“Hey, I’m happy to talk to the police.” He was obviously bluffing, but he blustered along. “They’ll know who’s in the right. They’ll get the book back for me, along with the money. That belongs to me, too.”
I frowned as something occurred to me. “They never said what the book was worth on the news segment. How do you know it’s worth anything?”
“I’m not stupid,” he snarled. “The guy on TV said it was worth enough money to feed a family of four for at least two years.”
I shook my head. “He was exaggerating.”
He ignored me. “I did the Google. A family of four eats about a thousand dollars’ worth of food every month. That’s twelve thousand a year, twenty-four thousand for two years. Twenty-four thousand dollars? That money is mine!”
You did the Google?
“You sold the book for three dollars.” I was pressed against the stage door and couldn’t back away from him any farther, so I started to edge sideways. “It doesn’t belong to you anymore.”
He took a step toward me and I stuck my hand out like a traffic cop’s. “Get back. Get away from me. Right now.”
Instead, he grabbed my wrist and twisted it, squeezing hard.
“Let go of me!” I slapped at his beefy hand to no avail. I’d never been attacked so publicly and viciously before. I’d taken self-defense classes, but anything I’d ever learned was useless because my mind went blank.
A police siren wailed in the distance.
That was enough to snap me out of my stupor. I kicked him and my pointed toe smacked his shinbone hard enough to make him howl like a wild dog. He let me go and started hopping around while clutching one leg, swearing the whole time.
I dodged away, out of his range, but he recovered quickly and came after me, grabbing my hair with one hand and my arm with the other. He yanked me back against him and I arched forward to keep from touching him. I was screaming as I tried to reach around and kick him again.
Benny came running back. “Hey! Take your hands off her!” He tried to pry the bigger man away from me, but the oaf wasn’t cowed. Instead, he elbowed Benny out of the way, whirled me around, and grabbed hold of my chin, angling it so that I was forced to stare at his red, sweating face.
I tried to twist away, tried to plant my nails in his fleshy skin, but he barely reacted to anything I did. I scratched and slapped him, but he just eyed me menacingly.
“Nobody screws with me,” he said in a harsh whisper. He squeezed my upper arm until I cried out. “I’ll track down that bitch and get that book. Then I’ll come after you. I’m gonna kill you both.”
I’d been in a lot of scary situations and faced down sociopaths and murderers, but I’d never been confronted with such visceral evil before. I could see it in his cold, dead eyes. I had no doubt that if there had been no witnesses, if he thought he could get away with it, he would have tried to kill me right then and there. As it was, he was ready to snap my arm right out of its socket. I was bent over backward, trying to keep that from happening.
He was right on top of me. His skin was clammy and his hatred was terrifying and real. I could sense it eating away at him.
“I said get your hands off of her!” Benny shouted, bravely pushing and pounding on my assailant’s back. “The police are on their way to arrest you.” He tried to pry the guy’s hand away from my arm, but it was like a minnow trying to prod a shark.
The brute had had enough of Benny. He shoved me aside and turned and smacked Benny across the face, sending him spiraling backward until he lost his balance and fell.
As Benny lay groaning on the blacktop, the police siren sounded again.
The man bared his teeth at me one last time. “I’ll be back.” Then he took off running across the parking lot and through the gate and disappeared into the neighborhood.
I’ll be back? Who did he think he was? The Terminator?
I wished I was in the mood to laugh at that, but I could feel a bruise forming on my sore jaw. I brushed aside the pain and rushed over to kneel down next to poor Benny. “Are you all right?”
“Uhhhhn,” he groaned. I helped him up to a sitting position and he shook his head, still disoriented. “Who was that guy?”
“I have no idea.” But I did. He had to be the garage-sale loser who’d sold The Secret Garden to Vera for three measly dollars. I knew he was a vicious, scary psychopath who had brutalized Benny. He had threatened and assaulted and frightened the hell out of me. He could’ve killed me. But I still had no clue who he actually was. I didn’t know his name or where he lived.
But Vera would know.
A cop car pulled into the lot twenty seconds later, siren screaming, but it was too little, too late. The vicious creep was gone.
? ? ?
“I love a challenge,” Chuck the makeup man said, as he dabbed a thick liquid foundation onto my chin and along my jaw. With a clean white sponge, he began to blend the liquid into my skin, hoping to cover up the darkening bruise that the attacker had given me.
“I’m glad I could make your day,” I mumbled.