David Baldacci - The Sixth Man

Michelle glanced out the window. In an SUV parked out front sat three FBI agents. There were two more in the rear yard of the safe house. For the first time in a long time she felt reasonably safe.

“Where’s Edgar?” asked Megan.

“In the kitchen cooking.”

“ Can he cook?” asked Megan.

“That would be a definite yes. I’m sure you’re hungry. I guess they didn’t feed you much.”

“Proverbial bread and water. I still can’t believe I got out of there alive.”

“It was complicated.”

“I’ll go see if I can help him. My mother always told me if I really wanted to get married I needed to know my way around a kitchen.”

“Don’t believe that for a minute.”

Megan walked into the kitchen while Michelle, always restless when no action was called for, simply paced.

On her second sweep around the room, her phone rang. It was Sean.

She started to answer, but never got there.

Blood spurted from the slash in her arm. It would have been her neck, but she had seen the knife an instant before it struck and flung out her arm. The blade cut skin, muscle, and tendon.

She dropped the phone, fell back, looked up and saw Edgar Roy coming at her again.

But then she realized he wasn’t coming at her . He was throwing himself in front of her. No, at something else. At someone else.

He crashed into Megan Riley as she attempted to strike at Michelle again with the large kitchen knife. They fell together on the floor, large man on top of petite woman. It should have been over at that point.

But Megan Riley was obviously no ordinary woman.

She was, in fact, the fail-safe.

Roy groaned and rolled off her when her knee slammed into his privates. She was up in an instant and caught him with two crushing kicks to the head that flopped him over flat on his back. He lay there semiconscious, with blood pouring down his face from a deep gash in his skin.

She raised her knife for the killing blow but never got a chance to land it.

Michelle hit her with a kick to the knee. Only it wasn’t a clean shot because as she was about to land it, she slipped in her blood, which was pooling on the hardwood floor.

Megan grimaced, glanced down at her injured limb, and then exploded forward on her good leg and smashed an elbow to Michelle’s head, whipsawed around her opponent, and kicked her legs out from under her. Michelle fell hard, her head banging off the floor. She moved an instant before Megan slashed again with the knife. The blade punched into her thigh instead of her gut. Megan twisted the hilt sideways, and Michelle screamed as the blade ripped her flesh. She kicked away at the other woman and scrambled to her feet. The two women squared off, each favoring their injured wheel.

“I’m going to kill you,” said Megan.

“No, you’re going to try,” Michelle shot back.

“You should have seen Bergin’s eyes right before I shot him in the head. He looked as surprised as Carla Dukes did when I killed her.”

“I’m not an old man. Or a big, slow woman.”

Megan smiled wickedly. “Yeah, but you’re also bleeding to death.”

Megan made a couple of slashing motions with the knife but could not get through Michelle’s defenses. Michelle grabbed up a floor lamp and twirled it in front of her like a nunchaku. She advanced as Megan fell back, outmaneuvered for the moment. But when Megan leaped toward Roy with her knife held high, Michelle had to throw the lamp at her to defend him.

The brass neck of the lamp struck Megan across the face, cutting a deep gash in her cheek. Blood poured down her face. She fell sideways over Roy, but was on her feet a moment later, the knife held in front of her.

It was an instant too late.

Michelle’s shoulder hit Megan in the gut, and both women torpedoed over a table and into the wall, popping holes in the drywall with the force of the impact.

Michelle, unfortunately, hit a stud in the wall, cracking her collarbone.

Sensing this injury, Megan landed a blow right on the damaged bone and Michelle slid backward, holding her shoulder and breathing heavily.

Both women slowly stood, each with a damaged leg, but Michelle had blood pouring out of two large wounds. She could feel her heart pumping harder and harder with each clench of the muscle, throwing more and more of her blood onto the floor with nothing to replace the loss.

She drew a quick breath. She didn’t have much time left. She feinted a charge, and Megan stepped back. Michelle launched, aiming at Megan’s knife-wielding arm.

But in her weakened state she arrived a second too late.

Megan flipped the knife to her left hand a moment before impact. As the women fell backward Megan slammed the knife deeply into the other woman’s back.

They hit the floor and Megan kicked Michelle off, rolled, and stood on a single wobbly leg.

Michelle tried to rise but then fell back to her knees. The knife was still in her. The blood now poured from three wounds, the last one in her back being the most damaging. She was seeing fuzzy images in front of her, and her breaths were becoming increasingly labored.

I’m dying.

She reached behind her, and with her last bit of strength she pulled the blade free.

She eyed Megan, her breaths coming in quick gasps.

“You’re dead,” taunted Megan.

“So are you, bitch ,” snarled Michelle, blood pooling in her mouth and garbling her words.

She threw the knife.

It missed badly and hit the wall, falling harmlessly to the floor.

As Michelle sat there helplessly on her haunches, her life rapidly draining away, Megan lined up the kill shot: an elbow strike to the back of Michelle’s neck that would shatter her medulla and instantly end her life.

She leaped to deliver this final shot.

And Edgar Roy pivoted.

In his one-of-a-kind brain it was suddenly thirty years ago and Edgar Roy, then only six years old and the object of his father’s sexual assault, pivoted. And struck. The man fell. The eyes turned glassy. The breathing ceased. The man died. Right there in the farmhouse kitchen.

Then, like an old black-and-white TV suddenly transformed to an HD flatscreen, the old images vanished and Roy was squarely returned to the present.

The six-foot-eight Edgar Roy slammed the kitchen knife he’d snatched off the floor into Megan Riley’s torso with such force that the petite woman was lifted a foot off the floor. A moment later the staggering velocity of Roy’s thrust catapulted Megan Riley violently against the wall. She struck it hard and slid down to the floor. She looked dumbly at the knife buried to the hilt in her heaving chest; the other end had cut her heart nearly in two. She attempted to pull it free. Her hands were around it. They gave one tug and then stopped. The fingers slipped off the handle. Her arms fell to her sides. Her head leaned against her shoulder. She gave one last shuddering breath.

And then she died.

Edgar Roy stood there for a few moments.

I pivoted. My sister did not pivot. I buried the knife into my father. My sister did not. I pivoted. I killed the beast. I killed my father.

His long-lost memory, his only such one, was finally back with him.

He rushed to Michelle’s side and checked her pulse.

He couldn’t find one.

The door burst open.

He turned to see Sean and his sister standing there.

“Please, help her,” cried out Roy.

Sean raced forward. They had phoned for an ambulance on the way over, just in case.

It had been a good call.

The EMTs flooded into the room seconds later and started feverishly working on Michelle. It did not look good. Too many pints of her blood already lay spilled on the floor. They rushed her out on a stretcher, and Sean climbed into the ambulance right before the doors clunked shut.