Unfinished Business (29 page)

He was crossing the foyer by now. I
scrambled a couple more steps up the staircase, getting closer to
the top, while I kept talking. “This time we have Kelly’s body. You
left DNA on her, you know. On Kelly and in the bedroom. We have a
witness who saw you outside the house this morning. And Rafe’s
alive to talk about what you did to him.”

I got to the top of the staircase as
Hernandez reached the bottom. “And this time he isn’t a small-time
crook working for Hector Gonzales’s organization. He’s a respected
TBI agent. One who busted open the biggest South American Theft
Gang in the Southeast. He doesn’t have to hide, and he doesn’t have
to maintain his cover. He can stand up in court and tell the judge
and the jury exactly what you did. And then you’ll go away for the
rest of your life.”

Something shifted in his eyes at that. Maybe
it was the realization that he was going back to prison. I can’t
imagine that it wouldn’t have occurred to him already, but maybe
he’d just been too caught up in the moment, in his quest for
revenge, to think everything through that coldly.

At any rate, it registered. Something
flipped over in his brain, and...

You know that saying, ‘he had murder in his
eye?’

That’s what it was like. He was looking up
at me, and the words I said penetrated. I could see his eyes
change, turn feral, and then he started up the stairs, with that
look in his eyes that said that he planned to catch me, and I
wouldn’t like what happened when he did.

I turned on my heel and ran.

I don’t know that I really thought about what I was doing. I think
maybe I was headed for the servants’ staircase, to run back
downstairs.

It wasn’t a conscious plan, though.
Consciously, I wasn’t thinking at all. It was all just a refrain of
words running through my head.
Run! Move! Get away!

I legged it down the hallway toward the back
of the mansion, my only thought to put as much distance between
myself and Eugenio Hernandez as I could. I could hear his feet
pounding up the staircase behind me. Any moment, I expected to hear
him gain the top of the stairs, and then it was anyone’s guess what
would happen. He might continue to chase me—he was the type who got
off on that—or he might shoot me in the back and drop me like a
stone.

I scrambled along the Oriental runner, my
blood rushing in my ears. And I probably would have gone for the
staircase had the door to Mother’s room not been open, and had I
not seen her through the opening.

At the last second, I veered off, just as
Hernandez burst off the staircase. The gunshot whined down the
hallway and buried itself in the old plaster wall with a slap and a
trickle of dust. It might have hit me, had I not launched myself
through the door and into the master bedroom. Hernandez’s feet
pounded down the hallway as I spun around and threw myself at the
door, slamming it in his face. My hands shook as I twisted the
lock. A second later, Hernandez’s body hit the outside of the door
with a smash and a grunt.

I whirled around to take in the room.

Mother was on the bed, and under other
circumstances, it might have struck me that she looked damned good
for her age.

That thought lingered only a second, before
my brain recognized that this was my mother, naked, and how that
was totally squicky. Yes, I’m twenty-eight, but some things never
change. A child never wants to see his or her mother naked.

Or his or her grandmother, or pseudo
step-grandmother, either.

A muffled sob came from my right, and I spun
in that direction as Hernandez hit the door again. It vibrated, but
the lock held.

David was sitting on my mother’s boudoir
chair, bound hand and foot and gagged with what looked like a
Hermès scarf. Tears were trickling down his cheeks and into the
silk, and the expression in his eyes was terrified.

I was terrified, too, and more so as
Hernandez changed his tactics out in the hallway, and instead of
throwing his entire weight at the door, began kicking it.

“Get him,” my mother said. Meaning David, I
guess.

I yanked the Hermès scarf down, and David
immediately sucked in a breath and told me, “No! Get her!”

I hesitated. And in the second it took me to
do so, Hernandez must have gotten sick of hitting his head against
the wall—or his boot against the door—and decided to employ
stronger measures.

There was a bang, and another bang, and
another, and another. David screamed, and I did, too. The door
quivered under the onslaught. Then the lock splintered as Hernandez
kicked it open and strode in.

