Karin Slaughter - Skin Privilege

'Please…' Valentine whispered. 'No, Lord, please…'

She pushed away the remains of Valentine's broken cell phone, pressed Valentine's wrist as flat to the floor as it would go and placed the knife blade against his wrist.

'No,' Valentine begged, his voice rising in register as he saw what she was going to do. 'Oh, God! Oh, God! No!'

Lena stood up and pressed the sole of her shoe against the knife, the double-sided blade slicing into the rubber. She leaned her forehead against the counter for balance as she put her full weight onto one leg, crunching the blade into his wrist.

'No!' Valentine screeched, his legs kicking out, animal sounds of pain echoing in the room.

She grinded the toe of her shoe into the blade, bouncing her weight until the knife cut all the way through to the floor.

The handcuff jerked up, Valentine's hand popping off his wrist like a loose tooth. The cuff was so tight that his hand wouldn't come out. Lena stood, his hand slapping against her leg. She gagged, the smoke thicker up high. Her eyes stung and she couldn't get her bearings.

The mugs on the stove were white-hot, liquid boiling up. She tried to turn off the knobs but just the stems remained and she couldn't get them to budge. Smoke filled the room with rolling black clouds. In the distance, Lena could see Sara had managed to sit up. As Lena watched, Sara's mouth moved, but she made no attempt to stand, no motion to leave the burning house.

Lena stumbled toward her, slamming against the table, knocking the matchbooks onto the floor. She looked down, saw that the red strike pads had all been peeled off, the matches unused. Her arm started throbbing and she realized she had put her hand in broken glass. There was a strange odor, then blinding pain. Acid. She had put her hand in the broken bottle of acid. Her mouth opened, but there was no breath in her lungs to scream as she jerked her hand away from the table.

' Lena…' Valentine called from behind her. 'Please…'

Lena moved forward, away from his voice. She felt as if her own skin was dripping off the bones of her hand, but she pushed herself on, made her legs move toward Sara, even though every ounce of sense left in her body was screaming for her to go the other way.

She coughed, gagging from the smoke, the heat of the enclosed room boiling her skin. He had set it all up so perfectly. The kitchen was a mad scientist's dream and every cop's nightmare.

Lithium batteries. Iodine. Paint thinner. Lye.

Some of the same ingredients used to make crystal meth were used in the bomb that brought down the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City.

She had to reach Sara before the house exploded, had to get them both out of here and into the open air.

'Sara!' Lena screamed, lurching down the hallway. She squatted in front of her, grabbing Sara under the arms and trying to pull them both to standing. 'Help!' she yelled, her legs cramping as she forced them both up the wall. The smoke was so thick now that Lena couldn't see. She felt tears running down her cheeks from the stinging chemicals. Something popped in the kitchen, like a champagne cork or a popgun. Lena swung Sara's arm over her shoulders, dragging her toward the front door. She could see the crack of sunlight coming through where the door hadn't quite shut.

'Please, Sara,' Lena begged. 'Please help me. I can't lift you.'

Sara's legs started to move in an awkward walk. Lena pulled her forward, yanked open the door. The sunlight was blinding. She could feel the handcuff and what was still in it banging against the door as she pushed Sara outside.

They both fell in a heap at the foot of the stairs, but Lena did not let herself stay down. She grabbed Sara underneath her arms and walked backward, dragging her across the yard and into the street. They had reached the neighbor's sidewalk when the air changed. There was something almost like a vacuum sucking all the oxygen toward the house, then a violent pushing out as a blast of hot air shot past them. Lena did not hear the explosion until she was diving to the ground, using her body to cover Sara's. Then came the heat, an intense, horrible ' heat that burned her skin.

Lena lay on top of Sara. Her body was out of adrenaline or whatever it was that had made Lena capable of getting them both out of the house. Somehow, she forced herself to roll to the side, falling onto her back.

In the distance, a siren announced that help was finally on its way. Lena closed her eyes, let herself feel relief, then joy that she had gotten away. She struggled, sitting up, coughing up a spray of blood. Her hand was hurting so badly that she could barely breathe. She tried not to look at it, tried not to see the melted skin where the acid had eaten into her flesh. That was when she noticed the empty handcuff dangling from her wrist. She looked around her, traced their footsteps across the street. Nothing.

Sara tried to sit up but fell back against the lawn. Up the street, Lena saw an Elawah County sheriff's cruiser take the turn on two wheels.

'What happened?' Sara mumbled, pressing her fingers into her eyes. ' Lena, what happened?'

'It's okay,' Lena told her. 'It's all over.'

'Are you okay?' Sara asked, still a doctor even though she was flat on her back.

The cruiser screeched to a halt in front of them. Lena struggled to stand as Don Cook got out of the car. Her legs wouldn't work, and her hand felt as if it was on fire.

'What the hell is going on here?' the deputy demanded.

Lena tasted blood in her mouth. Her stomach clenched and she could barely speak. 'Fred Bart,' she told Cook. 'You need to find Fred Bart.'

Sara had managed to sit up. She put her hand to Lena 's back, told her to take deep breaths. Lena tried to do this but the blood caught in her throat. She coughed, her body tensing from the effort.

The last thing she heard was Sara screaming, 'Call an ambulance!'

Then she passed out.

Nick Shelton had not been entirely forthcoming when he'd told Jeffrey the Georgia Bureau of Investigation could only step in when the local law enforcement agency asked them to. There was one exception to this rule: when the local law enforcement was so corrupt that there was no other choice but for the state agency to come in and clean house. You didn't get more corrupt than trying to blow up a cop and a police chief's wife in a meth lab, and the state agency had swarmed into Elawah County like a pack of angry hornets.

Jeffrey had been halfway between Coastal State Prison and Reece when his cell phone rang. He hadn't recognized the number, but knew the voice as soon as he picked up.

'I'm okay,' Sara told him, not even bothering with the formalities. Her words had stopped his heart in his chest, because you didn't say you were okay unless you'd been decidedly un-okay before.

Sara was calling him from the back of an ambulance; the siren in the background competed with her voice. She had laid out everything she could remember, from Valentine pulling the gun to Bart injecting her with something that had knocked her out. By the time she'd finished the story, Jeffrey's jaw was so tight that he could barely form words. He had been blowing smoke up Ethan Green's ass while Sara had been in mortal danger.

He would never forgive himself for leaving her alone with Valentine. If the man was not already dead, Jeffrey would have found him and done the deed himself.

Two hours later, when he had finally reached the hospital, Sara seemed more concerned about Lena than herself. She was worried about the plastic surgeon being good enough to fix the burn on her hand, scared an infection would set up in her lungs, sure that the pulmonologist didn't know what he was doing. She'd been almost manic, pacing back and forth as she spouted her concerns until Jeffrey had physically stopped her.