The Jake Helman Files Personal Demons (32 page)

Jake heard the sound of metal scraping wood, then saw Gorman swinging a paring knife with a four-inch blade at him in a decisive arc. He felt himself being jerked forward, and his eyes darted to the knife, buried to its hilt in the flap of his coat, over his heart. Opening the flap, he saw the knife’s blade pressed flat against his sweater; it had missed his flesh by a fraction of an inch.

Marc jerked the knife straight up out of Helman’s coat and plunged it down again. Face turning white, Helman raised his left hand in a defensive gesture.

Jake screamed as the short blade pierced his palm, then bit his lower lip as the metal emerged through the back of his hand. Pain blasted through his entire arm, and blood filled his latex glove.

Marc put both hands on the paring knife’s handle and drove the blade into the wall like a nail, pinning Helman.

Blinding agony traveled Jake’s body. He gritted his teeth, wide-eyed, as blood from his palm trickled around the blade and through the slashed glove. He thrashed from side to side, like a hooked fish, each movement increasing his pain. Gorman scooped up the oxygen mask with one hand and drew another knife from the butcher’s block with the other: a carving knife with a long blade. With tears streaming down his face, Jake clutched the paring knife’s handle and tried to pull the blade out of his hand. His pain doubled.

Sneering, Marc advanced on Helman. Too many emotions flowed through his mind: sadness, anger, betrayal.

Revenge
.

He intended to watch Helman’s life slip away as he had the others.

Jake pulled the knife free with a desperate cry, and blood spurted out of the hole in his hand. He swung the knife in a broad arc, forcing Gorman to step back.

Knife fight
, he thought, glancing at his gun in the sink.

Marc swung the carving knife at Helman, its blade whistling through the air. It missed his quarry’s face by inches. Rotating his wrist, he swung again, missing once more. To his surprise, Helman dropped the bloody carving knife on the floor.

Jake knew that he could not stab Gorman with a knife coated with his own blood because DNA tests would prove that he had been present at Gorman’s death. Dropping the knife to the floor, he stepped so close to Gorman that the killer had no space in which to attack. Ignoring his pain—no,
feeding
on it—he closed his left hand around Gorman’s right wrist and raised Gorman’s arm at a forty-five-degree angle. Then he drove the flat of his right hand straight at Gorman’s elbow, shattering it.

Dropping the carving knife, Marc screamed. He felt his legs being swept out from under him and he crashed to the floor with Helman on top of him, their faces only inches apart. He struggled to roll free of Helman’s weight, but the pain in his broken arm proved too great. Then he saw Helman reach into the ruptured briefcase lying on the floor.

Jake drew Gorman’s knife from the briefcase—

Not my sacrificial dagger!