Philadelphia Noir - Carlin Romano [10]
“Corrine.”
She giggled and reached for him as the rain smacked against the windows. But just as their lips were about to touch, the soothing sound of the downpour was interrupted by shattering glass.
Corrine sat up in bed. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Richard answered, reaching down to grab his pants from the floor. “Stay here.”
He got up and walked briskly down the hall. Then he descended the steps two at a time, his feet padding silently on the hardwood floor. When he entered the kitchen, he saw that one of the windows over the sink was broken.
“Probably the wind,” he said to himself, and reached up into a cabinet for a candle.
He lit it and searched the cabinet. When he found the roll of duct tape he was searching for, a shadow crept across the wall. The shape of it was unmistakable. It was a man.
Richard didn’t look up. Instead, he reached down into a drawer as his eyes darted back and forth across the room. He released the tape, wrapped his fingers around a kitchen knife, and hoped that he’d imagined what he’d seen. But when he turned around, he knew that it was real.
The man crashed through the kitchen door, lunging as Richard brought the knife down with all the force he could muster. The man yelped, like a dog, and stumbled back onto the counter as the blood from his wounded arm soaked through his shirt.
“Richard!” Corrine yelled from the bedroom.
“Stay there,” Richard managed to bark out as he slashed the man’s cheek with a sideways stroke of the knife.
The man ducked when Richard swung the knife back in the other direction. His fist pounded Richard’s kidney, knocking the breath from his body and forcing him back into a cabinet. The man rushed toward him. Richard gripped the knife with both hands and swung upward. The man grunted, and warm blood flowed from the ragged gash that extended the length of his stomach.
A second passed, then two. Richard’s heart beat wildly. The weight of the dead man pressed against him, pushing him into the cabinet as the blood saturated his clothes. The wind moaned and whisked through the broken glass in the kitchen. The rain fell in a thousand tiny drumbeats, tapping out its own timeless percussion.
As Richard pushed the man’s body to the floor, another sound tore through the house, biting into him like nails against a blackboard. The sound was Corrine. She was screaming.
“Help me!” she shrieked, and the wind seemed to fade into the echo of her voice.
Richard turned and ran toward the bedroom, slipping on the blood-soaked linoleum of the kitchen floor. He ran, pushing himself toward the sound of his wife screaming. He ran, forgetting the body that lay in his kitchen, the pain shooting from his side, the blood covering his hands. He had only to get to Corrine. And when he did—when his feet had carried him up the steps and into the bedroom—all he could see was a shadow in the darkness, straddling his wife as she struggled to free herself from its grip.
Richard charged into the room, slashing into the back of Corrine’s assailant with the knife. The man rolled onto the floor, arching his back against the pain when Richard brought the knife down again. Corrine joined the fray, her tiny fists striking the man’s head angrily. Richard pushed her away and raised the knife high into the air—a madness playing in his eyes as he delivered the killing blow.
A split second passed. Then something whistled through the air. Richard was momentarily blinded by a white flash of light as a burning sensation gripped the back of his leg. He dropped the knife and grabbed at the bullet wound, then turned around to see yet another shadow coming toward him.
Corrine screamed when the shadowy figure aimed a gun with a silencer. There was another whistling sound. This time, the heat glanced Richard’s shoulder. He reached for Corrine. There was a final silenced shot, and as the shooter lowered his weapon and retreated down the stairs and into the windswept rain, Corrine’s blood spilled onto Richard.
He wrapped his arms around his wife, and as her eyes went