Stone Cross (Arliss Cutter #2) - Marc Cameron Page 0,123

down to meet her knee. Downward momentum arrested, his teeth cracked together like a pistol shot. His head snapped up and his feet flew out from under him, depositing him flat on his back in a snowdrift. His skull missed the edge of a concrete walk by mere inches. Pity, Lola thought, her aggression still pumping from the heat of battle.

“Deputy!” Markham shouted, obviously sensing that she was about to do something she couldn’t take back.

Lola shook her head, then stooped to grab Sascha by the wrist, staying out of his reach just in case he wasn’t as hurt as he made out to be. She extended his arm and gave his hand a hard twist toward the pinkie finger, forcing him to turn over onto his belly.

Once she had control, she stepped over Green’s outstretched arm, retaining control while she walked around his body to place her knee firmly in the small of his back.

“Give me your other hand.” She increased the pressure on his wrist until he complied and she could ratchet on the handcuffs. She coughed, spitting more blood in the snow. It had been a while since she’d taken a hit like that. It didn’t exactly make her smile—but it was exhilarating nonetheless. “Sascha Green,” she said. “You are under arrest for urinating in a national park within three hundred feet of an authorized outhouse.”

He turned his head, face covered in snow, and looked up at her as if she were crazy.

Behind her, Markham laughed out loud.

Green thrashed his legs, but she lifted up on his arms, putting pressure on his shoulders until he stopped. “Knock it off!”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m not finished.” Knee still against his back, Lola pulled the windblown hair out of her face with her free hand and continued. “You are also being charged with violation of a domestic violence court order, assault on a federal judge, assaulting a federal law enforcement officer—and for calling me a gash.”

Now Jolene laughed, which Green appeared to take harder than the knee to his face. He was near tears when he lifted his head out of the snow again.

“That’s not a crime.”

Judge Markham stood over the prisoner, ignoring his own bloody nose.

“It is today,” he said.

CHAPTER 44

Sarah began to think of her plan as her only possible hope— and even that was thin. She had enough sense not to focus on the little details. That would only slow her down.

She stayed put at the foot of the bed. Rick’s fist had put her there, so neither of the men appeared to give a second thought to the fact that she was near the axe. David had become more animated since they’d lightened up on his beatings, and spent a lot of time dazed and blinking as he looked around the room trying to get his bearings. Sarah wondered if he remembered why he was here. He recognized her, and kept apologizing through the bloody mask of tears and saliva and snot that covered his face.

Morgan Kilgore looked at her differently now, hungrily, like there was no point in pretending anymore. That’s what people like him did. They drew you in close with a bit of warm soup and soft crackers, and then, when it suited their purposes, they tore you apart.

Sarah spent a good deal of time testing the grip in her hands. The cords they’d used to tie her had damaged some nerves. She was sure of that. Just days before she’d been capable of splitting a pile of spruce logs as high as her waist before lunchtime. Her back and shoulders and forearms knew and understood hard work. There was no way to know how much they’d forgotten until she tried to pick up something heavy—like the axe. Until then, she bunched the corner of her stinking blanket into a tight ball, squeezing and releasing, testing her grip as best she could. It was painful at first, even making the roots of her teeth throb, but she pushed through it. She was likely to have more than a few broken teeth on the other side of this.

Her poor grip was only the first of many problems. The axe was like a single-shot rifle. Even if she killed one of them, she’d need time to reload and swing at the other—who would be stunned by the attack, but probably not enough to stay in one place long enough for her to hit him too. She’d gotten her axe stuck in a