Vice(74)

“Natalia, go! Wait outside for me!” I shout.

She hesitates, but not for long. She runs past me, and then she’s enveloped in the thick gray-white smoke, vanishing like an apparition.

“You think he’s going to let her live after this?” Harrison spits. “He’s gonna f*cking destroy her. He’ll take whatever he wants from her. He’ll make her beg for his forgiveness, then he’ll dump her body off the closest cliff face. Not even the wolves will be allowed to have her after he’s finished with her.”

Harrison is right. Fernando’s such a selfish guy; he probably would rather Natalia was dashed to pieces on the rocks rather than hand her over, even to his pets.

“You did this to her,” Harrison says. “When he’s done punishing her, and there’s nothing left of her, you’ll know that it was all your fault. You should have listened to him. You should have done as you were told!”

Such bullshit. I grab hold of him by the hair, yanking his head back so I can smash his face into the wall. The impact is so satisfying. The plaster crumbles, small cracks appearing like a spider web in the paintwork. Harrison sags a little, but it’s only a moment before he’s back up and swinging. I’m so f*cking dizzy, my head swimming from the smoke inhalation, that my response time is delayed. He clips me on the jaw, and lights dance in my eyes. Again, he hits me—the stomach this time—and I double over, trying to recover myself. Oxygen is already thin on the ground right now. I don’t need a slug to the gut to make breathing even harder.

“But you never know,” Harrison says, leaning down to whisper into my ear. “Maybe I’ll kill Fernando myself. Maybe I’ll shoot the psycho in the back while he’s distracted. Then I can have Natalia all to myself.”

If Harrison wants to pour gasoline on this fire, he just made the right call. He shouldn’t talk about her. He shouldn’t have even thought such a thing. I gather what little strength I have left in my body and I right myself, drawing up to my full height. Harrison knows he’s pushed the right button; he points his gun at me again, smiling like the * he is.

“You’ll never best me, motherf*cker. You keep throwing the fact that you were military and I was private security in my face, but it’s precisely why I will survive this and you won’t. All those rules and regulations. Always doing things by the book. We didn’t have to adhere to any bullshit rules when I was in the desert. There ain’t no Geneva Convention in this kind of war, my friend.”

I can see it in his eyes. He’s going to shoot me, and he’s going to take great pleasure in watching me die. I don’t plan on giving in that easily, though. His finger hovers over the trigger, twitching restlessly.

Any second now.

Any second…

Just as he moves into action, I drop to the ground, though. He fires, the loud snap and zip of the bullet rushing past my head. I roll onto my back, aiming my gun upward, and I fire. His shot missed me by a mile, whereas my shot hits home, driving deep into his shoulder. Harrison rocks sideways, his body hitting the wall, and his gun falls from his hand, landing on the floor at his feet. A stream of blood begins pumping down the front of his white shirt. The surprise on his face is classic; he really did believe that was going to be his defining moment of victory. Well, too bad so sad, motherf*cker. Sorry to disappoint.

His shoulder wound won’t kill him. He’ll lose a lot of blood if he leaves it long enough, but he’s not going to drop down dead immediately. He falls on me, strong hands clawing and pulling at me as he tries to overpower me. I’m done f*cking around, though. Time for Harrison to learn a real lesson.

I plan on shooting him in the temple, but he knocks my gun away in the struggle. It goes skittering off into the smoke and darkness, and I have no idea where it ends up as we wrestle. Harrison’s gun is down on the ground somewhere, but in the confusion of limbs and flying fists, it must get knocked away, too.

I can feel my body starting to lag. I need fresh air and I need it badly. The synapses in my brain are firing in slow motion, and every single cell in my body is screaming for oxygen. I don’t give up, though. I can’t. My arm hits something, sharp and hard. I scramble for it, closing my hand around…

…a handle.

A knife handle. I can’t see what kind of knife it is, and to be honest I don’t really care. So long as it has a sharp edge to it, it will suffice. Harrison’s trying to get on top of me, to pin me to the ground so he can pummel the shit out of me, but I have other ideas. I drive the knife upward, slamming it into his torso, grinding the blade in between his ribs. This is a high damage zone. The lungs, the heart, the liver. The kidneys, depending on how big the blade is. I could hit any of these major internal organs, and it’s the long goodnight for Harrison.

He goes still.

Blood bubbles from his lips, trickling out of his mouth as he releases a strange, relieved sounding sigh. “Fuck…you…” he whispers.

I lean toward him, shoving my face into his. “No, Harrison. Seriously. Fuck you.” I twist the knife, yanking it around, feeling the sharpened edge of the metal scraping against his ribs. More blood spews from his mouth. He begins to shake, his eyes rolling back into his head. I shove him away from me, pushing him off me, and I get to my feet. Harrison lies in a sprawled-out mess on the floor, hands resting gingerly on either side of the knife, which is still sticking out of his body. I leave it in there, not because I pity him. Not because I regret what I’ve done. I leave it there because I know he’ll bleed out if I remove it. He’ll lose too much blood too quickly and die, and where is the justice in that?