little bitch.”
Kyle laughed fleetingly before the pain in his collarbone made him stop.
“Now I see the family resemblance. Despite your nasty words, I want you to know that I’m not a monster. Okay, I am. But I’m not a complete monster. That’s why I’m going to make this quick for you. No knife to the chest, just a shot to the back of the head. You won’t see it coming. That’s my gift to you.”
Jessie had now managed her complicated maneuver. Her cuffed hands rested in her lap as she tried to decide how best to make her next move. She saw Hannah glance at her for a split second before turning her full attention to Kyle.
“I don’t need your gift,” the girl shouted at him in what was an obvious attempt to keep his focus only on her. “You’re just a coward who can’t look a teenage girl in the eyes while you murder her. I’m amazed you lasted two years in prison. I can just imagine the favors you had to do to survive.”
Jessie was on her feet right around the time Kyle responded.
“Last chance to turn around,” he growled at her sister.
Jessie was almost to him when he heard her footsteps. He spun around, aiming the gun in her direction just as she swung her arms over his neck. She heard the gun go off but didn’t feel any new source of pain, unaware that Hannah had flung her arm out, knocking Kyle’s elbow and making his shot fire errantly into a wall.
Jessie used her momentum to slam into Kyle. They toppled over, with her on top of him, and landed hard. As they hit the floor, she propelled her forearms into his chest, hoping to make solid contact with his clearly damaged clavicle.
The collision made them both bounce. Kyle hollered, indicating that she’d been successful in targeting his collarbone. She disregarded her own pounding shoulder as she clambered to her knees to get a better angle to twist the handcuffs around Kyle’s neck.
She saw him lift the gun, still in his left hand, in the direction of her head. But before he got it all the way up, two hands, Hannah’s, clasped his wrists. For several long seconds, the two of them engaged in a terrifying arm wrestling competition, as the teenage girl used her entire body weight to try to push Kyle’s arm down while he attempted to lift it, his vein-choked arm muscles bulging at the effort. Jessie flashed back to earlier that same evening, when another brave young woman desperately used all her strength to prevent a much larger man from hurting her.
Finally, he changed tactics, dropping his arm as he flailed about. As he did, the gun popped out of his sweaty hand and disappeared under the couch. He managed to roll over onto his front and knock Hannah away with one broad shoulder, sending her flying into the couch.
Jessie was now on top of him, squeezing the metal cuffs into his windpipe as she stared at the back of his head. She was just feeling him start to weaken when he threw his entire body up and backward, slamming down on top of her, leaving both of them splayed out on their backs, looking up at the ceiling.
Jessie felt his weight digging into her, trying to squash her into the floor. From her vantage point, she could see Ryan to her right, the knife protruding from his unmoving chest. To the left was Hannah, crumpled in a heap by the couch, dazed but frantically, valiantly trying to get her bearings. Jessie had a momentary flash of Garland Moses, struggling much as she was now, desperately try to escape the merciless crush of a man she’d once somehow loved.
The thought of it all produced an uncontainable fireball of fury in her gut. Setting aside all the pain in her shoulder and her back and her heart, she yanked down on the handcuffs, squeezing the metal chain in the flesh of his neck, picturing it cutting through to the bone of his windpipe below.
She felt him trying to push off the floor with his hands and ripped him back down, using every ounce of strength she had, imagining actually smashing her elbows through the wood of the floorboards.
She heard him gagging, felt his resolve weakening. But just when she thought he’d begun to give up, he flung himself upward again. Her grip loosened and she knew that he was about to break free.
But