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Thursday morning, July 15
Even superficial scalp wounds will bleed profusely. That’s what my father told me the day I did my George-of-the-Jungle imitation and cracked my nine-year-old head on the paving under the monkey bars. At the sight of all that blood, I screamed so loudlya neighbor called the police. My dad was right though. All I needed was two stitches.
So when Kane grunts in pain and I feel his blood on my fingers, I don’t let that deter me, but slash him again, aiming for where I imagine his heart to be. Earlier, I selected the largest, most lethal-looking shard of glass, wrapping a pillowcase protectively around the palm of my hand.
The glass shard slices through something soft and yielding.
Please not an artery, but please let it stop him.
I hear the sharp intake of his breath, feel him stagger against me, knocking me off-balance. I shove against his chest. He falls to one knee and I kick out at his head, connecting clumsily with his skull. I see him sway, and my focus narrows to one goal. The open door.
I stumble toward it, but his hand shoots out and grabs my ankle, pulling me down onto the floor with him. I try to slice him again, but the brutal pressure he applies to my wrist forces me to drop the makeshift weapon with a pained hiss.
And then we’re grappling on the floor, me pummeling him, Kane deflecting my blows and trying to pin down my wildly flailing form. If it wasn’t for his injuries, I wouldn’t stand a chance. At least now there’s the hope we’re roughly matched.
It’s an eerie struggle. Apart from our labored breathing, neither of us makes a sound. I know the reason for my silence, but I don’t know why Kane doesn’t call out to Jill.
“Give it up,” he pants in my ear as I lie stretched out on top of him.
“Not a chance.”
I claw at his ski mask, ripping it off, allowing me to see clearly a face I’ve wondered about since I was kidnapped. A face I imagined older and uglier than the one before me now. The features are too strong to fall under the pretty-boy label, but it’s still a surprisingly attractive face.
His unmasking takes us both by surprise. For a split-second, we’re frozen. Kane is the first to react. Still lying on his back, he grips my wrists and wraps his legs around my thighs, locking me against him.
“You tried to kill me,” he says in a tone of disbelief. “Are you so desperate to escape you’d kill me or Jill, whoever walked through the door first?”
“Why not?” I retort, the sour taste of defeat in my mouth. “You’re planning on killing me.”
He seems stunned by my statement. “Where did you get that ridiculous idea?”
“Maybe when you took me away by force from my home,” I say thickly. “When you paralyzed me, when you tied me down and forced me to look at those pictures...” My voice breaks.
His eyes slide away from mine. “About last night, I might have gone a bit overboard.”
“Might!” I almost choke on a surge of helpless rage. I wish I had cut an artery.
His eyes flick back to mine. “What I subjected you to, that was wrong. But you—” He stops, shaking his head.
“How could you do that to me?” I ask, tears blurring my vision. “What have I ever done to you?”
“Amy.”
But I’m crying too hard to take in anything he says, to realize he has, for the first time, called me by my name. When my sobs become shudders punctuated by hiccups, he asks quietly, “Are you okay?”
I shake my head, keeping my face averted.
Kane exhales heavily. “If there was another way to do this, I’d take it.”
There’s a note in his voice I haven’t heard before, but I’m too exhausted to try to figure it out. In a hollow voice, I ask, “Do you love animals that much?”
“You’re asking the wrong question.”
“What should I be asking?”
“Do I hate injustice that much?”
