Page 24

CHAPTER 24

PANIC WALLOPED INTO ME, raw and wild and electric, an explosion of pain in my sternum.

There was a man standing over me in the dark, in my own home, aiming a gun at my head. I had no time to wonder whether he’d been waiting for me there on the roof or if he’d snuck in when I responded to the eggers at the front door.

I gripped the barbell and looked at the figure, upside down to me, his extended hand gripping the pistol butt. I could tell it was a man in a dark hoodie, but all I could see of his face were his eyes.

I must have jerked involuntarily.

“Freeze,” he barked.

Every muscle in my body clenched. My brain was screaming with worry about Baby, asleep in her bedroom below. Terrifying possibilities coursed through my mind — that this man had already murdered my younger sister or that she would come through the rooftop door any minute and he’d kill her before my eyes.

I gripped the barbell as the man held the gun against my head.

I waited for a sickening bang. The end.

It didn’t come. He reached into the pouch pocket of his hoodie and came out with a cable tie. I watched, bug-eyed, as he skillfully slipped the tie one-handed over both the barbell and my right wrist and yanked it tight. He found another tie and did the same on the other side, zipping the plastic tight against the back of my bare wrist, just below my weight glove.

“Listen good, lady,” the man said. Having secured me, he seemed to relax slightly. He slid the gun up so that it was pressed against my forehead. “You gonna drop the case. Okay?”

“Wh-what?” I stammered. Something was rising in me, overcoming my terror the way a bank of dark clouds eats the night sky. A billowing plume of anger grew so big, it seemed to bulge inside my ears, stifling all sound. “What did you say?”

“You gonna drop ... that ... case, ” the man said. “Make whatever calls you gotta make. Do whatever it is you gotta do. But you gonna drop it tonight or I’ll be back here.”

I breathed, fury bending my bones outward to make space for itself. The man stepped around and stood between my knees at the end of the bench, a hooded silhouette against the night sky.

“You back away for good or I’ll be comin’ around again with my li’l ties.” He nodded at the cable tie on my right wrist. “I can have a lot of fun with those. You saw how fast I put ’em on. I got plenty of tricks where that came from. I’ll have you and that li’l teenage beauty all trussed up before you — ”

He didn’t get to finish. The balloon of rage burst in my chest. I heaved the barbell up off the hooks holding it, brought it to my chest, then used all my strength to simultaneously jump up and launch it at him. My tied hands carried me, and I smashed the bar horizontally into his chest, knocking him backward. We tumbled together to the ground, landed with the barbell pinning him, me straddling his chest. The gun skidded across the tiles and into the pool. I braced my thighs, lifted the barbell, twisted it vertically — and drove it down onto his chest.

The huge surface of the stacked weights attached to the end smashed into his torso. I heard a colossal crunch, felt a wet expulsion of air. I stood and as he rolled away, I dropped the weights and put a foot against the bar. I braced myself, then snapped the cable ties off my wrists like they were dental floss.

My attacker was crawling for the stairs, coughing blood. I marched over, picked him up by the ass of his jeans and the collar of the hoodie, and threw him through the open door down the stairs. He landed in a crumpled heap on the landing like a human bag of laundry, leaving blood smears on the walls.