My Wife Is Missing(111)
“What are you going to do?” Natalie asked. “Stab me? Kill me in cold blood?”
Natalie had come here already in a weakened condition after her string of sleepless months. How would she find the strength to wrestle a knife from someone well rested and supremely motivated? She had to think, plan her next move with extreme care.
“I don’t know,” said Tina forlornly. “This wasn’t my plan. But I guess I’ll say we found the knife hidden in your house. We were bringing the knife to the police when you suggested we should come here to look in his locker, see what else there might be. But we got into a fight because you got cold feet about turning on your husband and handing over the evidence. We argued. It got heated. You came at me with the knife.
“It was self-defense, yes, that’s what it was. You already stabbed someone, they’ll believe me.”
Natalie realized that she was hearing a woman coming to grips with how she’d explain away a murder. Her murder.
Any hint of lingering fatigue left Natalie in a great rush. Thoughts of Addie and Bryce only added to her resolve. She’d do anything to be there for them.
With startling speed, Natalie shot her right hand forward, latching her fingers around the wrist of Tina’s hand, somehow managing to avoid the knife blade. At the same time, she wrapped her foot around Tina’s ankle. Pulling her leg back, mustering a strength Natalie didn’t know she possessed, she sent Tina to the ground on her back. The matted gym floor protected Tina’s body, but the bloody knife dislodged from her grasp upon impact.
Panic drove Natalie as she scrambled to her feet. She glanced at the knife, thinking she could reach it before Tina came to her senses. Natalie made her move, but Tina recovered quicker than she expected. In a role reversal, it was Tina who got a hand on Natalie’s ankle. With a tug, Natalie went back down onto her knees, hard. Tina scrambled over her back like she was after a fumbled football.
“I have kids, too,” Tina blurted out.
Natalie rolled onto her back, taking Tina with her. She grappled with Tina on the floor, moving her face from side to side to avoid her fingers, which Tina was trying to use like talons. Even so, Tina sunk her nails into Natalie’s cheek. She pulled her fingers across the skin, digging in deep. Blood surfaced from the long marks gored into Natalie’s flesh.
With an anguished roar, Natalie bucked Tina off her, but she fell back in the direction of the knife. By the time Natalie scrambled to her feet, she found Tina standing as well, holding the knife out in front of her, stabbing at the air.
With every step Tina took forward, Natalie took one in retreat, all the way until she was butted up against the rack of dumbbells. Instinctively, Natalie picked up a ten-pound weight to use as a weapon.
“Please, Tina. Don’t. This isn’t you.”
“I killed before to save my life, my family. I can do it again.”
Natalie threw the weight at Tina’s head, but there wasn’t much thrust. Tina had no trouble sidestepping the slow-moving projectile. Natalie picked up a five-pound weight and threw it harder this time. Tina ducked to avoid the strike.
Don’t stop attacking.
Don’t give her time to breathe.
Blood continued to ooze from the scratches running down Natalie’s cheek as she picked up another ten-pound barbell. This time, instead of throwing it, she charged at Tina while giving her best warrior cry. Taken by surprise, Tina backpedaled quickly. She crossed over the running track before ramming up against the wall that overlooked the swimming pool below.
Momentum carried Natalie over the track as well. When she was within striking distance, Tina lurched forward with a lightning-fast counterattack. The blade of the knife landed on Natalie’s forearm. Tina pulled her arm back, dragging the blade with it, producing a long gash. Natalie tried landing a punch at Tina’s head with the barbell, but the shock of getting sliced open caused her to miss her target. Even worse, the barbell sprung from her grasp as if she’d thrown the weight. The window behind Tina broke in an explosion of glass that plinked as the pieces hit the tiled floor below.
A chlorine smell washed in through the shattered window. Tina came at Natalie with a fury, the knife hoisted high above her head. In response, Natalie wrapped Tina around the midsection, driving forward with her legs like she was pushing a weighted sled across the floor. Tina fell backward, stopping only when her legs hit the wall behind her. About three feet up from the floor, the wall became an open window that looked out onto the pool below. With the glass now in a million pieces, there was nothing to safeguard against a fall. Tina vanished through the opening, but Natalie didn’t see what was happening in time to let go.
She was still holding on to Tina when she realized the momentum was too much. One moment her feet were on the ground, and the next she was tumbling over Tina before she, too, fell through the opening created by the shattered window. The fall lasted only a second, but it took a lifetime. Down she went, holding her breath, eyes closed, bracing to meet the floor below.
A sudden splash reverberated in her ears. Cold water covered her body. Natalie hit the pool with force, and intense pain radiated out from her shoulder before traveling up and down her legs, her back. She surfaced, choking, coughing water out of her lungs and spitting out blood. Wet hair curtained her eyes. She examined her arm, expecting to see a protruding bone. There was the gash, nothing more. But still, the blood was everywhere, pooling about her with the crimson sheen of an oil slick.