The first man’s back is to me; he is kneeling in front of a prone figure. His partner hovers over his shoulder, watching. He is the one I take down first, thrusting the knife into his neck until its tip comes out the other side. He lets out a gurgle as his hands grab the point of the blade. The blood spurts like an unclogged spigot, steaming in the cold.
I yank the blade out when he begins to fall. I need to close the gap between me and the second man before I lose the element of surprise. The second man is too fixated on the woman to notice his partner is gone.
“Shut her racket before someone hears,” he says.
The woman moans as he attempts to take her jewelry. He hits her.
“Maybe you’re right, Jacques. Maybe we’ll take her shit and kill her.” He grunts as he struggles with her, unaware his friend Jacques is a corpse.
The woman struggles desperately. He slaps her again, harder. I can tell because I hear her head smack the ground. It reminds me of the woman in Monsieur’s basement. I move to grab the man’s neck—I seem to like necks—but he catches my movement in his peripheral vision. He twists, yelping a curse, and knocks me back. I fall, tripping over his dead friend.
“Jacques!” He sees his friend beneath me and lunges. With a dead man at my back and his partner’s weight on top of me, I am pinned. The man’s grasp on me is weak, slick with water and grime. He punches me on the side of my head.
Mon dieu! Stars flash in my vision.
I have come too far to die at the hands of this thief, to be a victim of yet another man. Again, my will to survive ignites me, taking me to the primal place, as it did a week ago.
We grapple, and I lose the knife. He launches curses and squeezes, trying to get a firm hold around my neck. I try to hold him off with one hand, my knees digging into his belly. My other hand roots around the oily ground for the dropped knife. The only things saving me are my legs, but I do not have enough leverage to push him off. I can only keep him at bay. Until my fingers touch something hard beneath me. I yank on it, desperate for something to save me. My hand closes around the handle, and I realize it is a gun. I have never held one. I do not know if it will work. There is no time to think. So as the man pushes his weight on me, I lift the gun, trying to get a better angle and my finger on the trigger. I point away from me. I pull.
A flash in the dark. An explosion in my ear that briefly robs me of my hearing.
The man topples over on top of me, dead.
I lie there, sandwiched between him and his equally dead friend, sucking in mouthfuls of burning air.
“Est ce que ?a va?” the woman croaks. I can hear her moving. “Merci de m’avoir sauvé. Es-tu blessée?”
She repeats in English, “Are you okay? Thank you for saving me. Are you hurt?”
Instinct tells me to run, and I need to do so because if I remain here any longer, the woman will call the authorities, because now there are two dead men, and she must. My nest is no longer safe for me. The police will have too many questions I do not want to answer.
I will never be taken by them—or anyone again. I shift beneath the weight of the man, wiggling free from within the cocoon of the dead.
41
AFTER
Through Nena’s earbuds, Witt said, “Hold for the intel you requested.”
Seconds later she watched a file download itself to her computer, then unzip and open. She tapped the mousepad, watching as the contents began popping up on her screen, images of the men as they had been long ago. Images of who Attah Walrus and Kwabena were now, both older, though Kwabena was still younger and much better looking.
“This info was buried so deep it was damn near impossible to find. That’s why it took me a bit of time,” Witt said apologetically.
If a week was a long time to gather intel, then Nena guessed he’d taken forever, but in the span of one night, she’d forgotten all about Bena. All she could think about was how Paul had slithered back into her life and threatened everyone and everything important to her.
She couldn’t leave Elin’s fast enough, pretending to feel unwell. Her mum had insisted on checking her temperature as if she were a child, all under the hawkish gaze of Lucien—Paul. She’d spent the rest of the night alternating between vomiting in her toilet and curling up in a ball on the floor of her bathroom. She’d awoken to the sound of an incoming call on her computer.
Witt hadn’t let her appearance faze him. He regarded her with troubled eyes but continued with their business. The information flashing across Nena’s screen woke her up, gave her something else to think about for the moment, something other than the stark terror she felt whenever she thought about Paul. She’d thought she was strong. She was a stone-cold killer. And yet, knowing he had been inches from her not twelve hours ago regressed her to fourteen all over again.