Kit wiped away her own tears and looked hard at Charlie. There wasn’t much time.
“Don’t listen to him,” she said. “You’re my baby,” and as her mouth formed the word the vibrations unlocked tremendous strength and vulnerability, at once mother and child, shepherd and lamb. “Always. But you belong to no one.”
Manny seemed incensed by Kit’s words, perhaps by their tenderness, or the love that would never belong to him. He rushed at Kit and clamped his hands around her throat. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
In that instant, Charlie hoisted up the shotgun, its strap unhooked and dangling, and pointed it at Manny’s head. She trembled, but her grip was strong. Her eyes were narrow and dark beneath her brow.
“See?” he said, aiming those vivid blue eyes back at her like pistols. “See that sleight of hand? That’s my girl,” he said. He let go of Kit’s neck and she coughed and breathed deeply. He pinned Kit’s hands behind her, twisting them up toward her shoulder blades. She struggled against him.
“Let her go, or I’ll shoot,” Charlie said.
“She’ll do it, too,” Kit said. “Don’t put that on her conscience, Manny. If you love her let me go.”
“You wouldn’t shoot your dear old daddy, though, would you?” Manny smiled a smile that had fed and clothed them, stolen countless hearts, gotten them out of trouble as soon as they had gotten in it. That smile, long and friendly, with a little mischief in the curl of his upper lip, had always worked. But it wouldn’t work today.
Charlie stared at him, panting, and checked the safety with her thumb.
“I don’t have a daddy,” Charlie said and clenched her eyes shut. Then she pulled the trigger.
Silence.
She hadn’t pulled hard enough to release the round.
Manny laughed and took a step toward her. She panicked and tried squeezing harder but lost her aim, stumbled backward, and fired a shot through the popcorn ceiling. She slid the gun to Kit just as Manny grabbed her.
“You let her go!” Kit yelled and staggered forward on her left leg, the other dragging behind her. A gush of blood from her hip kept time with her heart.
Manny held Charlie up under her arms, her long legs dangling like a marionette’s.
Kit pointed her gun at Manny, but there was no shot without hitting Charlie. She would have to maim him. There should be three shells in there, but she might only get one chance to take him down. She aimed low and pulled off a round that peppered the meat of his calf with buckshot. Manny roared and dropped Charlie. With her target clear, Kit reloaded and fired a second round straight at his gut. There was no complexity to the moment, only action, swift and clean. Manny curled around the wound.
“Run!” Kit screamed and aimed again at Manny. Charlie clambered to her feet and sprang for the door. Manny got to his knees and lunged at Kit. She aimed at his face, his ugliness laid bare as if his skin had peeled away from muscle and bone, and said a quiet goodbye.
But before she could take the shot, he fell on her with his full weight, her head cracking on the floor, seeing white, stunned still. Her gun pinwheeled across the floor and out of reach. Before her vision cleared, he had his knees on her wrists down by her waist. She had never seen him like this, unhinged, wild, desperate, and needy.
There was nothing she could do to overpower him, so she closed her eyes and let the calm roll in. Her heartbeat slowed. The sting of adrenaline subsided, and her muscle tone softened. She found Manny’s eyes, blue as death, half-hidden under his brow. As she went supple, he leaned down, as if to kiss her, weight shifting slightly off her right wrist, and for a moment loosened his hold.
She quickly freed her hand and shoved her thumb in the wound in his abdomen, his flesh all hot, wet, and soft. He twisted away from the jab and she rolled over and scrambled toward the door. Manny staggered toward her, crying. She had to glance away from him to see what she was looking for. The machete, its fresh edge glinting even in the dim light. Before she could grab it, Manny had her by the neck again, his huge hands pinching off her air. Had he seen it? He pressed his face, wet and rough, against hers and tried again to kiss her, his tongue groping, his teeth clashing against hers. He sucked the air from her, like he would snuff her out, and she felt an allover dimming as her strength ran thin and she slipped out of herself. She noticed, strangely, the faded twist of lemon drops on his breath and his same old smell. The numbing like a drug now, soporific, a call to rest. She could drift away, she could sleep, and let go.
Then she heard a sound as if broadcast from the end of a long corridor. Someone calling, a baby crying. The sound grew clearer, closer, the way an infant’s cries would sound if you were running toward her in the night. As if dunked in icy water, she came to. Her face engorged, her hands prickled, Manny sucking on her, leech-like. She squinted, bracing, and bashed his forehead with hers, hard enough to ring her ears. He pulled back, enough of a beat for her to snatch up the machete and slash. A stripe opened up underneath his collarbone and filled with blood. He looked down at it, aghast, touched it with two fingers, and looked back at Kit. All rage again, he swiped a grizzly paw at her. She recoiled and swung again and the blade landed in his neck, stopping at bone. She held the machete there, Manny looking askance at the blade, gullies of blood spilling from his mouth, burbling around the steel. He uttered a strange wet sound. He fumbled around for some invisible thing and passed his eyes over Kit, not seeing her. Then his legs gave way and his body hit the floor.
Kit dropped to her knees, shivering, sapped, and let the machete fall. She tried to call out for Charlie—had she made it out?—but even her voice had given up. She slumped to the side and rolled on her back, the popcorn ceiling like a level mass of clouds above her.
As she sank out of consciousness, there was a sound from the darkness outside. A voice, small and scared, the sweetest she had ever heard.
“Mama?”
Then Charlie appeared in the dim light and knelt next to her mother. Kit opened her mouth, reaching for her daughter, longing to hold her, and again, no sound. As the room spun swiftly away from her, Kit thought, She’s safe, she’s safe, she’s safe.
Chapter Forty-Five
The first thing Kit noticed when she woke up was pain. A radiating pain from the back of her head, a sharp sickly pain from the gash in her hip, and deep, muscular ache all over her body, like she was being crushed in the fist of some giant. There were tubes in her nose and hand, a catheter from between her legs, and a thicker one coming out of a bandage around her hip. She moaned, which seemed to make more of the pain, but also less.