I don’t know whether to stand up or stay down. It always seems like someone else has the right answer.Stand up, go toe-to-toe.Nice advice when you’re not in the situation. Or when you have height or weight on your side.
I can’t fall from my position here. But I can?—
Oh fudge. I can take a shoe to the ribs. That’s… breathtaking.
Hands on hips, the man leans over me, glaring. “Get up.”
I whimper as I roll onto all fours. I know another blow is coming. This man is not one who thinks of women as the fairer sex or has any gender expectations.
And I’m right. Another to my other side. Losing all the strength in my arms, I slip, face meeting the gravel and brush of what was once a trail, and suck its dust down my throat. Choking and sputtering, licking fire into my ribs with the pain of movement.
“I said, ‘Get up’.”
Turning my head to him, I see exactly what worried me when we spoke at Ayla’s—cold, dead eyes… evil incarnate, and do as I’m told. One hand wraps around my ribs. The other dangles at my side.
“I changed my mind.” The man tilts his head. “Get on your knees.”
Lifting my chin, I hold his gaze. “No.”
He raises a pistol eye-level with my forehead. “I won’t ask again.”
I sink to one knee, losing my breath at the movement, and then the other.
Violated or dead? That’s what’s laid before me. Violated or dead—a choice between drinking poison and rolling in fire. Neither is good. Both are dire.
One has a chance. That chance is my only thought.
Five more minutes. Survive for five more minutes… Then figure out the next five.
The smile that creeps across his face as the scratch of his zipper spikes my panic in a way nothing has until this point. I mean, I knew, but I didn’tknow. That doesn’t make sense but…
He drops his pants and underwear below his testicles and takes his dick in hand, stroking. “Open.”
Think, Lorien. Survive. Five minutes. You can handle anything for five minutes.
“Wait. No. You can’t do this.” Seamus Murphy is… defending me? That can’t be.
The gun swings wide. The man holding it does not want to be deterred. My hand hits my pocket where the ball point pen is. It’s now or never.
Rising with all the energy I have, I grab his sac, squeezing and tugging as if I can rip them from their sheath. I stab wildly with the pen, screaming in agony at the ribs that are surely broken.
His screams are a chorus with mine, until…
… until the sound of a gasp silences all of us.
I look up. In panic. In horror. In relief?
Oh no. What have I done?
My hand flies to my throat, as I gag in equal parts shock and reflex.
That ballpoint pen. The only thing I could find in that trunk. My pathetic little weapon.
It’s lodged straight into his neck, directly below his Adam’s apple.
His throat. His trachea. Everything connected to his autonomic nervous system hangs in the balance. Removing it guarantees death… choking to death on his own blood. Drowning in it.
What have I done?
