That’s it, sweetheart. Keep him talking. Smart woman.
When he heard John starting to talk about Sarah’s scars and how much he was looking forward to doing a better job at carving her to pieces, Dante almost lost it. The moment the asshole mentioned slicing off Sarah’s nipples, Dante stopped thinking like a cop and reacted like a man.
I’ll kill the fucking bastard.
By the time he dropped quietly to the floor of the bathroom, he was running on purely primal instincts, and he knew the Windy City Carver wasn’t leaving the room alive.
I can’t let him see that I’m afraid. I need to stall for more time.
Sarah was waiting for the right time, and it wasn’t now. He had the gun pointed directly at her head and John wasn’t close enough for her to get a shot at his groin. Since she didn’t have a weapon of any kind, her best bet was to maneuver him close enough, with the weapon pointed away from her vital organs, for her to take her chance at immobilizing him. If she could disable him for even a few moments, she could get out.
Just wait to make your move. He’ll have to change position eventually.
She talked to him steadily to buy herself time, but he was getting tired of talking about himself. He had her on her feet and he’d jerked her tube dress down to her waist. Right at the moment, he was tracing every one of her old scars with the mammoth knife in his right hand, letting her know exactly how he was going to carve her up this time, while the gun remained steadily at her temple in his left hand.
“I’ll take your nipples for a reminder of how much I enjoyed slicing you up,” John told her, now sounding crazed.
Sarah flinched as the knife blade scraped over her nipples. It was sharp, and she was bleeding from a few nicks he had left when he was assessing her old scars with the point of the knife.
“I think I’ll slice your throat just enough to watch you bleed to death while I’m using you,” he decided, lifting the knife to her throat.
Sarah had just decided that she would rather die from a gunshot wound than let him defile her body while she was bleeding to death when a furious blur passed by her face.
“Like hell you will,” a homicidal Dante roared as he flew through the air, putting his body between her and John, grasping the murderer’s wrist that was holding the gun, taking John down with him.
Sarah watched in horror as both men flew through the air and hit the floor. She swore she heard the crack of Dante’s skull as it connected with the hardwood platform for the piano as he fell.
“Get the fuck out of here, Sarah!” Dante said furiously.
She didn’t. She couldn’t. Instead, she froze in place, watching in horror as John escaped Dante’s hold and rose. He ran for the bathroom, minus his gun and blade, which had been knocked to the floor.
Dante was slow to rise, and Sarah reacted on instinct as John staggered toward the bathroom, obviously to escape.
Here’s my chance.
Sarah blocked his path and lifted her knee hard into his balls. John stopped and cursed, his voice a furious, angry snarl. She’d stopped him, but she wasn’t sure for how long.
“Move,” Dante demanded angrily.
Sarah moved instinctively to Dante’s command, stepping sideways and dropping to the floor. She looked at Dante, blood pouring down his face, as he lifted his gun without hesitation and shot the Windy City Carver straight through the heart before he fell backward and collapsed.
The police burst through the door, swarming the room, but Sarah’s mind was on nothing but getting to Dante. Not even sparing a glance for the dead man on the floor, she crawled across the room until she reached her savior, and cradled his bleeding head in her lap.
“Dante,” she cried frantically. “Open your eyes.” She sought and found the laceration on his head, feeling a hematoma also starting to form on his scalp.
“Pull your dress up.” Dante’s voice was weak and muddled.
His eyes were barely open, but Sarah was relieved to see him responding. Of course, Dante’s first concern was her pulling up her dress to cover her breasts. EMTs came up beside her to help. “Do you have some sterile gauze?” she asked the female technician closest to her anxiously, yanking her dress up and over her breasts.
“We can take over from here,” the EMT said in a soothing voice as she handed Sarah some gauze.
“I’m a doctor,” Sarah informed her, gently placing the gauze over Dante’s laceration and putting pressure on the wound. It was bleeding profusely, as most head wounds did, but she didn’t like his sluggishness or the forming hematoma. “Dante?”
“Am I going to die?” he asked incoherently. “If I am, the last thing I want to see is your face. Don’t leave.”
“You’re not dying,” Sarah told him sharply. “And I’m not going anywhere. Stay awake with me.”