Allison Brennan - Cutting Edge

“What?” Leif said, not knowing whether she was talking to him or not.

She walked back to him, straddled him on the chair and that’s when he realized the towel around his waist had slipped off and he was completely naked. But there was nothing sexual in her expression.

“It’s all your fault. Your fucking fault!” Her hand reached out and grabbed his neck and squeezed. “I hate you, hate you, you fucking prick. You messed up everything. Everything . I didn’t want to kill her. I loved her more than a sister. More than anything, but you made me do it!”

She squeezed until his body tightened, fighting for air.

Then she jumped off and started pacing again. “Fifteen minutes,” she said.

She was crazy. Certifiable.

I didn’t want to kill her .

The truth of that statement hit Leif like a bullet. “You killed Anya.”

“You! You killed Anya. You turned her against me. We had a good thing going, and you screwed with my plans. It was a major setback, you selfish prick, but you don’t care about anyone but yourself. You used her.”

“I loved Anya.”

She barked out a laugh. “You loved having a young girl to fuck, old man.”

She walked back to him and straddled him again, this time grinding herself against his limp dick. “Just a pervert,” she said.

“What do you want, Maggie?”

“I want you dead. I want you to suffer like Anya. I didn’t want her to suffer, but I didn’t have much time.” She jumped up, then kicked him in the balls and he screeched. She didn’t seem to notice.

“She called me and said that someone had died in the fire and we had to confess. Confess! Right, like I was going to admit that I’d killed a man. A man who deserved to die for all the pain and heartache he caused.”

“You killed Jonah Payne.” Leif’s voice was a whisper. He shuddered in pain.

“He thought he was so brilliant, and he wanted everyone to know how brilliant. He didn’t care who he hurt just to prove he was right.”

“There are … other ways.” Leif took a deep breath.

She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Payne was only one problem. Anya would have been with me for all of it, but you got to her. You corrupted her. You turned her against me. I hate you. I hate you!”

She kicked him again and Leif’s vision darkened. He closed his eyes and held his breath. Everything hurt. His hands were numb, his groin throbbed, his head spun.

“It was your idea,” he whispered.

“Most of it was my idea. Scott came up with the arson. He got off on setting fires. Anya and I picked the locations. Well, I picked the first place because I needed something from Langlier.”

“What?”

She continued without answering his question. “We were good. We were a great team. Then you started fucking Anya, and she was so goo-goo about you, what a sucker. I told her you just wanted to screw around, but she didn’t believe me. I even told that wuss Holbrook and he didn’t care. Said he would look into it, but he didn’t.”

Leif remembered last year when the dean came to him and asked if he was involved with a student. Leif had denied it, called Anya to warn her, and she’d also denied it when Holbrook called her in. Chris backed her up on it. It had never occured to Leif that it had been Maggie who’d turned on them.

“I had to leave before I did something stupid. I wanted to kill you so bad, but I didn’t have a good plan. It’s all about the plan. I needed to think, to get my head clear. I knew …” Her voice trailed off.

Leif couldn’t hear her, he couldn’t see her. Where had she gone? He fought the restraints. His vision sharpened and took on odd hues of color. Almost like when he’d dropped acid in college. He blinked rapidly and they disappeared, but his head again felt thick and he became nauseated. He had difficulty focusing, but when he closed his eyes the dizziness returned. He looked for Maggie, turned his head each way, but couldn’t see her. Where was she? What was she doing?

Dead silence for a full minute. Longer. Had she left? He was sweating. Another minute slowly passed. He closed his eyes and tried to slow his racing heart.

“It’s time.”

He opened his eyes. She stood in front of him. Had he passed out for a minute? A second ago she wasn’t there.

His eyes fell to the knife in Maggie’s hand. It wasn’t one of his. She’d brought it with her. She’d come to his house to kill him. His body shook and the more he tried to control it, the harder he vibrated.

“Please,” he begged, his voice high and terrified. “Don’t.”

She looked at the knife without emotion, then pressed it against his forearm. He felt only a mild sting, like a paper cut. He stared at his arm and saw blood seeping through the slit skin, dripping down his arm, sliding down the side of his chair. Little pain, but so much blood …

The blade touched his skin again, an inch farther up his arm. More blood. Again, again, again. His arm was drenched in blood. Blood that dripped. It seemed to be pouring from his arm. He couldn’t stop watching, knowing that he was going to die.

Calm down. Leif, calm down .

Anya had stopped cooperating with Maggie’s plans, so Maggie killed her. Now she would kill him.

“Why?” he asked, failing to keep rising terror out of his voice.

“I told you why, you prick.”

She cut him again, smiling. She enjoyed hurting him.

“Maggie-Anya never hurt you. She was upset when you left last year. She missed you.” His vision began to fade. He saw little except his blood flowing out of shallow wounds.

Maggie took the knife and made a stabbing motion, stopping as the tip of the knife pierced his chest. Though the blade went in not even a quarter of an inch, pain pulsated through his body, and more blood flowed from his wounds. She pulled out the knife and blood ran down his chest. A panicked cry escaped his throat.

“You hurt me, Anya hurt me. She would have talked, and I couldn’t have that when my plan is not finished!” She started pacing again.

Leif was dying and Maggie continued to rant.

“You’re no better than any of them! You sound like you care, but it’s an act and you would have betrayed the cause just like she did!”

Maggie came back and walked around to his other arm. Her face was feverish, her eyes wide, her mouth pursed as she cut his arm without comment, one, two, three times, the blood dripping down, sliding, Leif’s vision blackened from the outside in. He swallowed, but that simple act was laborious.

Maggie had been Anya’s best friend, but she’d killed Anya. She was killing him. And she wasn’t going to stop.

My plan is not finished!

Play possum. Let her think he was dead. She’d leave him alone, right? Leave him for dead and someone would find him when he didn’t show up at the college in the morning. He could survive. Mind over matter. He would survive.

Calm down. Close your eyes .

So tired .

Maggie stared at Professor Cole’s bloody body, her breathing rapid, her skin flushed. She dropped the knife, stepped backward, and tripped over a stack of papers, falling on her ass. She sat there, her head in her bloody hands, and breathed deeply.

It’s over it’s over it’s over .

She waited until she was calm, waiting until she could think again.

Then she looked at the professor.

He was dead, his entire body slick with blood. She didn’t remember cutting him so many times. His arms, his legs, his chest.

“It’s your fault,” she accused the dead man.

She rose from the floor, picked up the knife with her gloved hands, and walked into his bathroom. She stripped naked, the clothes she had bought at a secondhand store earlier that day falling on top of Leif Cole’s earlier discarded clothing.