Софи Райан - A Whisker Оf Trouble

“Is that why you’re going to Hawaii? Because you’re tired of waiting?”

Something changed in his expression and the manic behavior disappeared as if a switch had been thrown in his head. “Yes,” he said. “That’s why I’m going to Hawaii and that’s why I won’t be coming back.” He exhaled and smiled. “It’s going to be very sad, really. I’m going to have an accident learning to surf and my body will never be found. And I’ll finally get to live the life I was meant to live all along without my old man and everyone else dragging me down.”

Some of what I was feeling inside must have shown on my face.

“Don’t give me that look,” Ethan said, a heavy edge of sarcasm in his voice. “It’s not my fault. Why couldn’t Quinn just stay out of it? Why couldn’t you?”

“You can’t kill two people in this house,” I said. “People will get suspicious.”

“I know,” he said, “but I don’t recall saying you’re going to die here. I am going to kill you, but not here.” He made a sad face. “You’re going to have a tragic accident on the way back to your store.” He put a hand to his chest. “So very tragic.”

Then his arm snaked out and whipped around my neck like a rope. He pulled a small plastic bottle of ginger ale out of his jacket pocket with his free hand, managed to unscrew the cap and pressed the opening to my mouth. “Drink,” he ordered.

I pressed my lips tightly together.

Ethan slapped my face. Tears filled my eyes, but I kept my mouth tightly closed.

He grabbed my nose, pinching it between his thumb and index finger.

I held my breath as long as I could, but eventually I had to open my mouth to breathe.

Ethan forced some of the liquid into my mouth. I sputtered and spit, but some of it went down. He repeated the process twice more.

“I’m going to vomit,” I choked out. I wasn’t, but I needed a moment to breathe, to think.

He let go of me and took a step back. “That’s probably enough,” he said. I was bent over, hands on my knees, trying to get my breath. “You don’t have . . . to . . . do this,” I managed to gasp out.

“You sound like Quinn,” Ethan said. “The thing is, neither one of you gave me a choice. He was going to call the police. I would have lost my job. And he would have made all the rest of those bottles completely worthless to me. What choice did he leave me? It was him or me and I picked me.”

He looked away from me again and shook his head as though he were seeing himself back in the kitchen with Ronan Quinn. “It was poetic justice, you know, him being killed with a bottle of wine that cost less than ten dollars.”

Chapter 20

His attention had shifted. It was now or never. There was a stack of boxes, about shoulder height, to my left. I used my knee and one arm to knock them over between Ethan and me.

“Run!” I yelled to Elvis, and then I bolted for the living room.

Ethan hollered an obscenity and scrambled over the cartons after me. I pushed a floor lamp sideways and heard the glass shade smash as it hit the hardwood behind me. Ethan was only a few feet back.

“Get the hell back here!” he shouted.

I turned and shoved a worn leather club chair at him. It skidded across the floor and caught him in the legs, knocking him off his feet. Elvis had jumped up onto a stack of boxes. He leaped from there to the sideboard against the wall. I swept both hands at the boxes and sent them down on top of Ethan. They only held blankets and tablecloths, so they weren’t very heavy, but all I needed was a few extra seconds to get to the door and get out.

There was a vintage standing metal ashtray, missing one foot on the bottom, leaning against the sideboard and hutch. When I shoved the boxes, it fell on my own foot.

I stifled a scream, kicked it out of the way and ran for the door, breathing hard. My right foot skidded on the loose bit of hall carpet. I slid into the half wall, banging my knee on the corner edge. The pain almost knocked me off my feet, but somehow I managed to stay upright. I slid along the expanse of drywall and banged against the front door.

Ethan lunged for me, catching the edge of my sweatshirt and pulling me toward him. “You stupid cow,” he roared.

I tried to twist away from him and slammed into two boxes stacked on a wooden chair. At the same moment Elvis launched himself with a loud yowl from the sideboard, landing on Ethan’s back, claws digging in through the man’s shirt. Ethan yelled another obscenity and reached over his shoulder for the cat with one hand while the other slapped over my mouth and nose.

I couldn’t breathe. I fell back against the boxes, my elbow pushing down the flaps of the top one. I felt around blindly inside for something, anything to use as a weapon. My hand touched something heavy and metallic. I grabbed and swung my arm up and out as hard as I could, making very satisfying contact with the top of Ethan’s head before my left leg gave out. His eyes rolled back in his head, his hand slipped from my face and he dropped to the floor.

Elvis jumped down, shook himself and made his way over to me. He climbed onto my chest, where he sat down and looked at what I’d just used to brain Ethan Hall. It was a can of Spam.

“Merow!” he said.

I pushed my hair back out of my face. I looked over at Ethan and nodded. “Poetic justice.”

Chapter 21

I managed to get to my feet, pick up Elvis and get the front door unlocked. Ethan was out cold. I could see his chest moving, so I knew he wasn’t dead, and beyond that I didn’t much care.

I stumbled out onto the stoop as Nick’s SUV fishtailed to a stop at the curb. Mac was already out of the passenger side running across the lawn to me before the vehicle had come to a complete stop. He caught me as my leg gave way again and I half fell down the front steps.

“Sarah, are you all right?” he asked. Nick was sprinting across the grass toward us.

I nodded.

“Where’s Ethan?” Nick said.

I jerked my head in the direction of the house. “He’s in there.” I held up the can of Spam and grinned at them. “I spammed his scam.” It struck me so funny I started to laugh. “I spammed his scam,” I said again.

“She’s in shock,” I heard Nick say to Mac, but it seemed as though he were talking from the end of a long tunnel. “Ambulance should be right behind us.”

I wanted to ask him what made him think I needed an ambulance. I had Elvis and him and Mac and a can of Spam. What more did I need?

I looked up at Nick and wondered what was wrong with his head that it had gotten so out of focus. Mac, on the other hand, looked wonderfully in focus. It struck me that laying a big wet one on him sounded like a marvelous idea, but before I could tell him that, the world suddenly went dark.

I woke up in the back of the ambulance. “What did you take?” a burly paramedic with muscles on his muscles asked me.

“I didn’t take anything,” I said. It was hard to get the words out. My tongue felt as if it were too long for my mouth. I made a flailing gesture with one hand in the direction of the house. “He made me drink something.” The luncheon meat can was sitting on the edge of the stretcher. “I spammed his scam,” I told the paramedic. I liked saying the words so much I repeated them again.

Nick appeared at the back door of the ambulance. He handed the bottle of ginger ale to the muscular paramedic. “Whatever she had, I think it’s in here.”

“Thanks,” the hunky paramedic said. “There’s another ambulance on the way for your suspect. We’re going to transport her now.”

I leaned sideways and waved at Nick. The straps in the stretcher were the only things keeping me from falling onto the floor.