He must have emptied the gun into the lock,
because he flung it aside. It sailed through the air and hit the
plaster wall with a crack. It might have left a dent, although I
wasn’t paying attention. Time enough to repair the damage later. If
we survived the next few minutes.

But at least the gun really did seem to be
empty, because the impact didn’t cause it to discharge and another
bullet to fly. So that was one thing to be grateful for, in the
midst of the chaos.

Hernandez stopped inside the door and looked
around. He fumbled at his belt, and for a second I thought he was
unbuckling. My heart did a weird sort of shimmy. But then I saw
that he was only—
only!
—changing weapons. The bright
afternoon sunlight pouring through Mother’s sheer curtains glanced
off the steel of the knife he flicked open.

“C’mere, bitch.”

This was me, obviously. I would have known
it even without the gesture, since none of the others were capable
of moving. Mother was stretched out across the bed—and Lord, was
that a sight I would have to burn out of my brain if we survived
this—while David was trussed to the chair. He’d have to bleach his
eyeballs too, poor kid, and was likely to need therapy.

And that possibility was a lot more pleasant
than the alternative, which was that we didn’t get out of this with
our lives.

“No,” I said.

Hernandez blinked. I guess he wasn’t used to
anyone saying no. But really, without the gun, there wasn’t much he
could to me. As long as I stayed at a distance, I was safe.

Or so I thought, until he turned toward the
bed. And Mother.

“Fine.” I moved a step closer. Just far
enough to get his attention away from Mother.

“Gonna gut you like a fish,” he told me.

I nodded, even as my heart started knocking
against my ribs so hard it hurt. “I know. You said that
downstairs.”

“Gonna slice you open and make you
bleed.”

It was a wonder this guy was walking around
free. With that kind of obsession, I was surprised someone hadn’t
had him committed years ago. Like, when he was ripping the wings
off butterflies in grade school.

Or at the very least, someone should have
examined him while he was in prison, and decided he was a menace to
society, one that couldn’t possibly be released on an unsuspecting
public. Then we wouldn’t be in this situation.

Those dead, black eyes dropped to my
stomach. “Gonna cut the bastard right outta there,” he grunted.

I felt myself turn hot, and then cold. And
I’m not sure where the words came from, or how I was able to say
them, but my voice was steady and ice cold even as my nails dug
into my palms hard enough to hurt. “You do that, and you may as
well kill yourself while you’re at it. He won’t let you live after
that. He’ll hunt you down and put a bullet in your brain like the
animal you are. So you better enjoy life while you can, because you
won’t be long for this world.”

There was no point in specifying who ‘he’
was. We all knew.

Hernandez’s eyes came back to mine, dead and
black and crazy.

He lunged.

I stumbled back. My heel got caught in a
loop of Mother’s overly fluffy bedroom rug, and I went down, flat
on my back. I hit the back of my head on the hardwood floor, and
for a second I saw stars. My back slammed against the floor, and
knocked the breath out of me. Worse, it jarred my stomach. I
thought I felt something give, and that isn’t a good thing for
someone who’s four months pregnant and prone to miscarriages.

But I had no time to worry about it.
Hernandez followed me down, his fetid breath in my face. That,
combined with the weight on my diaphragm, almost made me gag.

I didn’t have time for that, either. I had
lives to save. Mine, the baby’s. David’s. Mother’s. Because if he
killed me, the next thing he’d do, would be to kill them.

So I fought like a mad-woman, kicking and
hissing and squirming under him. David helped by yelling and
kicking out at Hernandez with both bound feet. The impact was
likely no more painful than a mosquito bite—not at all, in other
words—but I can imagine it was also distracting. And while Mother
was still stuck on the bed, she was screaming, the kinds of words I
never thought I’d hear from that quarter.

Somehow—and I think it was luck as much as
design—one of my knees managed to connect with Hernandez’s crown
jewels.

I can only assume he wasn’t used to someone
who fought back. I mean, look at Mother. Bound hand and foot: there
was no way she would have been able to defend herself. And he’d
probably done the same thing to Kelly, and Maria, and the blonde we
still hadn’t identified.

