The Pretender - Cora Brent Page 0,66
see the two men arrive but they would have knocked on the front door. The same door I left from. If the side door was left unlocked when we arrived earlier in the evening then it’s still unlocked now.
I’m not positive that I’m right. I can’t be sure until I try the door myself.
After a three second dash to the side of the house, I have my hand on the doorknob and my heart in my throat. The knob twists easily and I step inside. A shout goes up in the next room.
“ANGUS!”
Noise follows, the kind of noise that comes from furniture being toppled amid men locked in combat. There’s a guttural curse and a grunt of pain.
The kitchen is a better place to discover weapons than the front yard and I wildly rifle through the drawers, hoping to see a great big butcher knife. The most dangerous object I can find is a steak knife and I grip it tightly with the blade facing out as I rush into the living room.
One of the men stands beside the couch and he’s shouting, “Angus, stop!” but he’s not doing anything about the fact that the other man, who must be Angus, has Ben locked in a deadly pose. Angus is behind Ben and he’s holding Ben in place by wedging a thick wooden stick at Ben’s neck. With horror, I see Angus secure his hold on the wooden bar by moving one end to the crook of his elbow in order to apply maximum force while Ben struggles to breathe.
“Say hello to your dad,” taunts Angus and I’m ready. I have the knife in my hand and I’m prepared to plunge it in his back between his shoulder blades. A dim memory haunts me, something I read in a textbook once about the technical difficulty involved in stabbing a human being. I’ll have to get through the man’s overcoat and his clothes and hope that the blade doesn’t bounce off a bone. I’ll only have one chance to inflict a crippling wound before he responds.
I raise the blade at the same instant I spot the half empty wine bottle. Ben must have set it down there, on the seat of a chair, perhaps just as he heard the knock on the door. It only takes a split second for me to drop the knife and seize the bottle instead.
“Was it seriously your plan to destroy the McGill brothers with a five dollar wine bottle?”
A foolish plan then.
Perhaps a foolish plan now.
I raise it high and realize that someone has finally noticed that I am here. The man beside the couch stares at me. There’s a gun in his right hand but he makes no move to raise the barrel. He simply watches. I don’t know why I have the feeling that he secretly approves of what I am about to do.
I swing with every grain of strength that I never knew I had and the bottle finds its intended target. With an explosion of glass the shock of the hit sends a painful jolt all the way up my arm and I fall to my knees.
In my next breath I hear the sweet sound of Ben gasping air into his lungs. He’s on his hands and knees but he’s breathing freely. The fallen man, Angus, has crumpled to the floor and I crawl across broken glass to get to Ben.
“Are you okay?” I wrap my arms around him, rejoicing in the solid feel of his warm body.
Ben breathes deeply and then looks around in a panic. Angus remains on the floor. Glass and wine litters the carpet around us. And the other man is still standing, still staring, still limply holding a gun in his hand.
Ben zeroes in on him and gets to his feet before ushering me behind him, spreading his arms wide and using his own body as a human shield. “Are you planning to become a murderer too, Grey?”
The man, Grey, stares at the prone figure on the floor. The gun in his hand disappears into his pocket. He sighs in defeat. “No, Bennet. I am not.”
Then he sinks down on the couch and drops his head into his hands.
In the distance a noise begins to grow; dozens of horns honking in unison as the people of Devil Valley ring in a new year.
And as the honking fades, another more urgent noise takes its place.
The wail of approaching police sirens.
Camden
Ben is pretty banged up but he refuses