He gets to his knees, crab walking up the length of my body. I struggle and he grabs the front of my dress, lifting me up, bunching his hand into a fist.
I close my eyes, raising my hands to shelter my face just before he punches me. A jolt runs along my forearm. It hurts like a bastard but no bones break. I scream, hunching my shoulders in anticipation of the next one.
“Don’t you fucking touch her!” Malakai yells, running over.
Relief explodes through my brain.
He collects the brick on his way, kicking the maniac off me, onto his back on the ground. One boot stamps on the man’s chest, cracking ribs, knocking the wind out of him. While he doubles in pain, Malakai slams the brick straight into his face.
And again. Again. Again.
Each blow lands hard. Lands with so much force, it caves the man’s skull in like an Easter egg being crushed by a bowling ball. Shattered, glistening wet bone juts from a mess of blood, grey mush, and tan flesh. Barely recognisable as human.
Definitely dead.
I roll away, staring up at the sun, waiting for the guilt of helping take a life to hit me.
Instead, I experience a rush of triumph.
My eyes eat up the sight of Malakai, still holding the bloodied brick in his hand, brain and blood and bone flecks splattered across his chest. Every cell in my body pulses, on fire at his strength, at his savageness, at the way he leapt to defend me.
My body melts into the ground, legs splayed as his gaze redirects from his victim to me. There’s a question mark forming in his eyes and God knows, right now, stoned out of my mind on the danger and the blood and the violence, my answer isyes.
He wipes his left hand on his sweatpants, then extends it, helping me to my feet. Once I’m upright, he curls his fingers briefly around my scalp, resting gently on my hair, then dropping to touch my arm where the bruise is already blossoming. “Are you okay?”
I nod, my voice having scampered into hiding for the time being. I experience a rush of warmth towards him, a rush of connection.
Then he lets me go, dropping the brick as he turns away, his lip curling and my surge of white-hot desire is extinguished in an instant, turning to the dull beige of rejection.
The triumph dissipates like smoke in the wind as reality reasserts its dominion.
I’m still being held hostage by a murderer.
Sorry. Make that adoublemurderer.
Whatever else is going on, he’s a troubled young man and I’m an old fool.
“Get into the car. We have little time.”
I slowly head for my vehicle, but he whistles, jerking his head towards the battered Jeep that the dead man drove here. I angle towards it instead, taking two goes to clamber into the passenger seat and having to make liberal use of the door as a support system, it’s that tall.
Thoughts of escape have gone. My mind buzzes like a fluorescent light on its last legs.
Malakai doesn’t even bother to drag the body around the back of the house. He leaves the battered corpse like a warning sign to weary travellers—danger, stay away—only pausing over it long enough to steal the keys from its pocket and grab the gun from the ground.
He ducks into the house, soon returning to the vehicle with the bag of drugs, now topped up with a variety of other paraphernalia. Inside, he took the time to clean himself and stripped off his stained sweatpants. Once he shoves the bag into my lap, he grabs a tee shirt and fresh pants from the back seat, dressing before he jumps into the driver’s seat and twists the keys in the ignition.
“Find someplace to store that,” he says, putting the car into gear and driving us away.
* * *
A half-hour later,I stare out the passenger side window, trying to pretend Malakai’s eyes aren’t moving all over me. My forearm smarts where the man punched it, the pain growing with each passing minute rather than receding to a manageable level.
Finally, it becomes so bad, I rifle through the glove box looking for aspirin, paracetamol, ibuprofen—anything to take the edge off the expanding pain.
“What d’you need?” Malakai asks with a frown as I give up, slamming the door shut with far more force than it needs.
“Painkillers.” I turn to the stare out the window, eyes watering and not from the blow. There’s a weird crackle to the air. I’m far too aware of his body and its movements as he drives.
