Page 65 of Breathe
The large man was grinning again. “See,” he said, “you gotta not play so hard to get; then you won’t get hurt.” She screamed again and tried to roll away, but he easily stopped her by hitting her again, and straddled her.
She was so terrified, her breath wasn’t doing enough to keep her conscious. But just as the fat man was finding his way up her leg, not looking at her face, she got a surge of angry energy. Not again, she thought, brought up her hand, and slashed at his face with the key.
The key dragged slightly as it tore his cheek. Then he was yelling, falling half on top of her, blood spraying onto her clothes and bare stomach. As she frantically pushed him off her, she saw the other man trying to reach her, and her whimpers of fear became grunts of desperate exertion. She left one shoe behind under the large man and ran back toward her car, jumping over the crash barrier that surrounded the lot.
Her keys were still clutched in her hand; blood was running down her arm and leg, and from her mouth. When she shoved the key in the lock, leaving blood on the metal, she also hit the panic button and the siren went off, threatening to pierce her eardrums. But she just got in the car, trapping her coat in the door, and used both hands to control her shaking fingers long enough to get the key in the ignition. She reversed with a shriek of the brakes, hitting the car behind her, then spun the wheel and nicked the corner of a minivan as she flew out of the lot, splintering the entrance gate, her siren still wailing.
She stopped what traffic there was at that time of night for blocks and pulled up haphazardly to Kane’s building, bumping up over the curb and narrowly missing a fire hydrant. As she staggered out of the car, the concierge came out and blocked her way. “M—Ma’am,” he stammered, “you can’t leave your car—” Then he saw her face in the light from the door, the blood trickling down the side of her mouth, and froze.
“Could you please...” she croaked out. “Call Kane Fielding?”
The concierge made the connection. He stood there for a second with his mouth working like a marionette. Then he led the way to the revolving doors and hesitated before he let her go in front of him. As soon as she’d made it inside, she leaned against the windows that flanked the door, listening to the siren that wouldn’t quit on her car.
“Mr. Fielding?” she heard him say into the phone. “There’s... I mean it’s... I mean I think Miss Hunter is here.” He eyed Ellen. She had begun to shake uncontrollably, now that she had reached the relative safety of one door between her and the outside. “Well she... she don’t look too good, sir. I don’t think I can ask her to go up.” He hung up the phone, as Kane had obviously done on him, and stood there eyeing Ellen uncertainly, while her heart roared in her ears, and her head left a bloody smear on the window.
She heard the elevator moving: the clicks as it went down the floors. I just have to stay standing for twenty more clicks... ten more clicks... five more...
Kane came out of the elevator at a run but stopped dead when he saw her. “Holy shit Christ,” he growled. “Ellen.”
She slid down the wall as he ran to her, until she was sitting on the floor, her knees up by her chin, shaking so hard her hair, which had been in a French braid, fell around her face. He crouched by her and picked her up, and with the movement the blood left her head altogether.
