But her daughter, just five years old, and never having known danger in her whole brief life, didn’t understand. Mommy was her safety. She stood ten feet away, confused and terrified, wailing, her precious little face red and wet.
Rage rose up like a wall inside Evi. Whatever mistakes she had made in her life, this would not be one of them. She wouldn’t let her murder be the last thing her child saw before a madman butchered her.
She reached up and clawed at her assailant’s eyes. Startled, he pulled back in reaction, lifting the blade from her throat.
Evi kneed him in the groin and ducked to the side as he doubled over, her focus on Mia. If she could grab her child and run—
He caught her by the hair, nearly yanking her off her feet, and slammed her back against the wall, shouting, “NO! No! You will not ruin this for me!”
The back of Evi’s head banged hard on the frame of the window. Her knees went weak, and her vision swam. She saw him turn toward Mia. She reached out to try to grab him and dropped to her knees, too dizzy to keep her feet beneath her.
She watched in horror as he scooped up her daughter. He had dropped the sword in favor of the long knife that hung from his belt. He put the point of the blade to Mia’s throat.
“You’re going to do what I tell you!” he shouted. “Or I’ll slit her throat, and you can watch her die!”
*
“POLICE! Drop the knife! Drop it now!” Nikki yelled. She entered the room gun first, taking a stance maybe five feet from the assailant. “Drop it now or I’ll blow your fucking head off!”
“No!” He hiked the child up higher against him so that her head overlapped the lower half of his battered face. The point of the knife pricked the tender flesh of the little girl’s throat, and blood began to trickle down.
Evi was on her knees, sobbing, pleading. “Let her go! Please! She’s just a little girl!”
Mia was screaming and kicking, trying to wriggle from the grasp of her captor.
“Stop it!” he snapped into her ear. “Stop it right now!”
“Mia, be still!” Evi cried.
“You hurt that child, I’ll make you wish you’d never been born,” Nikki promised.
He laughed, a sound that was strangely tragic. “I already wish that,” he said quietly. “That’s why I’m here.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re not a part of this,” he said. “You don’t belong here. Get out. This is between me and her,” he said, nodding toward Evi.
“Then let the little girl go,” Nikki said. “There’s no reason to hurt her.”
He shook his head, hefting Mia up and adjusting his hold on her.
“She’s getting heavy, isn’t she?” Nikki said. “Put her down. Let her go. Let’s end this now. Nobody has to get hurt.”
“No,” he said. “You’re wrong.”
“I’ll stand here like this ’til hell freezes over,” Nikki told him. “Can you hold her that long? Come on. Put her down. We can all walk out of here.”
Come on, asshole, give me something to work with here, she thought. She had to keep him talking. The longer she kept him talking, the heavier that child was going to feel in his arms.
“What’s your name?” she asked, readjusting her grip on the Glock in her hands.
He laughed again, a sound full of nothing but sadness, and nodded toward Evi. “Ask her.”
Evi was sobbing quietly into her hands, rocking as she kneeled on the floor, just out of reach of her daughter.
Nikki could hear cars pulling up outside. There were no sirens, but someone was running lights. She could see the flash of blue, red, and white through the window.
“Put the child down,” she said softly. “Let’s end this.”
“Let’s,” he said, but he made no move to let Mia Burke go. Instead, he lowered himself and the child to the floor, putting her on her feet and kneeling behind her, the knife still pressed to her throat.
Strange knife, Nikki thought in the back of her mind. Exotic. It was long, maybe eighteen inches, and gently curved from end to end. The soft amber nightlight played over the surface of the blade. The handle was elaborately wrapped in some kind of fine blue cord.
“Give her the gun,” he said, nodding toward Evi.
“No. I can’t do that. You let the little girl go.”
“Give her the gun or I’ll kill this child right now.”
To prove his point, he cut an inch-long line on Mia Burke’s throat. Blood bloomed along the line and ran down the blade of the knife.
Evi screamed, “No!” as her child screamed and cried and called for her mother.
“Give her the gun!” the assailant shouted.
The telephone on the nightstand rang. Nikki thought she could hear the distant whop-whop-whop of helicopter blades beating the air.
“Give her the gun!”
Fuck. She had to buy them time.
Nikki took the Glock in her right hand and moved her arm to the side slowly as she stepped toward the bed.
“I’ll put it right here,” she said, placing the gun on the foot of the bed.
A thousand scenarios raced through her mind. The last thing she was supposed to do was surrender her weapon, but she couldn’t shoot him without endangering the child, and she couldn’t stand there and watch him slit Mia Burke’s throat.