Page 35 of Rooke
He rocks back, holding the knife in his hand out toward me, his eyes growing wide. “What do you mean,wakes up?”
I point at Amanda. “I mean, she’s sleeping right now but if we stay here for much longer, she’s going to wake up, and she’ll be really upset, won’t she? Don’t you think she’ll be really upset?”
A mad look glimmers in the guy’s eyes. “You mean she only pretended to die?”
This is a dangerous game to play, but I need to test out my theory. If this guy is unhinged, perhaps there’s a way to trick him into letting me go. I stare at Amanda’s lifeless body and sorrow wells up inside me. She was a lovely person. She didn’t deserve this. “Yes. I think she only pretended,” I say firmly. “I think she’ll be coming back soon.”
This seems to startle him. He takes a tentative step towards Amanda’s body and then appears to think better of it. He swallows so hard I can see his Adam’s apple bob beneath the thick wool of his mask. “I knew it,” he whispers. “I fuckingknewit.” Whirling around, I think he’s going to grab hold of my arm again but instead he fists a handful of my hair, snarling. “You want her to wake up,” he snaps. “You want to work with her to kill me, I fucking know you do. Well I don’t die, either, Doc. I’ll come back to life, too. I’ll haunt you for all eternity if I don’t get out of here soon. I’m beginning to lose patience.”
“All right, all right, let’s go. I don’t want her to wake up, I promise.” I move as quickly as I can across the lobby of the museum, favoring my good side as I head toward the service entrance that leads to the loading dock. The noise from outside grows louder and more frantic as we move away from the entrance, a bubbling, riotous sound, and I almost scream for help. There’s nothing any of them can do for me, though. With his knife so expertly held in his hand, I know this guy will stab me to death before I can even get a word out.
Amazingly, the loading dock is deserted. It makes no sense. I thought there would be people out here for sure, but there’s no one. A stack of empty flattened cardboard boxes leans against a trash compactor. The wrapper from some McDonalds delicacy swirls around on an eddy of wind, trapped in the narrow, dirty courtyard. I look up, hoping to see a face in a window or the dark suggestion of a sniper on one of the surrounding building’s roofs, however we are alone. No one hiding in the shadows. No one watching on from above. Just me and the guy in the ski mask. Fuck.
He pushes me out of the doorway and onto the stained concrete of the loading dock. I hear something—metal scrapping on metal—and I freeze. I’m too scared to turn around. “Go stand by the compactor over there,” the guy tells me. I walk forward, holding my breath. The guy in the ski mask spins me around, grabbing hold of my wrist. He’s holding onto something—a scuffed, rusting pair of handcuffs. They look like they’ve been used before. He snaps one side of the cuffs around the blue steel handle that is welded to the side of the trash compactor, then gives me a pointed look.
“You call for help, you die. Understand?”
I nod.
He jerks me closer to the compactor, about to circle the other cuff around my wrist, when a shrill, obnoxious ringing splits the silence. My phone. The cell phone I still have tucked into the waistband of my skirt, concealed beneath my shirt. I can feel it vibrating cheerfully against the skin of my back, letting me know I have an incoming call. The guy in the ski mask looks stunned.
“What thefuck?” He runs his hands over my body, searching for the phone. When he finds it, he looks like he’s just been shot in the gut. “What’s this?” he whispers. Holding up the phone in front of me, I can see Ali’s name on the screen, clear as day. The guy in the ski mask shakes his head slowly, his eyes unblinking. “You sneaky fucking bitch. You’ve had this on you the whole time? You’ve had this on you the whole fucking time?”
He punches me. I see his fist coming, but I’m paralyzed by fear and I do nothing to avoid the blow. He strikes me, and it feels like fireworks going off inside my head. For a moment I can’t see anything. A pure white light fills my vision, followed by a dizzying blackness that threatens to swallow me up. I stagger backwards, my legs going out from underneath me. I can do nothing to break my fall. I hit the ground hard, tailbone first, the back of my head connecting with something on the way down. I can’t even comprehend the pain. It leaves me winded and confused.
