwidge [90]
I’d lost all hope for myself when the tightening at my throat eased up suddenly.
“Don’t go yet, Jeanine. Time for one last round of truth or dare,” Peter whispered in my ear. “I go first. Truth. Remember Ramón Peña? That night on the beach? Yeah, well, you didn’t actually kill him.”
He licked my earlobe and gave it a playful bite.
“That was all me,” he said.
Chapter 116
GASPING, my throat on fire, I stared at Peter’s smile.
“That’s right,” he said with a nod. “Peña was an informant who was going to rat us out to the Feds. I was actually chasing him over the beach, planning to kill him, when I heard you drag-racing down the beach road. As he ran to the sidewalk to wave you down, I shot him three times with a suppressed gun. Next thing I know, he falls into the street in front of your spinning car. There was no way you could have avoided him.”
I shook my head, my eyes slits of disbelief and pain.
Peter nodded. “At first, I thought I was going to have to kill you, too, until I smelled alcohol on your breath and came up with a quick plan. I never got a chance to thank you for giving him a lift back to my house. Great job, Jeanine.”
As Peter’s hands went around my throat again, something happened. A cold ball of pure hatred formed behind my eyes. It traveled down my left arm into my hand, where it formed itself into a claw.
I swung up stiff-armed and buried my sharp nails into the pink, fleshless wound on the side of Peter’s head where his ear used to be. Then I raked them down.
Peter flung himself off me, shrieking. I turned over and lifted myself to my knees, flailing through the pile of fallen books, looking for the gun. I spotted black metal under the couch and dove for it. I pulled the heavy gun up off the floor, in toward my stomach, and slipped my finger over the trigger.
Swinging it around at Peter, I squeezed. Nothing happened. The trigger wouldn’t move. I pushed the safety in with my thumb and then raised the gun again. It still wouldn’t fire.
I screamed as Peter booted me in the side of the head. The gun went flying out of my hands. It spun as it sailed over the hardwood, down the hallway, and toward the bedroom.
“It’s called a double-action pistol, you dumb bitch. You need to squeeze the trigger really hard in the beginning to get off the first round,” Peter said, stepping toward it. “Allow me to demonstrate.”
I jumped up and ran in the opposite direction. I was going to run out the front door screaming for help, but I knew what Peter would do to Emma.
I turned at the last second and ran into the kitchen. I grabbed at the knife block beside the stove. The big eight-inch Henckels slid easily into my grip. I raised it over my head and ran back into the living room.
Peter, standing by the bedroom doorway, now had the gun trained at my face. He actually laughed as he watched me coming.
Still chuckling, he tried to pull the trigger.
Nothing happened. Instead of disengaging the safety, I must have put it on!
I kept coming and swinging as I dove forward. The barrel of the gun hit me in my mouth, knocking two of my teeth loose. I still kept coming.
My knuckles brushed the smooth underside of Peter’s freshly shaven chin as I came down with all my might.
I opened his throat and buried the knife to the hilt in his collarbone.
He fell back into my bedroom, making a wet, gagging sound. I remember warm blood in my eyes and on my cheeks as I turned and ran for Emma. Kicking books away, I found Emma’s hand and dragged her to the door before she groggily got to her feet. We hobbled out of the apartment and down the stairwell, clutching each other.
A woman with a bad face-lift, walking her Labradoodle, screamed and took off sprinting when she saw me come out of the building’s service entrance onto the sidewalk in my bloody bathrobe. When we got to the Korean grocery store on the corner of Third Avenue, I stopped by the florist sink beside the racks of cheap roses. I was still hosing the glass out of Emma’s eyes when the first cop car jumped the curb.
Epilogue
ONE YEAR LATER