“That’s her!” somebody shouted. “The girl with gloves!”
“Oh, shit,” Jenny whispered. Her whole body was trembling and she couldn’t breathe very well. She needed to do something, but she couldn’t think straight. Her mind was blinded by fear.
The crowd closed in around Jenny. A dreadlocked hippie girl threw the first punch, right into Jenny's mouth.
“Corporatist pig!” the hippie girl screamed, and then she spit on Jenny. The girl didn't seem to notice the bloody pustules rising across her knuckles, where she'd made contact with Jenny’s lips and teeth.
“That’s right, the girl with gloves!” the voice from above shouted. “Get her! Get her now! She’s the one you want. She’s the one behind all your problems!”
Jenny wondered what the hell that meant.
But those words seemed to open the floodgates—everybody attacked her. Fists pounded her head and her back. Somebody punched her in the stomach and she doubled over. Jenny saw a couple of police jogging toward her and she reached out one hand, hoping maybe they would help her.
Instead, the first cop slammed a knee into her face. Jenny felt her nose crack and a hot gout of blood rush down across her lips. Somebody smashed a bottle over her head.
Jenny fell to the sidewalk and curled into a fetal position, covering the back of her head with her hands. Shoes and sandals and boots kicked and stomped all over her, bruising her ribs, her hips, her legs and arms, the crown of her head. God only knew why everyone had listened to the crazy lady with the megaphone and started attacking her, but Jenny was terrified and didn’t know what to do.
There was one thing she wasn't going to do, she decided. She wasn't going to flare up with the Jenny pox and fight her way out of this crowd. Already the pox was rising in her, fueled by her growing fear. With all these people pushing in around her, pulling her hair and pounding on her body, it would be easy to flood them all with infection, even kill them if necessary, and make her escape.
She wouldn't do that again. She couldn't live with one more death on her hands. So she would lie here and let the mob do its worst, even if they killed her. That, Jenny thought, would be justice for what she’d done to all those people in Fallen Oak.
When she'd made that choice, her whole body relaxed. The blows continued raining down on her, but by now she was in so much pain that things couldn't possibly get any worse. She had died before, and it wasn’t so bad.
Chapter Forty-Five
Seth gave his right hand another hard pull, and it finally slid free of the noose. All the skin was rubbed off at the base of his hand and his wrist, leaving only raw pink tissue, and the end of the rope was wet with his blood, but he was free. It had taken a horribly long amount of time, and it hadn't helped that Allegra wouldn't get off of him, or stop slathering his face and neck with kisses.
Seth rolled over so that she was underneath him.
“Oh!” Allegra laughed. “Want to go old-fashioned, huh?”
“I have to go.” Seth jumped to his feet, dragging the rope behind him, since it was still noosed tight around his left hand. He pulled on his jeans and shoes, grabbed his shirt, and ran for the door.
“Wait!” Allegra screamed after him, sitting up on the bed. “Come back! I need you, Seth!”
Seth dashed through the sitting room and into the hall, and then the hotel's fire alarm began to scream. When he reached the railing, he glimpsed the backs of two people, a young man and a young woman, rushing out the fire door all the way down on the first floor, despite the EMERGENCY ONLY sign warning about the alarm. They slammed it behind them.
Seth started down the stairs, but then something snapped his left arm and hauled him backward, right off his feet, and he sprawled out across the deep-piled rug. He looked up to see Allegra standing over him, stark naked, holding the other end of the rope that was still tied to his left wrist. The rope smeared his blood all over her hands, but she didn’t seem to notice.
She wagged a wet, red finger. “Don't you run away from me.”
“I have to go!” Seth stood up and tugged at the rope. “Come on, this is crazy.”
“Oh, Seth, I love you so much.” She tried to kiss him, but Seth turned his head. “Let's get married and have babies. We can go sailing with my parents every summer. Oh, and you can go to the dog shows with my mom! We have a champion Sheltie, Lady Tinkerbelle’s Lace.”
“Well, all that sounds like it sucks,” Seth said. “But I’m in a big hurry here, and you really need to… let go!” He jerked the rope as hard as he could, meaning to wrench it free from her hands, but instead she held tight and stumbled up against him.