She kept her head straight forward, but looked past Toby at Jim’s sprawled body.
Is he still alive?
She pulled her blouse shut, took a deep breath and said, “I’ll do anything you want, but not till an ambulance is on the way for Jim. Come on. Please. He doesn’t deserve this. He was just helping me.”
Toby stepped around to the side of Jim’s body and stomped on his back.
Jim let out a low groan.
“I guess he’s alive.” Toby grinned at Sherry. Then he crouched over Jim and raised one of the knives.
Sherry shrieked.
It hurt her ears, but it stopped Toby. His mouth dropping open, he gaped at her and yelled, “Shut up!”
Shoving her hands against her ears, she shrieked again.
Toby leaped up and rushed at her.
Knives in both hands.
She whirled around and ran from him. In front of her was the bed. When she leaped onto its mattress, Duane’s head tumbled off the pillow and rolled toward her.
She swung around in time to see Toby dive toward her legs.
She kicked him in the face.
The blow knocked his head sideways. It didn’t stop him, though. The momentum of the dive kept him flying toward her. Sherry tried to jump out of the way, but he crashed through her legs. She fell across his back, tumbled down his buttocks and legs and rolled onto the floor behind his feet.
Sprawled on her back and gasping for breath, she heard quick, hard pounding sounds.
They came from somewhere outside the bedroom.
Somewhere down the passageway.
Somewhere, maybe, out near the living room.
Duane’s front door!
Chapter Seventeen
Sherry flipped over, scrambled to her feet and ran from the room.
Glancing back, she saw Toby shove himself off the bed.
Ahead of her, knuckles pounded furiously on the door.
She dodged Jim’s body on the floor, raced past the bathroom and poured on the speed.
Behind her back, the thuds of Toby’s bare feet pounded after her.
In front of her, a fist knocked on the door again and again.
She dashed into the living room, ran toward the door.
“What’s going on in there?”
It was the urgent voice of a woman.
Skidding to a halt, Sherry grabbed the doorknob. She twisted it and jerked the door open. On the other side stood a woman no older than herself, slim and dressed in a pink bathrobe and frowning first with annoyance but then with concern.
Sherry crashed the door shut in the woman’s face.
“Get help!” she shouted. “There’s a mad—!”
Coming up behind her, Toby clenched her hair, jerked her away from the door, swung her sideways and let go. She shuffled over the carpet, trying to stay on her feet. A lamp table got in the way. Her thigh rammed the table against the side of the couch. Her shoulder hit the lamp. As the lamp flew, she tumbled across the top of the table and fell over the padded arm of the couch. She felt a cushion underneath her body, but only for a moment. The lamp crashed and the room went half-dark as Sherry fell off the couch. Her weight shoved the coffee table away and she landed on the floor.
Through the melancholy strains of the Titanic soundtrack, she heard thudding sounds. A woman yelled, “Help!”
Sherry sat up.
“Someone! Please!”
The door was wide open.
Shoving at the couch and coffee table, Sherry got to her feet. On wobbly legs, she stumbled over to the door and staggered out.
Halfway down the hallway, Toby had caught the woman.
His back to Sherry, he was sitting on the woman’s rump and pounding his knives into her back. Right, left, right, left, right. Her legs were twitching, her feet thumping against the floor.
Except for Toby and the woman, Sherry saw nobody in the corridor.
She saw no open doors, either.
Where is everyone? Don’t they hear anything? Are they hiding in their rooms?
Toby kept driving his knives into the woman’s back.
The woman didn’t stand a chance. Toby must’ve already stabbed her a dozen times or more.
He’ll be done any second…
What’ll I do?
Shut the door. That’s for sure. Shut it and it’ll lock and he hasn’t got a key on him. He’ll be locked out. At least for a while.
But what about me?
I shut the door, but where am I?
Inside or out?
The frenzy of stabbing came to an end. Toby jerked the knives out of the woman’s back and started to climb off her.
Don’t just stand here!
He stood up and turned around. The front of his naked body was crimson. Grinning, he raised both arms high like a