“I thought we were friends,” the guy says softly. “I thought you knew better than to keep secrets from me, Doc.” He’s on top of me, then. I can’t see him for a second, and panic spreads like poison through my veins. If I can’t see him, how can I protect myself? The cold, hard terror of the knife presses up against my neck. “The security guard struggled. Are you going to struggle?”
Stale coffee and cigarettes: his breath is rancid. The stink fills my head, and I try to turn away from it. He has hold of me, though. He won’t let go. My sight returns to me in frightening bursts of light, until I can finally see him clearly again. I almost wish I couldn’t.
He presses down on the knife, and the sharpened steel breaks my skin. It’s as if I’ve needed the shock this brings to wake me from some kind of stupor. I scream. I scream so hard and so loud that it feels like the cry is being forcefully ripped from my throat, barbed wire tearing up my windpipe. The guy on top of me hisses. He hits me again.
I have to get up. I have to get away.
Now.
If I don’t…
If I don’t…
If I don’t…
I scramble, reaching for something, anything to defend myself with. To my left, the cardboard boxes are rocking wildly. The guy’s foot is hitting them as he wrestles with me and the movement is on the verge of knocking them over. I lay my hands flat against his chest, and I push. He hardly moves. Laughing, he takes his knife and he slices slowly over my shoulder, his teeth only an inch away from my face. I register the pain, can tell he’s damaging my body, but I can’t really feel it. Not the way I should. My heart is surging behind my ribcage. Quickly, without even thinking, I bring my right knee up, slamming it into his body. I miss his balls, but the surprise of the movement knocks him sideways. The cardboard boxes come crashing down onto his back, scattering everywhere, and I seize the opportunity. I push him again, this time with enough force that I manage to roll him off of me. The guy doesn’t fight me. He’s hysterical, hacking and coughing in between his manic bouts of laughter.
I jump to my feet, and he mirrors me, getting up onto his knees first, then standing slowly, his pale blue eyes fixed on me. “What now?” he asks, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “How fast can you run with bare feet? How fast do you thinkIcan run?”
My feetarebare. My stockings are ripped and torn, barely still on my body. Looking down, I see that I’m covered in blood and I have no idea where it’s coming from. The guy steps forward, making the small gap between us even smaller. “Are you a Sagittarius?” he asks. “My mother was a Sagittarius. She was just like you. Arrogant. Ungrateful. She didn’t see it coming, either.”
I back up, knowing the move to be a mistake. I’m literally putting myself in a corner. There’s no escape route behind me. No way out. The trash compactor is to my left, and there’s no way to make a dash for it to my right without him catching me. I’m out of options. I don’t know what to do.
He creeps forward toward me.
I take another step back. Wildly, I look around, searching for anything that might help me. Anything at all. Then...I see it: a long wooden pole, laying on the ground. There’s a large metal hook on the end of the pole—I’ve seen the janitorial staff using it to pack down the garbage in the compactor when it’s getting full. It’s meant to be used to open the windows inside the museum, the ones too high to be reached by hand, or even using a ladder.
Can I reach it? Am I brave enough to even try?
It’s not really a matter of bravery anymore, though. I have this one option available to me, and I have to take it otherwise I am going to die. It’s as simple as that. I move quickly. I lunge, dropping to the ground, and I snatch at the pole, trying to clasp hold of it. I’m an inch short. The guy in the ski mask is moving, too. He rushes forward, presumably seeing what I’m reaching for, and he tries to get there first.
I have witnessed this moment before in countless movies. The moment where the hero and the villain are both grasping for the gun that has been kicked just out of reach. The whole situation would feel ridiculous if it weren’t for the fact that I know this is it for me. When I was laid out on the floor upstairs, contemplating my death, for that very brief second I wasn’t scared. I am now, though. I am really, very afraid.