But my legs were free, and flailing around.
I kneed Hernandez in the groin. I could feel my kneecap connect
with the squishy parts between his legs—some of them less squishy
than others, and that was totally gross, too. I mean, here I was,
fighting for my life, and he was getting turned on by the idea of
killing me.

Until my knee pushed his balls up into his
intestines, and then for a second, everything hung in the
balance.

He made a weird sound, like he was being
squeezed, and his eyes rolled up. For just a moment, he didn’t
move. And again I wasn’t thinking consciously, but I think I knew
that once this tiny reprieve was over, he was going to be more
angry and more determined to kill me. I had to act
now
.

I grabbed for the knife. He held on. Not
with the same strength as earlier, but I figured it was just a
matter of time—and chances were not very much time—before he was
fully recovered.

I held on, too.

I held on as his color returned and his lips
curled back from his teeth.

I held on as the knife descended toward my
stomach and pierced cloth and skin.

The shock was like a splash of cold water in
my face.

I screamed, more in anger than in pain, even
as I felt the first warm trickle of blood start.

Mother screamed too, and David somehow
managed to launch himself and the boudoir chair forward.

I saw him coming, and tried to get out of
the way, but with Hernandez on top of me, I couldn’t squirm very
far.

David, still with the chair tied to his
rear, slammed into Hernandez.

Hernandez dropped onto me.

We were still fighting over the knife, and
both our hands were on it. But since I could see David coming, and
Hernandez, on top of me, couldn’t, I had warning, and at the last
second, managed to twist the point of the knife away from me.

Things would have gotten ugly if I hadn’t.
It was a sharp knife, and it was aimed directly at my stomach. When
I twisted it, it penetrated Hernandez’s gut instead.

And then David landed on top of him and
pushed him down on the blade.

He stiffened, and jerked.

I was still hanging on to the handle of the
knife, and for a second I almost let go. But then Hernandez’s eyes
met mine, and they were still crazy, and I held on.

He made a feeble attempt to throw David off.
In doing so, he lifted himself halfway off the knife. Blood gushed
out of the wound, warm and wet, and coated my hands. Hernandez
groaned and dropped back down.

“Get off,” I told David. I felt like I said
it calmly, but I think my voice was pretty shrill. Hernandez’s
blood was soaking through my clothes, sticky against my skin, and
he was breathing sort of funny, with this weird rattle in his
throat. The combined weights of him and David—three hundred pounds,
give or take—pressed against my diaphragm and made it hard for me
to breathe. I started to feel claustrophobic and panicky. “Get
off!”

David tried, but with the weight of the
chair keeping him down, it wasn’t easy. My ears started ringing,
like I was about to pass out.

Faintly, I heard noises downstairs. The
slamming of the front door, then footsteps on the stairs.

Someone’s voice called my name.
“Savannah!”

I could hear the fear laced through it even
in my current predicament.

“Rafe,” I whispered.

It was the best I could do. I didn’t have
enough breath to shout.

Hernandez heard me, though. He stirred
feebly, and made another attempt to get rid of the weight on his
back. This time, he managed to shift David far enough that the
boy—and chair—tumbled to the floor. David grunted. More blood
gushed out of the wound in Hernandez’s stomach and onto mine as he
tried to lever himself up. In looking down at myself, I saw that my
stomach—gently rounded under the dress—was colored red.

The footsteps came down the hall. As they
came closer, Hernandez pushed himself to his knees. And somehow—God
only knows—he managed to pull the knife out of his abdomen. As a
result, when Rafe came to a stop in the doorway, Hernandez was on
his knees, leaning over me, the knife in his hand dripping blood
onto my already red stomach.

A roar filled the room. There was a rush of
feet across the floor, and then Hernandez flew, like a rag doll,
across the room. He smacked against the wall, slid down, and stayed
there. Rafe dropped to his knees beside me.

“Savannah.” He fumbled for my hand.

“Get David,” I whispered.