He landed, slamming the man to the ground. The guy’s gun skittered under the bed. He rammed his knee up toward Noah’s groin.
Noah twisted to protect himself as the guy snatched up the bloodied knife he’d dropped on the floor earlier. He whipped it up.
Noah blocked the stabbing blow to his face, but his opponent’s blade sliced through his sleeve and carved a gash in his arm. Noah yanked the knife from his pants pocket. With a yell, drove the notched blade down through his opponent’s hand, pinning it to the floor.
The knife bit deep into the damp plywood.
The guy screamed, convulsing. Blood spread beneath his hand. He stabbed at Noah with his knife, but his wild, slashing strokes didn’t reach, not with his other hand pinned to the ground.
Noah snagged the man’s knife hand, torqued it . . . and crushed it. The knife fell.
Noah straddled the guy. That fuckhead had hit Caro. Cut her. Now he paid.
He started in on the guy’s face. Then his ribs. Instinct and training took over, and he let it roar on through him like a flash flood—
. . . Noah . . . Noah! Stop! It’s enough! Stop it, goddamnit!
The words came from faraway. Caro’s voice. He fought his way back.
Those strange, rhythmic rasps were his own panting breaths. His throat was raw. He had a vague memory of screaming.
He stared down at the broken, unrecognizable man beneath him. Mark’s bald, goateed thug was a gory mess. Blood gushed from his nose, his jaw was askew, his eye socket was crushed, trapping his eyelid so that it could not blink. His other eye watered, rolling frantically.
His own knuckles looked like raw meat.
“Noah?” Caro’s voice was barely a whisper. “Are you OK?”
He nodded, struggling off the guy. Feeling weak. Just when he needed to be strong for her.
She grabbed him. His forehead pressed the cool skin of her belly, but just for a second. He had work to do. He heaved himself off the guy. Reached to touch his carotid artery.
There was a pulse, barely. He was shutting down. He saw it in the man’s sig, too. No tears when this one went down the drain. “Dying,” he said.
“Good.” Her voice hardened. “Wish I’d done it myself.”
“I killed the ones outside,” he said. “Three more out there.”
Caro got to her feet and swayed for a moment, clutching the bedpost for balance. Her eyes looked glassy, but he could see her fighting the drop in blood pressure by sheer force of will. “What now?” she asked. “I assume you don’t want to involve the police.”
“That’s right,” he said. “My DNA would confuse the living shit out of a crime lab. But Mark won’t call the cops either when he shows up. This is his mess. Let him deal with it. We just need to get you away before he shows up.”
Noah looked around and spotted a crumpled wrapper from a breakfast sandwich on the floor. He retrieved it, fished a pen from a pocket of his own jacket and smoothed the grease-stained paper out onto the window sill. “You write this,” he said.
“Write what? Why me?”
“Mark might recognize my handwriting, even if I try to disguise it. I don’t want to identify myself to him yet.” He pushed the pen into her hand.
“OK.” She poised it over the crumpled wrapper. “So?”
“Write, ‘Oblio.chat. You’re the Keyseeker. I’m the Keyholder. When I find you, we’ll talk terms.’ Just that. Nothing else.”
She looked up, eyes wide and wary. “Terms? With Mark? Are you nuts?”
“We have to establish a point of contact. I’d finish this right now, if I could, but I’m not prepared. And I don’t want you anywhere near him.” They stared at each other. Finally, he made an impatient gesture. “Write it. Now. So we can get out of here.”
She wrote it, asking him what was capped and what was not along the way. Noah crumpled it, bent down, and shoved the ball of paper into the dying man’s mouth.
Caro turned her gaze away, shuddering.
His own jacket lay stuck to a thick smear of blood. Too bad. He would have liked to use it for Caro. He scooped it up anyway, along with his phone.
Her coat caught his eye in the corridor, crumpled and forgotten in a corner. He picked it up and draped the ugly thing over her shoulders. Her bare, bloodied feet looked so vulnerable, poking out from the frayed hems of her blood-spattered jeans. He hated that she had no shoes on. “Come on,” he said shortly, tugging on her hand.
She followed him out the door, stopping short when she saw the bodies. The one by the door lay in the dirt, face turned to the side, mouth gaping. Buzzcut swayed from his tree, his rope creaking in the rising wind. She gazed at them without flinching, her face pale and stiff.
“There’s another one behind their Jeep,” he told her.
Noah dug car keys out of his jacket pocket, vaguely surprised they were still there. He pulled out his phone, and immediately called Sisko.
“Hey,” Sisko’s usually mellow voice had an edge to it. “So?”
“You can turn around,” he said. “Go on home. It’s handled.”