“The fuck I am,” Missy hissed, bringing her boot up to kick him squarely in the balls. The man doubled over with a pained whoof, releasing her arm. She raised her freed hand and raked her keys across the second attacker's face, drawing blood. He howled and let go of her, his hand pressing against the ragged holes in his cheek.
“You bitch!” he shrieked.
Missy ran over to the driver's side and unlocked the car, throwing herself into the seat. She slammed the door just as the first attacker reached out to grab her again, and his hand was smashed in the door. He let out a high-pitched wail, falling to his knees and trying to pull his hand free.
Missy turned the key in the ignition and put the car in reverse just as a huge shadow fell over her. She looked back through the rear window and saw the fat man standing directly behind the car, glowering at her.
“Get out,” he commanded, crossing his arms.
“Get a salad,” she spat back, slamming her boot down on the gas pedal.
The car leaped backward, ramming into the fat man's midsection. He was knocked backward, his eyes wide with shock and disbelief.
Missy pulled the car forward, then shifted gears again and backed it into the sprawled body, running over part of it with a heavy thump. There was a wet breaking sound underneath her like a melon being crushed, and she had a feeling she'd rolled right over the man's skull.
She put the car in drive again and started to head for the entrance to the parking lot, realizing that a small crowd of shoppers were staring at her. Some were shooting the scene with their camera phones, while others looked like they might be dialing the police.
This'll be fun to explain to Hemmick, she thought. Wonder whether this means I'll end up buying him a Blu-Ray player, a sound system, or both.
As the car moved forward, Missy heard a strange scraping noise next to her door. She looked over and saw that the attacker's hand was still crushed in the door, and he was being pulled along, whimpering and gibbering in Spanish with tears in his eyes.
She opened the door to release the mangled hand, then slammed it shut again and drove away as fast as she could.
Chapter 19
Cain
Cain sat on the couch again, realizing that he was already growing to despise the feeling of its flattened, threadbare cushions under his ass. As he'd told Missy before, he'd rarely spent his nights in this house, preferring to get his meals from drive-throughs and grab a few hours' sleep here and there in the back room of the Knife. He vowed that once he was healed up, he wouldn't come back to this shitty place for at least a month.
He flicked on the TV, watching a daytime courtroom show where the fussy, middle-aged female judge was wagging her finger at a man for intentionally ruining his neighbor's lawn over some property dispute.
He flipped to another channel, and another, until he'd cycled all the way back around to the courtroom show again.
“Fuck these shows,” he muttered, swallowing a handful of pills, “and fuck everyone on them.” He felt the tablets dissolving in his stomach and spreading out through his veins, working their magic on each part of his body until the pain dissipated and he felt like he was floating in a pool of warm water.
He'd hated this feeling the first few times he'd taken the meds. The feeling of being under the influence of heavy chemicals was largely new to him. He hadn't liked the sensation that his brain was experiencing the world through a thick veil of cotton, and that everything was steadily drifting away from his ability to touch or control it.
But now he was starting to appreciate it, and even look forward to the times when he was supposed to take his medicine.
That's a bad sign, buckaroo, he thought sleepily, slumping back against the couch.
He felt like he was falling in slow motion into a bottomless well. And would his faithful dog stand in his parents' kitchen, barking and barking until they guessed where he was? He hoped so. He doubted they'd come to rescue him, though, since his father was dead and he hadn't seen his mother in...
A sound from the kitchen made Cain raise his head and open his eyes. He felt a brief stab of panic, then remembered that Missy had a key and started to nod off again. It was just Missy, that's all. In a minute or two, he'd hear the sound of shopping bags on the kitchen counter and hear her calling out to him, and he could relax and return to his nap.
Except that Missy had a key to the front door. Which had a different lock than the door from the kitchen to the garage.
For that matter, how had she gotten into the garage from the outside without the remote, anyway?
Cain raised his head again and shook it, trying to clear out the cobwebs. He knew that he was probably in grave danger, but his body somehow seemed incapable of responding to that. The usual tang of adrenaline he'd tasted in previous fight-or-flight moments was gone, replaced by the cottonmouth caused by the pills and the feeling that his limbs were filled with wet cement.