Charlaine Harris - Shakespeare’s Champion

Bobo raised his face to look at Darcy, and I saw tears on his face.

“I gotta ask you, boy, where you went just a while ago,” Darcy said genially. He raised the knife so the light caught the part of the blade that was not red. Bobo stood up. His shoulders squared.

“I’m hoping you didn’t betray your family by telling anyone what we’d caught here,” Darcy said, waiting for Bobo to answer.

When the silence dragged on, everyone turned to look at Bobo, even Jim Box. Jack was taking advantage of the respite by closing his eyes. I saw his hands working under the tight cord around his wrists. He was biting his lower lip. There were a dozen cuts and burns on his chest, and they’d reopened the bullet wound. Streaks of blood clotted his chest hair.

“Did you go tell that blond bitch?” Darcy asked, quietly. “You tell that gal her little bedmate was in trouble here?”

Bobo didn’t speak. He stared at Darcy, his blue eyes narrowed with turmoil. Something hardened in his face as I watched.

“I hope she does come looking,” Cleve said suddenly. “We get to reenact her worst nightmare.”

Darcy looked at Cleve in some surprise. Then he realized what Cleve meant. He laughed, his head thrown back, the overhead light scouring his face of any sign of humanity.

Jack’s eyes were open now, all right. He was looking at Cleve with a brand new nightmare for Cleve in his eyes. Cleve looked down, flinched. Then he seemed to recall that he was in charge.

“We can give her a real good time right here,” he told Jack. “You can watch, Bobo. Learn how it’s done.”

Tom David’s eyes were slitted in distaste. He was looking at his coconspirators as if he’d just learned something about them that he didn’t like. Bobo’s face said he couldn’t believe what he’d heard. He was waiting for some other explanation of the words to occur to him.

“This is going to be a pleasure,” Mookie said in my ear. She pulled a knife from one of her pockets, handed it to me.

“I cover you, you cut him free,” she said. “We get out the best way we can.”

I nodded.

“Or maybe I’ll kill them all,” she said, to herself.

“They killed Darnell?”

“Yeah, I do believe. My mother got some calls after Darnell’s death, anonymous, nasty really explicit about Darnell’s injuries. They came from this store. She has caller ID,” Mookie whispered. “Dumb shitasses didn’t even think about a black woman having caller ID. Get ready.”

She stepped out then, her rifle up at her shoulder.

“Okay, assholes,” she said. “Down on the floor.”

They all froze, Darcy in the act of bending over to put the knife to Jack’s chest again; Cleve had the arrow in one hand, the lighter in the other. Beyond them, Tom David was still leaning against the wall, his arms crossed on his chest. Jim Box was beside him. Bobo, who’d been close to the door into the store, turned and stepped through it, and the clunk as the heavy door closed behind him made Cleve jump.

In that flicker of time, Darcy threw the knife at Mookie and dived to his right. Mookie fired and ducked to her right. Her bullet hit Jim Box, who’d been beyond Darcy; I glimpsed a red flower blossoming on his chest. And the knife missed her, but got me. I felt the sudden cold where my shirt sliced open, felt the pressure, but I was running for Jack. Cleve charged me, his thick chest and heavy chin making him look like an angry bull. I stepped aside as he came to me, and I extended my arm. It caught him in the throat. His head stayed still, but his feet kept on going. When the rest of his body didn’t follow, they flew up in the air, and down he went. His head thudded against the concrete floor. And I heard the clunk of the door again. Someone else had fled into the store.

I knelt by the chair, cutting at the cords binding Jack. I was awkward about it, but Mookie’s knife was sharp. I heard a rush of feet, light and quick, and then the pow ! of the rifle.

Mookie passing by, doing God knows what damage. I thought I heard the door again.

I could pay attention to nothing else while I was using the knife, and when I’d sawed through the second set of bonds and I could look up, everything had changed.

I saw no one, at least no one moving.

Cleve was down for good. I felt a flash of satisfaction. Jim Box had vanished, but there were drops of blood on the floor where he’d been standing. I saw there was a chair in the shadows, across from Jack’s. It was empty.

Jack whispered, “Help me up.”

I jumped to my feet, held out my hands. To my horror, I could not meet Jack’s eyes; that seemed worse, much worse, than what I’d done to Cleve Ragland. Jack made an awful sound of pain as he pulled himself up on me. There was a discarded brown coat, Bobo’s, lying on a nearby shelf. I grabbed it. I had in mind fleeing through the rear door, trying to make it through the back lot and hole in the fence to my house, calling-someone. Fleetingly, I thought of the FBI men, who might still be at the motel where they’d been camped since the bombing.

“Put this on,” I said urgently, holding out the coat to Jack. I was thinking of the bitter cold, Jack’s wounds, shock, God knows what.

I kept lookout while Jack tried to manage, but in the end I had to help him. I was so intent on maneuvering Jack’s left arm into the sleeve that I did not know anyone was behind me until Jack’s face gave me a second’s warning. Just as Jack began to move, something slammed against my shoulder. I shrieked involuntarily, knocked to my right, off my feet. I slammed my head into the shelves and fell to the floor hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs. I couldn’t move. I stared up at the bright lights of the storeroom, high above me. I could see tall dark Jim Box, his shirt soaked with blood. He gripped an oar, holding it like a baseball bat, and he was swinging it back. He was going to hit me in the head, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

Jack went mad. He launched himself at Jim, wrenched the oar from him, and slammed it into Jim’s head. Jim went over like a felled tree, without a sound. Jack stood over him, his blood-spattered chest heaving, wanting Jim to move, wanting to strike again.

But Jim didn’t move.

With a rush the air came back into my lungs. I moaned, not only from the pain but from black despair. We were both hurt now, weak. How many more were in the building? Where was Mookie? Had they killed her?

Jack stood over me with the oar. Gradually some of the madness seeped from his face and he crouched beside me.

“Can you get up?” he whispered. I saw the finger marks on his throat for the first time. They’d choked him, enough to almost cost him his voice. I wanted to tell him no, I couldn’t move, but found myself nodding instead. That was a mistake. Pain rocketed through my head. I had to lie still a moment, before I rolled over on my stomach, pushed up to my knees. My arm, sliced by Darcy’s knife, was bleeding. I touched my hair, which felt-funny. There was blood on my hand when I took it down. I’d hit a shelf with my head when I’d gone sideways, I remembered slowly. Maybe I had a concussion. As if to confirm that suspicion, I vomited. When the spasm was over, I felt like I would welcome dying. But Jack needed me to get up.

I gripped the nearest upright, a corner bar for the shelves, and tried to gain my feet while Jack stayed alert for another attack. Finally I was standing, though I could feel myself swaying from side to side; or maybe I was still and the warehouse was swaying? Earthquake?

“You’re really hurt,” Jack rasped, and I could hear a little fear even in his strained voice.

I felt weak and shaken. I was letting him down.

“Go,” I said.