shooting could change their position. I was also working my jellylike arm into the pocket of my sweatpants and praying to all things holy that my butterfly knife hadn't fallen out.
My fingers touched metal, and I grinned.
That caught his attention, though. "What are you smiling at?" he demanded, and I knew it'd be a matter of seconds before he found my weapon.
Now or never.
"This," I replied, whipping the blade out of my pocket and slamming it into his side.
He cried out, falling backward, and I didn't waste my opportunity. I left my knife in his flesh and fucking ran.
My bare feet pounded the damp grass as I raced towards Steinwick and Anna's cottage, but I only made it halfway there before my attacker tackled me to the grass.
I went down hard, but rolled immediately and kicked out furiously, fighting him off as he tried to get his hands around my throat. All my bruises and injuries from just three nights ago were screaming, my entire body a mass of pain, but it was incredible what could be achieved when there was nothing to lose.
My stalker cursed at me, something about not fighting him, but I was lost to an almost total panic state. Fight or flight had well and truly set in, and seeing as I couldn't flee, I was damn well going to fight with everything I had.
My legs bunched under me, and I kicked out, trying to push him away, but he was heavier than I expected. Not to mention my legs were still so weak with the lingering gas in my system. Seeing it wasn't working, I swung a fist, trying to break his mask or knock it loose, but he caught my wrist in a crushing grip. It was my sprained one, and I let out a scream of pain.
"Stop fighting me!" he roared, his grip tightening even more. Tears stream from my eyes at the crushing pain. His face was so close to mine that I could see his eyes through the mask, and there was something eerily familiar about them. They were an unusual violet-blue... just like mine. Just like my mom’s.
Panicked and desperate to free myself, I just struggled harder. This time I swung my other fist, aiming for the spot where I'd stabbed him. He cried out, and something snapped. White hot pain lanced through my arm, and my vision blacked for a second. He'd broken my wrist.
He reared back, releasing my wrist to reach for my knife, where it was still buried in his side. That was my opportunity. I pulled my knees up to my chest and kicked like a donkey. My heel caught him in the chin, snapping his head back. His gasmask skittered away across the grass, and I gasped in shock.
"Dave?" I exclaimed in disbelief. But... that didn't make sense. The eyes didn't match. I would have noticed something like that, as many times as I'd spoken to the man in the past months. He had brown eyes, I was sure of it.
Unless, of course, he wore color contacts.
Fuck.
My shock held me frozen, but it no longer mattered. A split second later a bullet ripped through our two-faced security guard’s chest splattering hot blood all over me.
"Babe!" Kody shouted from somewhere nearby, racing out from the shelter of some trees to scoop me up in his arms.
Dave seemed almost frozen in place, still upright on his knees with a look of abject horror on his face. A second shot tore through his shoulder, jerking his body, and a moment later, Steinwick appeared from freaking nowhere and slammed his fist across Dave's face.
"Steinwick?" I exclaimed, even as Kody tried to carry me away to safety. "No, Kody, put me down. It was Dave. It was him all along. Stop!" My order echoed through the suddenly quiet night air, and Kody froze in his tracks.
"Babe, you need—"
"No!" I cut him off, "I need answers. Put me the fuck down!"
He only needed to look into my determined gaze for a second before doing what I asked. He trusted me not to be an idiot, and I really didn't want to disappoint him. Besides, it was my wrist that was broken, not my ankle. I could walk just fine.
Okay, so it was more of a stagger as I made my way back to Dave and found Steinwick standing over him with a gun. Fucking Steinwick.
"Nice punch," I murmured to him as I dropped to my knees in the grass. Dave wasn't