The Land Beneath Us (Sunrise at Normandy #3) - Sarah Sundin Page 0,13
was more tired than she realized.
After she shelved the book, she crossed the library to the circulation desk. She swung open the half door in the desk, stepped inside the storage room, and switched off the light.
A hand slapped over her mouth. She cried out, muffled by rough, digging fingers.
Someone yanked her left arm behind her back. Pain exploded in her shoulder, and she tried to scream.
“One sound and you die.”
Her eyes burned with tears. The man stank of musk and onions and beer. The scent of a wolf.
Gene Mayer sang “The Girl I Love to Leave Behind” as he and Clay left the service club, where they’d watched the movie Stage Door Canteen.
“The Army was a good choice for you, G. M. You’re killing that song.”
“Ha. You’re just jealous ’cause I’ve got a girl to leave behind.” In the pale moonlight, Gene grinned. “Saturday I’m asking Betty Jo to marry me.”
Clay strolled beside the long club building toward their barracks in Block 19. “Unless Rudder gives us another night exercise.”
Gene groaned.
Two days earlier, the Rangers had run the assault course until two in the morning with live ammunition firing overhead. Then reveille at 0545.
They passed the library. Lights shone inside, but dimly. Was Leah still there? The library closed at nine thirty, but it was almost ten thirty. And an awful lot of men roamed in the dark.
Clay frowned. “Say, go on without me. I’m going to see if Leah needs an escort to the bus stop.”
“An escort?” Gene mimed dipping a girl low and smooching her.
“An escort only. A lady shouldn’t walk around alone at night.”
“Whatever you say, Pax.” Gene strolled away, singing “Here comes the bride . . .”
Clay rolled his eyes and trotted up the stairs. This would be hard to live down.
The sign on the door read “closed,” but Clay tested the doorknob and it opened. The library was dark except the central reading area—which was empty. “Leah?”
A muffled thump and a shuffling sound came to his right, from behind the circulation desk, inside a darkened room.
Every sense went into high alert. Someone was in there. If it were Leah, she would have said something.
Clay had nothing to use as a weapon. He wiggled loose his necktie, which could be used against him, and he stuffed it in his pocket.
His heart rate rising, Clay padded around the circulation desk, low and swift. Was it a thief? But what was there to steal in a library? Or had a soldier sneaked in with a girl for a tryst? Clay would feel real stupid if it turned out to be a raccoon.
The half door in the desk stood open, and Clay darted through and crouched in the attack position outside the back room.
A tryst, all right. In the dimness, a man knelt buttoning up his pants beside a woman on the floor, more undressed than dressed.
Disbelief and rage billowed up. Two years before it had been Adler and Ellen in a tangled mass of bare limbs and discarded clothing on the garage floor. His girlfriend. His brother.
But this was Leah! A gag slashed white across her face, and her eyes met his—frantic and terrified. And there was blood.
Clay’s rage snapped to the man, a soldier in khakis. A knit cap with two holes cut in it concealed his face.
No time to analyze. Clay leapt over Leah and tackled her assailant.
They grappled, and the attacker flipped Clay onto his back. The man reached for something on the ground, and light flashed on steel.
A knife! Clay parried the thrust, then jabbed straight fingers into the man’s windpipe, the same move Lyons had used so effectively on him.
The assailant coughed and jerked back. Enough for Clay to kick free.
Silhouetted against the light from the doorway, the man sat on his knees, knife in hand.
Clay scrabbled up and chose his next move.
The attacker’s cheeks jutted out as if he were smiling. Then he swung around and plunged the knife into Leah’s chest.
“No! Leah!”
The man dashed away with his knife. If Clay chased him, he couldn’t help Leah.
Clay scrambled to her. “Leah! Leah!”
She was conscious, her eyes squeezed shut in pain.
He ripped off the gag and assessed the knife wound. “Leah, talk to me.”
“He—he—” She swept her hand down over her clothing, trying to cover herself.
Clay only looked at the wound, at the blood spilling out. Right upper chest below the clavicle. Arteries and veins ran through the region. “Leah, we’re going to stop the bleeding and get you to the hospital,