The Lonely Mile(44)
He released his hold and bent down, snatching the knife up off the floor. He was incredibly quick. He spun the weapon expertly in his hand until he gripped the handle, leaving the butt end sticking out below his fist. Then it was his turn to swing the steak knife. He lifted it high in the air as the terrified teen dropped to the floor and shrank away, scuttling like a crab, her hands and feet slipping on the grimy surface.
He thrust the knife down at her. The butt end smashed into the side of her head with the full force of his swing, tearing the skin open, and she crumpled onto her side, her head bouncing off the linoleum with a loud crack! Her blood splattered, mixing on the dirty floor with Martin’s, which continued to gush from his arm in frightening volume.
Carli groaned, and her arms and legs continued swinging for a moment in her reflexive attempt to escape her attacker, but her eyes were closed, and the rest of her body lay motionless. Then her limbs got the message that her brain was shutting down for a while, and they stopped moving, too.
CHAPTER 41
MARTIN STUMBLED TO THE kitchen pantry and grabbed the last clean dishtowel. “Dammit,” he hissed in frustration. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have fallen for that little traitor’s silly song and dance? “Oh, I’ve been sweating and nervous all day. I don’t want our first time to be like this!”
He felt like a world-class idiot, like some stupid, junior high sap played for a fool by the cute girl in class. He glared accusingly at her, motionless on the floor, blood flowing sluggishly out of her head, and the urge to finish her off welled up inside him like lava preparing to blow the top off a volcano. He was humiliated and angry, and she should pay.
But he was also injured, and from the looks of it, quite badly. He lifted the dishtowel gingerly from the arm to examine it more closely and he winced. There was no pain, not exactly, not yet, but he knew that was thanks to the adrenaline rushing through his body in response to the sudden altercation with Little Miss Academy Award over there. Soon enough, the adrenaline would dissipate, and the pain would come rushing in to take its place.
He was lucky that the little bitch wasn’t a fighter. She had swung the knife diagonally, holding it high, starting her swing up in the neighborhood of her shoulder, which had given him the split-second he needed to react. When she struck his arm the knife had sliced into the fleshy outside part.
If she had come at him from down low, swinging upward as she should have, she probably would have sliced his stomach open, and his innards would be scattered all over the kitchen floor, or he would even now be staggering around, dying, fighting a losing battle, trying to hold his guts inside his body.
Martin was impressed with the self-control he had exhibited once he had regained control of the situation. Every ounce of him wanted to kill her, to slice and stab and fillet his new houseguest. But he had stopped himself, as difficult as that had been. First of all, he needed to tend to his arm before he bled to death. And this girl was special, regardless of how badly she had played him. Even more importantly, his contact would be more than furious if he murdered a perfectly good girl just because she had become a little feisty, and that could jeopardize the entire setup he had been enjoying for the last three years.
Martin knew something else instinctively, too. This whole mess was his fault, not hers. He was still convinced that this beautiful little thing sprawled unconscious on his kitchen floor was the one. She had to be the one, the fates had spoken, and he was determined to enjoy the remainder of his allotted seven days with her, once he made absolutely clear who was in charge here.
But he should never have allowed his emotions and his unrealistic dreams to rule his actions. Sure, she was special, but she had only just arrived. He should never have trusted her, should never have allowed himself to believe she would do anything other than try to escape. She was still a teenage girl, after all, unused to the ways of the real world.
Martin’s arm began to throb, lobbing the opening volleys in what he knew was only the beginning of the war. The impromptu surgery hadn’t resulted in any irreversible damage, at least as far as he could tell, but the wound was deep, he was losing blood, and he knew the pain was going to get a lot worse before it got better. He needed to get to the hospital and get it sutured, that much was clear, but he had work to do first. Hopefully, he could complete it before he lost so much blood he passed out on the floor.
Slipping and sliding through the blood to the bathroom—holy crap, there was blood everywhere!—Martin knelt and rummaged through the cabinet located under the sink. He picked through spare toilet paper, boxes of tissues, a hand towel. He placed the towel between his knees and threw everything else on the floor behind him, and then finally spotted what he was looking for: a rolled up Ace Bandage.
He grabbed the bandage, and, as he did, he noticed his hands were shaking uncontrollably. Then he stood, and a wave of nausea and lightheadedness caused him to stumble. He grabbed the edge of the sink for support. He looked in the medicine cabinet mirror, and the man staring back at him was white as a ghost. Martin knew he was slipping into shock. He had to hurry.
He opened the door of the medicine chest, grabbing the rubbing alcohol, marveling at how far away from his body his hand seemed to be when he wrapped his fingers around the bottle. It was as if his arm had magically elongated, like he was some sort of superhero. Rubberman or something. In his ears, a buzzing noise had begun to sound and was growing steadily louder. It reminded him of a mosquito flying around his head at night when he was trying to sleep.