He’s twice my size and obviously capable of choking the life out of a woman with whom he’s recently had sex. If I lunged at him now, he’d make quick work of me for sure. And grabbing the table lamp will not serve me well. It’s likely not heavy enough to do the job, and this is certainly one of those situations where I’ll only get one shot. If I try but don’t manage to kill him—or at least sufficiently stun him so that I can follow up with another blow—Dylan will surely kill me.
I scan the room for something else to bring the odds more in my favor. Everything else I see is soft or too unwieldy: fabric-covered chairs, clothing, my television, the cable box. None of those things converts well into a weapon.
And then I remember. My purse. It’s on the nightstand. And inside it is a knife.
I had thought about bringing a knife into the bedroom upon my return but decided against it because, given my nakedness, I had nowhere to hide it. I considered briefly dropping it in the water glass, but concluded that the element of surprise would be of greater advantage than a blade.
So when I reenter the room, I hand Ella her water, careful to keep the second glass at my hip. If she hasn’t noticed the scar up until now, I aim to keep it that way. If all goes according to plan, she won’t have anything to fear from Dylan Perry—until my hands are around her throat.
I take the glass of water he’s offering. The other remains in place, blocking his scar.
“Thank you,” I say.
He nods that he’s heard me, but doesn’t say anything. That’s when a second, horrifying thought hits me: Dylan knows that I know that Charlotte’s killer has a scar on his hip. That’s why he’s trying to shield it from me.
He saw my notes. That’s the only explanation. Like an idiot, I left them on the dining table. He must have seen them when he got the water. I might as well have written him a letter saying that I know he killed my sister.
Stay calm, I tell myself. Relax your breathing. He’ll know if your demeanor toward him has changed.
I slowly move to leave the bed. To grab the knife.
“Where do you think you’re going, young lady?”
“I’m cold,” I lie. “I’m going to get my sweatshirt.”
“I’ve got a much better way to keep you warm,” he says.
I slide between the sheets, careful to keep my torso twisted so Ella cannot see my hip. After I’ve placed my water glass on the nightstand, I turn to Ella.
I move to grab my handbag, which means closing the distance between Dylan and me. He must think I’m engaging, however, because he takes the opportunity to press his lips onto mine, ramming his tongue into my mouth. It’s as disgusting to me as if he’d vomited.
Then he pushes me back onto the bed, his hands pressing down on my shoulders, effectively pinning me down.
I position my body on top of Ella’s, careful to make sure that my weight immobilizes her. The irony strikes me that I choked Charlotte to death without meaning to, and now I’m worried that it might be difficult to do the same thing to Ella—even though this time I’ll be acting with clear purpose.
Dylan’s weight makes it impossible for me to move. I struggle to shift my shoulders off the mattress, trying to get any part of me out from under him.
He doesn’t seem to notice my hand reaching over to the nightstand. Instead, he’s focused on getting himself to his goal. As he does, I slide slightly away from him, each time moving a little closer to my own.
My arm extends as far as it can, feeling the hard wooden corner of the nightstand. Dylan has entered me, which allows me one final movement. He undoubtedly thinks that I’m bucking with him, rather than trying to reach the weapon with which I’m planning to kill him.
I’m fully submerged, and she’s defenseless.
I move my right hand to her throat. Then my left.
All of a sudden, both of Dylan’s hands grasp my throat.
I abandon all thoughts of my purse and enter survival mode, grabbing his wrists to break his hold, but I’m no match for his strength. His grip tightens.
I can feel her submission. Her eyes are bulging, as if she can’t believe that it’s actually happening. It is nothing like killing Charlotte. Then it seemed to move in a flash, but this time everything is in slow motion.
I press down harder. It will be over very soon.
I can’t break his hold on my throat. My only chance now is the knife.
My hand flails for the table, knocking aside a framed photograph of Charlotte and me, and the glass Dylan just placed there flies to the floor. His grip tightens further around my neck. I can actually feel myself slipping away. My fingers splay out, reaching as far as I can.
The touch of the purse’s leather strap gives me a renewed strength. I stretch every inch of my limb, from the shoulder socket to the finger joints, until, at last, I’m wrapping my palm around the knife’s smooth grip.
In one swift motion, I whip the blade up and plunge it as hard as I can into Dylan’s side.
He screams in pain. The force of my thrust pushes him off me.
I pull the knife out of him. He looks relieved, as if I’ve just saved his life.
Then I drive the point as hard as I can into his throat.
He gasps and begins to shake. I let go of the blade, leaving it in his neck as he rolls onto his back.
It’s his eyes that stay with me to this day. The shock in them. I wonder if that’s what Charlotte looked like as he strangled her to death.
After spending nearly my entire adulthood prosecuting criminals, I finally understand the rush of adrenaline that accompanies taking a life. Dylan Perry—or whatever the hell his name really is—is sprawled on my bed with blood pouring out of his neck and his side, and all I feel is the exhilaration of knowing I’ve avenged my sister’s murder.
38.
I sit beside Dylan’s body for more than a half hour. The first—I don’t know how long—five minutes or so, before he succumbed to the inevitable, I didn’t do anything but stare at him, watching the blood flow from his wounds. A thick river of red pooling on my white linens.
All that time, I didn’t say a word. No screams of anger. No cursing his name. No shouting about what he’d taken from me. I’ve communicated all I had to say with the blade.
He gets the message. Enough to know that asking for help is futile. His eyes remain fixed on mine, though. So much so that they don’t move when he expires.
That’s when I call Gabriel.
“You need to come to my apartment. The guy who killed Charlotte just tried to kill me, and now he’s dead.”
I say it like that. Cool and collected. As if I was giving someone directions to the market, rather than admitting to the police that I’d just taken a man’s life.
I expect him to remind me that it was only a few hours ago I told him Paul Michelson had killed my sister. In fact, he might be interrogating Paul at this very moment.
“I’m going to call a patrol in the neighborhood,” Gabriel says instead. “They’ll get to your place before me, but I’m going to tell them not to question you. And if they try, you tell them that you want to speak to your father and mention that he’s a lawyer. Understand?”
I understand perfectly. He’s protecting me.