The tiny bathroom is a cold, shadowy twin of its usual self, its gingham curtains fluttering in the chill breeze. I place my hands on either side of the porcelain sink and try taking some grounding breaths. I need to rack my brain for solutions, or at least options, but it proves unrackable.
I look at myself in the mirror and almost want to laugh at the reflection. The date makeup still clinging to my face for dear life can do nothing for my harried expression and tangled hair. I look and feel like I’ve aged a decade in a matter of hours. And all of this is framed by the knock-you-over-the-head cheer of the retro floral shower curtain behind me.
Did something move? I squeeze my eyes shut and look again.I can barely think straight, let alone trust my eyesight. I’m so tired and cold, it’s like I can’t be bothered to perceive anything else accurately.
… Cold. This room is especially cold. Between the fire and the shuttered windows, the rest of the house has begun to warm up, but it’s freezing in here. I piece it together on a delay. The breeze. The open window. Whatever I thought I saw in the mirror. That hollow feeling of unease that accompanies a drawn shower curtain. Wondering if it isn’t so hollow this time.
I turn around slowly, fighting to keep my breathing even and my nerves stable.
With an impossibly quiet, careful step toward the shower, I inch my hand up toward the curtain. I move so slowly my muscles ache, rigid with apprehension. Almost there. Centimeters to go. Millimeters. My hand finally touches the plastic curtain, and with a sharp inhale, I jerk it aside.
He lunges.
CHAPTER SIX
Idodge Jack by a hair, screaming as he takes a swing. His knife swooshes through the air, just barely missing my neck. My skin prickles with the nearness of the blade. I’ve practiced knife attack defenses hundreds of times, maybe thousands. But this knife isn’t rubber, and Jack isn’t Uri.
And if he were, he’d point out that I just made a huge mistake: in my haste to get away, I ducked in the wrong direction. Now I’m backed against the window, and there’s a manic pixie nightmare boy between me and the exit.
Jack steps casually over the bathtub ledge and gives me a lecherous smirk. Or maybe it’s the same ruthlessly charming grin he flashed me when we first met, and I was just too stupid to recognize the danger in it then.
“Roxie, Roxie, Roxie,” he sighs. “You’re my one that got away, did you know that?”
“I’m not your anything, asshole.”
He winces theatrically, a sharp intake of air hissing through his teeth. “Pet names? Oh, I don’t know if we’rethereyet.”
He steps closer, the hall light haloing his hair. My limbs crackle with energy, itching to strike, but I have to wait for theright moment. I don’t take my eyes off his, shadowed in the darkness, but take stock of his every move in my periphery.
His face cracks into a wide smile.
“Now, where were we?”
At that, I kick him hard in the stomach, but Anna seems to have given him rock-hard abs by force of habit; it only sets him stumbling back for a moment. He rebounds quickly and with a vengeance, raising his knife with dramatic flair. I can almost hear the halting strings of thePsychoscore.
I know this one.I shoot my arm out to block him, slightly bent at the elbow and hand flat as I was taught. It works, I guess, as I remain unstabbed. But that’s not enough. I have to get the knife away from him.
Moving quickly, I jab my knee up at him and seize his wrist, but he doesn’t drop the knife. My hands are sweaty and my confidence is waning.Focus.I try to hear Uri’s voice as if he were here coaching me, standing in the bathtub with his crossed arms and his scrutinizing gaze and his arsenal of acronyms.OODA: observe, orient, decide, act. KISS: keep it simple, stupid.
I pivot away from Jack but keep hold of his arm, using the rotation of my body to pull him off-balance and weaken his hold. He shouts in pain and loses his grip, and the knife falls out the window, swallowed up by the night.
“Fuck you,” he grunts, as if appalled at my rudeness for disarming him, and I almost laugh. But I don’t have time. Before I can see it coming, his hands close around my throat and he jerks me back to the window. My head hits the raised pane, grinding painfully against the glass, but it’s nothing compared to the fingers digging into my neck, cutting off my breath.
My ears are ringing, thoughts flickering.Do not panic. Do NOT panic. DO NOT PANIC.I have a number of defensive maneuvers to choose from, combinations of twisting and wrenching and shoving to free myself and force him back. One of them will work. It has to.
I don’t get a chance to decide which. With an earsplitting clang, Jack’s grip loosens and his body goes stiff. His face fades into blankness before he falls, revealing the scene behind him—a shell-shocked Grant, breathing hard and wielding a massive cast-iron skillet.
I gawk at him, my heart pounding as the air whooshes back into my lungs. He stares at where Jack went down. For a moment, we’re trapped in silence like bugs in sap, because what can you possibly say at a time like this?
“I had it under control,” I blurt, barely breathing.
But he doesn’t look at me. The pan falls from his hands, clattering to the floor. Only then does he seem to break from his daze.
“Oh my God,” he exhales. “Did I—is he—” He rushes forward and bends over Jack, presumably to check his pulse, but I can’t look. I squeeze my eyes shut until Grant speaks again.
“Oh,fuck.”
He stumbles backward, a new kind of wild-eyed terror on his face. His breaths are ragged and too fast, filling the hallway as he paces back and forth, burying his hands in his hair.
