Keeper of the Moon - By Harley Jane Kozak Page 0,95
glanced back. If she could make a call, keeping it in her pocket, even 9-1-1... But it was a touch screen. She couldn’t just hit buttons, she had to see the screen. Stupid smartphone.
“Watch your step here,” he said, as the path dipped just before the entrance to what looked like a construction shed, some kind of one-room prefab structure.
Don’t go inside, she thought.
“Come on,” he said, reaching out to take her hand, but she put it behind her back, unable to control her reflexes.
“No, I— It’s giving me the creeps,” she said. With her arms pinned to her sides like this, she could feel the sheath holding Alessande’s knife. “I—”
“Come on,” he repeated. “If any of this stuff belongs to Wainwright, we have our proof.”
“Let’s call the police,” she said, which was a stupid thing to suggest because it was the last thing he would agree to. And she wanted him to stay agreeable.
“No. We have to deliver this guy to the Elven Circle, right?”
“Yes. True.” She needed to get the knife out. She slipped her hand inside her jacket. “Okay, after you,” she said.
He reached to open the door, a rickety affair, but he didn’t take his eyes off her. Shit. This would get physical the moment he realized she was on to him. Her fight training was in stage combat for the most part, where the point was to avoid hurting your fellow actor.
For the most part, but not entirely.
“Come on,” he said, and reached over, putting a hand on her waist. It was so intimate a gesture, and so repellent to her, that she had to force herself not to jerk away. How had she found him even mildly attractive? How had four dead women?
He was propelling her into the shed.
Once inside, she stepped away from him. She freed the knife from its sheath, keeping it inside her jacket.
A small window provided light, enough for her to make out a mattress on the floor. The mattress was bare, its patterned fabric marred by dark stains. The floor around it was also stained, and even the wall behind it. She could discern handprints. She gripped the knife, keeping it close against her rib cage, and stared, unable to look away.
The dark stains were blood, and there was so much of it she could hardly comprehend it.
Play your part, she told herself. Stay in character. “What—” She cleared her throat. “What kind of evidence should we be looking for?”
“Well, there’s this,” he said.
She turned to see him pull a vial from his jacket pocket. It was ancient, ornate, scarlet-colored. She stared, paralyzed, but also fascinated by the small glass bottle responsible for so much blood and death.
Reggie stepped forward and grabbed her.
He spun her around, and the knife fell from her jacket and skittered across the floor toward the mattress. Reggie was substantially bigger than she was and strong; he maneuvered her until he was behind her and holding both her arms behind her back. She felt him moving, and she knew he was trying to get a rope around her wrists.
Fat chance.
She lifted her knee and stomped down hard on his running shoe with enough force that Reggie let go of one of her hands. She turned toward him. He was bent over in pain, and she drove her elbow downward, onto his back. He grunted at the blow, then stood up fast, some part of him catching her on the chin.
She wasn’t sure what happened next because the shadows were swirling around her, and then she was falling. Reggie came down, too, going for her hands again, but she squirmed like mad, knowing what he was trying to do, and got them in front of her, holding them against her stomach. He wrestled her onto her back and then sat on her, his weight crushing her, but she kept squirming, moving her arms back and forth to stop him from tying her up. Then he backhanded her across the face, hard, and while she was waiting for the lights in her head to stop flashing he got the rope around her wrists and knotted it.
When he was done, he stood, towering over her. Breathing hard.
“Try teleporting now,” he said, smiling.
A moot point. Under this much stress she couldn’t teleport three feet. What concerned her more was that bound like this, she couldn’t even run, not effectively. “You overestimate my abilities,” she gasped out.
“Really? Your father used to say you were half Elven.”