From upstairs, the slightest creak of a floorboard sounded out, giving away the killer’s position. Mackenzie acted quickly, wanting to get the jump on him.
Now or never, she thought.
She ran down the hallway and halfway up the stairs in less than three seconds. She paused there, staring into the darkness above her. Her eyes were beginning to adjust and when she thought it was safe to do so, she started up the stairs.
She was in mid-step when she heard footsteps in the kitchen. Confused, Mackenzie looked back down the stairs just in time to see the would-be victim coming toward the stairs. Her eyes looked half-tinged with lunacy and something about seeing such an attractive woman in her underwear in the midst of such a tense scene was abstract in a way that befuddled Mackenzie just enough.
“Please,” the woman said. “You have to call the police. I can’t – ”
But she didn’t get a chance to finish. She screamed, her eyes now trailing just above Mackenzie. Mackenzie turned just in time to see the killer’s shape coming at her, racing down the stairs so quickly that Mackenzie barely had time to raise her gun.
Crack!
He whipped her, and a fierce stinging sensation erupted on her right hand right across the knuckles – followed by a blinding pain that raced along her left cheek as he whipped again.
She felt blood flowing instantly, racing down her fingers and face. She saw him coming at her, diving from the top step. She fired blindly, knowing that the pain in her hand affected her shot.
Still, she heard him cry out in pain, as the shot took him low in the stomach.
Amazingly, the shot only slowed his progress. Once again, his full weight slammed into her and she went falling backwards down the stairs.
She grabbed for the wall, again dropping her gun, but it did no good. They both went falling down the stairs and when Mackenzie’s back hit, it exploded in pain and the wind went rushing out of her.
They tumbled down the remainder of the stairs in a bundle of arms and legs. When they finally hit the floor, Mackenzie’s back was a spasm of pain and the blood from her face was coating her neck and soaking into her shirt.
The killer was getting to his knees now, drawing back the same whip he had attacked her with on the stairs. He turned and whipped the original object of his madness, the woman in the pink bra, who was standing and gaping, frozen in fear. It slapped her across the shoulder, bringing up a red whelp right away, her blood splashing against the hallway wall.
With the woman falling to the ground and wailing, Mackenzie tried to launch her own attack but her back didn’t seem to want to work for a moment. She felt paralyzed and wondered if she had snapped her spine on the way down the stairs.
The killer turned his attention to her and drew back the whip. The smile on his face was a thing of madness, a smile that belonged in asylums and nightmares.
“I will raise a city in your name,” he said as he readied himself to bring the whip down on her.
Mackenzie could only flinch, waiting for the whip to come down on her flesh with that sick cracking noise, its barbed end to pierce her flesh and disfigure her for good. She wondered what she would look like when he was done – if she survived at all.
Suddenly, there came a booming noise in the kitchen. Mackenzie didn’t understand what it was until she saw a body appear in the hallway. It came racing down the hall and leapt for the killer.
The killer, caught in mid-turn, was tackled to the ground. It wasn’t until the two bodies started fighting for position on the ground that Mackenzie saw, to her shock, who the other person was.
Porter.
It made no sense. A part of Mackenzie wondered if she had hit her head on the way down the stairs and was seeing things.
But as her back finally started to loosen up, she groggily got to her knees and saw what was happening before her. Porter had saved her. He was now fighting with the killer, positioned on top of him and delivering a deft right hand to the face.
With black dots racing in her vision, Mackenzie looked around for her gun. The floor felt like it was swaying beneath her and she could actually smell her own blood now. It was coming out of her cheek in what felt like a river and —
Suddenly, she saw her gun. It was inches from the killer’s hand and he was clearly reaching for it.
“Porter,” she croaked, still finding her back untrusting and her legs wobbly.
She tried to run forward but her back locked up and she went to her knees in a grimace of pain. She could only look on helplessly as the killer grabbed her Glock.
Porter noticed it just in time, reaching out to stop the killer from getting the gun into position to fire.
But Porter lost his balance atop the killer as he did this and the killer took advantage, rolling away, sending Porter to the floor, and grabbing the gun.
The killer stood and fired.
The gunshot was deafening and the roar of pain from Porter was far too brief. Mackenzie’s heart fell, hoping it didn’t mean what she thought it did.
Mackenzie pushed past the flaring pain in her back and stumbled forward. The killer stood there, his face now also bloodied from Porter’s attack, and Mackenzie attacked him from behind, driving an elbow hard into the space between his shoulder blades.
He went falling to the floor, the gun flying from his grasp.
Mackenzie cried out from the pain in her back as she followed up by driving her knee into the center of the man’s back. She could practically feel the air rush out of him and she took advantage of this right away.
She grabbed him by both sides of his head, her right hand nothing more than a glove of blood from his whip attack, and raised it several inches from the ground. Then, with a scream that was a sublime mixture of pain, frustration, and victory, she slammed his head into the wooden floor.
He groaned and gasped.
She did it again, in a quick machine-like motion. Up, then down.
This time, he made no noise.
She rolled off of his back and leaned against the wall. She slid over to Porter and her heart swelled when she saw that he was moving. There was blood coating the left side of his head and he was holding his ear like a frightened child.
“Porter?”
He didn’t respond. He did, however, roll over and look at her.
“White?”
He looked worried, wiping blood away from his face.
“The damned gun went off right by my ear,” he said, his voice loud. “I can’t hear a thing.”
She nodded, arching her back and trying to stretch out the pain. But the pain was there to stay, or so it seemed. She reached over to the killer and placed her hand to his neck. It was hard to tell through her own surging adrenaline and heartbeat, but she was fairly certain there was a pulse there.
Mackenzie lay on the floor next to Porter and slowly pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket. When she scrolled for Nelson’s number, she left bloody streaks all over the phone.
As the phone started to ring in her ear, she reached out with her free hand and found Porter’s. She gave it a squeeze and despite the sticky blood coating her fingers, Porter squeezed back.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
Three days after the Scarecrow Killer had been taken into custody, Mackenzie returned to the same hospital she had left just two days previous with fourteen stitches in her cheek and five along the top of her right hand. She went to the third floor and entered a room that was being occupied by Porter. Seeing him in a hospital bed broke her heart, especially considering how he had ended up there.
He smiled at her when she came in. There was heavy padding and bandaging along the left side of his head but she was relieved to see that all of the IVs had been removed since she last saw him.