Blush(73)
Curled up in the narrow space between the bedspring and floor, with her free foot she used the hard edges of the box spring to anchor herself while Marcel pulled and twisted her other foot to pull her free. All the while he was screaming invectives and threats. Mia didn’t bother listening. It was all noise. She shut it out. She shut out the pain he was inflicting on her ankle, and the way the wood slats hurt her foot and hand wedged tightly against the frame.
She. Was. Not. Letting. Go. Fuck him. If he wanted to kill her, he’d have to crawl under the bed with her.
She knew she had to be proactive, but for once in her life she had no idea how. The knowledge that she was helpless to deal with the situation scared her almost as much as the situation. If she could just have a few minutes to think—
Her fingers screamed with agony as he pulled, but she maintained her grip on the hard wood frame. Stretching her arm overhead to reach the lockbox, every muscle and tendon, like rubber bands about to snap, screamed in agony. She felt as though, any minute, she’d be snapped in two.
Still holding her bare foot, Latour lay on the floor now. His voice echoed in the confined space, so enraged, so out of control, that he was inarticulate. His fingers scrabbled up her leg, his nails scoring her bare calf as he tried to use her leg as a fulcrum to force her out from under the bed.
Lashing out with her wedged foot, she kicked him in the face. As hard as she could under the circumstances. There wasn’t much power behind it, but for a moment he released her other ankle enough, giving her time to slide away from his flailing hands.
Sweat dripped into her eyes, and Mia’s manic heartbeat tripped, then raced even faster as her fingertips brushed the metal box just as Marcel dug his fingers into her foot again. God, oh God, oh God. The crazy son of a bitch was crawling under the bed after her. She let out a cry of pure fury. The man was like a damned zombie.
“Hi, honey, I’m home— What the fuck!”
Cruz. Mia almost puked with relief.
• • •
Cruz yelled out the teasing greeting before he entered the bedroom. What he saw when he walked in chilled his blood. The bottom half of a man, in filthy jeans and work boots, protruded from his side of the bed.
Dropping the plastic bag of plumbing parts, he dashed across the room, grabbed the man’s legs, and dragged his ass out from under the bed.
His blood chilled as he wrenched Latour off the floor, and decked him before he stood upright. Twisting a fistful of the man’s shirt in his left hand, he yelled, “Mia, where the fuck are you? Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
Latour swung a fist, trying to reach him. Cruz just held him at arm’s length, so his punches went wide. The guy cursed a blue streak. “You can’t do this. I have my rights—”
Cruz punched him again, getting satisfaction from the crunch of cartilage and the instant gush of blood from Latour’s nose. “You don’t have any fucking rights, dickwad. You lost them the moment you broke in and committed assault. Call the cops,” he told Mia.
“M-my phone’s d-downstairs.” Disheveled, glassy-eyed, Mia emerged on the opposite side of the mattress, the gun box clutched in a white-knuckled grip as she staggered to her feet.
Latour continued to fight Cruz’s firm hold on him as Cruz watched Mia from the corner of his eye. She seemed to be whole. He didn’t see blood, but he saw the dark smudge of bruises beginning to form on the delicate skin of her throat and along one cheek.
Latour’s boot hit him a glancing blow on his knee. “You can’t steal a man’s family. I have my rights!”
Cruz kicked his legs out from under him and planted a heavy foot on his throat the second the dickhead hit the floor. “Use mine.” He tossed his phone on the other side of the bed close to where she stood.
It took every ounce of control for Cruz not to shatter the man’s skull like a fucking watermelon after what he’d done to Mia. Not to mention putting his wife in the fucking hospital, and scaring the shit out of his kid. But then it wouldn’t look like an accident, and he couldn’t afford for the police to dig too deeply into his handyman persona and find out who he really was.
“She’s mine, dammit!” His breath wheezed as he tried to suck in the small sip of air Cruz allowed him in a moment of generosity. “You and your damn Yankee bitch got no business here. We take care of our own. You fuckers better tell me where she is or I’ll kill the both of you with my bare hands,” Latour shouted. “You’re nothing but a vagrant and she’s”—Latour pawed at his face, catching clots of blood that dripped from his nose as his gaze fell on Mia—“and she’s nothing but—”