“Right in the head, you bastard,” she said, and she fired a round into the ceiling.
He didn’t flinch.
She sighed and lowered the pistol.
Dead. He was dead.
She had killed a man.
Dreading the coming ordeal with police and reporters, she edged around the outstretched arm and headed for the hall door.
Suddenly, he was not dead any more.
Suddenly, he was very much alive and moving.
He anticipated her. He’d known exactly how she was trying to trick him. He’d seen through the ruse, and he’d had nerves of steel. He hadn’t even flinched!
Now he used the arm under him to push up and forward, striking at Hilary as if he were a snake, and with his left hand he seized her ankle and brought her down, screaming and flailing, and they rolled over, a tangle of arms and legs, then over again, and his teeth were at her throat, and he was snarling like a dog, and she had the crazy fear that he was going to bite her and tear open her jugular vein and suck out all of her blood, but then she got a hand between them, got her palm under his chin and levered his head away from her neck as they rolled one last time, and then they came up against the wall with jarring impact and stopped, dizzy, gasping, and he was like a great beast on her, so rough, so heavy, crushing her, leering down at her, his hideous cold eyes so frighteningly close and deep and empty, his breath foul with onions and stale beer, and he had one hand under her dress, shredding her pantyhose, trying to get his big blunt fingers under her panties and gain a grip on her sex, not a lover’s grip but a fighter’s grip, and the thought of the damage he might do to her softest tissues made her gag with horror, and she knew it was even possible to kill a woman that way, to reach up inside and claw and rip and pull, so she tried frantically to scratch his cobalt eyes and blind him, but he swiftly drew his head back, out of range, and then they both abruptly froze, for they realized simultaneously that she had not dropped the pistol when he had pulled her down onto the floor. It was wedged between them, the muzzle pressed firmly into his crotch–and although her finger was on the trigger guard instead of the trigger itself, she was able to slip it back a notch and put it in the proper place even as she became aware of the situation.
His heavy hand was still on her pubis. An obscene thing. A leathery, demonic, disgusting hand. She could feel the heat of it even through the glove he was wearing. He was no longer clawing at her panties. Trembling. His big hand was trembling.
The bastard’s scared.
His eyes seemed to be fastened to hers by an invisible thread, a strong thread that would not break easily. Neither of them could look away.
“If you make one wrong move,” she said weakly, “I’ll blow your balls off.”
He blinked.
“Understand?” she asked, unable to put any force in her voice. She was wheezing and breathless with exertion and, mostly, with fear.
He licked his lips.
Blinked slowly.
Like a goddamned lizard.
“Do you understand?” she demanded, putting bite into it this time.
“Yeah.”
“You can’t fool me again.”
“Whatever you say.”
His voice was deep and gruff, as before, and it did not waver. There wasn’t anything in his voice or eyes or face to betray his hard-muscled tough guy image. But his gloved hand continued to spasm nervously on the sensitive juncture of her thighs.
“Okay,” she said. “What I want you to do is move very slowly. Very, very slowly. When I give the word, we’re going to roll over very slowly, until you’re on the bottom and I’m on the top.”
Without being the least amused, she was aware that what she had said bore a grotesque resemblance to an eager lover’s suggestion in the middle of the sex act.
“When I tell you to, and not a second before I tell you to. you’ll roll to your right,” she said.