Live to Tell (Detective D.D. Warren, #4)(5)

I hit the bottle with the side of my hand. It falls to the floor, rolls across the tiles.

I hear another scream, pure unadulterated rage, and know he’s just discovered that I locked up the kitchen knives. I did it two weeks ago, in the middle of the night, when he was sleeping. You have to keep one step ahead. You have to.

The Ativan has rolled behind the toilet. My fingers are shaking too hard. I can’t reach it, can’t roll it out. I hear crashing now. Cherry cabinet doors being flung open, cups, plates, serving platters being tossed onto imported Italian tile. I changed everything over to Melamine and plastic years ago, which only pisses him off more. He has to trash the kitchen, does it every time, even as the lack of shattering damage drives him further over the edge.

Another loud crash, then silence. I find myself holding my breath, then bend over the toilet, scrabbling for the damn prescription bottle. The quiet stretches on, unnerving me more than the destruction.

What’s he doing? What has he discovered? What have I missed?

Dammit, I need the Ativan now.

I force myself to breathe, to steady my strung-out nerves. Towel, that’s the trick. Roll up the towel, poke it behind the toilet, push the prescription bottle out the other side. Got it.

Tranquilizer tablets firmly in hand, I creep into the hallway of my now silent home, already terrified of what I might find.

One step. Two, three, four …

I approach the end of the hallway. Expansive family room on the left, followed by formal dining room, leading to the gourmet kitchen to the right, then circling around into the vaulted foyer. I peer behind the dying ficus tree in the corner, then tiptoe into the family room, mindful of the ambush spots behind the L-shaped sofa, beside the battered entertainment unit, and underneath the tattered silk drapes.

What have I missed? What have I failed to consider and what will it cost me?

Other images crowd my brain. The time he bolted out of the pantry with a wooden meat tenderizer and cracked two of my ribs before I managed to get away. Or the first time he picked up a meat cleaver, going after my arm, but in his enraged state slicing open his own thigh. I was afraid he’d severed an artery and would bleed out if I ran away, so I stood my ground, eventually wrestling the knife from his grasp. Then I comforted him while he sobbed in pain, and the blood from both of our wounds soaked into the Persian rug in our beautiful vaulted entryway.

Can’t think of these things now. Must remain focused. Find him. Calm him. Drug him.

I creep through the family room, approaching the dining room, taking in all shadowed corners, trying to listen for sounds from behind. The kitchen opens back into the foyer. That makes it easy for him to circle around, attack from the rear.

One foot in front of the other. Inch by inch, prescription bottle clutched like pepper spray in my fist.

I discover him in the kitchen. He has pulled down his jeans and is now defecating on the rug. He looks up as I approach, an expression of malevolent triumph crossing his face.

“What do you think of your precious rug now?” he sneers. “What’s so f*cking special about it now?”

I approach him steadily, holding out the bottle of Ativan. “Please, baby. You know I love you. Please.”

For his response, he scoops up a pile of excrement and smears it across his bare belly.

“I’m gonna kill you,” he says, calmer now, conversational.

I don’t say a word, just hold out the bottle of tablets.

“I’m gonna do it in the middle of the night. But I’ll wake you up first. I want you to know.”

I hold out the tablets.

“You locked up the knives,” he chants. “You locked up the knives. But did you lock up all the knives? Did you, did you, did you?”

He smiles, gleefully, and my gaze goes instinctively to the drying rack, contents now strewn across the kitchen floor. Had there been a knife in that rack? Had I washed one just this morning? I can’t remember, and that’s going to cost me. Something is always going to cost me.

I twist off the lid of the prescription bottle. “It’s time to rest, sweetheart. You know you’ll feel better after you’ve had a little rest.”

I pour a couple of tablets into the palm of my hand, stepping close enough that the heat and stench of his body flood my nostrils. Slowly, I open his mouth with one finger and poke the first quick-dissolving tablet into the pouch of his cheek.

In turn, he cups his stained fingers around my neck and, almost tenderly, rubs the hollow of my neck.

“I will kill you quickly,” he promises me. “With a knife. I’ll slide the blade in. Right here.”

His thumb brushes over the pulse beating wildly in my throat, as if he’s mentally rehearsing the death blow.

Then I can see his facial muscles start to relax as the drug takes effect. His hand falls away, and he smiles again. Sweetly now. A ray of sunshine through the storm, and I want to cry but I don’t. I don’t.

There are pieces of yourself, so many pieces of yourself, that, once you give away, you cannot get back again.

Ten minutes later, I have him in bed. I strip off what remains of his clothes. Wipe down his body with a soapy washcloth, though I know from previous experience that the smell of excrement will linger on his skin. Later, he will ask me questions about that, and I will lie to him with my answers, because that’s what I’ve learned to do.

I clean him up. I clean me up. The dishes will go through the dishwasher, then be replaced in the cupboards. The rug will be left on the curb on trash day. But all that can wait.