“After an orgasm,” Jocelyn supplied.
He looked back at her, his brow crinkled. “Yeah, how did you know?”
She sighed and wiped a wisp of blood-crusted hair from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I saw that look on her face while my friend was dying on her kitchen floor.”
She wasn’t sure just how deep and twisted his attachment to Francine was, even though he had spent years disentangling himself from her, so Jocelyn didn’t mention the fact that she was the person who killed Francine.
Pantalone’s face softened. “I thought you were bullshitting me about that.”
Jocelyn shook her head. “I wish I was bullshitting you. Maybe my friend would still be alive.”
“How—how’d you say she did it?”
“Some kind of poison in his coffee.”
He nodded gravely. “Of course she did. That was her thing. She couldn’t ever really hurt someone—I mean not, like, violently. She couldn’t shoot someone, not like me. She didn’t have it in her.”
He said this with some pride, and it made Jocelyn want to wrap her fingers around his fat throat and squeeze the life out of him. At the same time, the image of Francine raising her gun at Jocelyn flashed in her mind. She changed the subject. “How did you get her to back off?”
“The tape,” he said.
His phone rang again. He wiped at the sweat pouring from his face and looked at his phone again. “Fuck.”
Trent’s body spasmed. His eyes rolled into the back of his head. “Trent,” Jocelyn said, trying to keep the hysteria out of her voice. She didn’t know how much time he had left. She was going to have to do something, and soon. She shifted from her knees onto the balls of her feet and cupped his cheek with one hand. “Trent,” she said again. “Stay. With. Me.”
No response.
Chapter 52
November 20, 2014
She looked up to see Pantalone looking out the window again. Both of his hands hung at his sides, one holding his phone, the other holding his gun. There was no more time. No more time to think about it, to consider her options. The options were Trent died or she got them both the hell out of there. How dare this piece of shit stand between Trent and the help he so desperately needed?
Rage propelled her over top of Trent’s body and across the room. Using her forearm as a bar, and throwing the weight of her entire body behind it, she rammed Pantalone below his shoulder blades. His face flew into the glass, his hat falling into her face. Before he could react, she batted the hat out of the way, grabbed a fistful of hair, and slammed his face as hard as she could into the glass.
He cried out. The glass broke, fine cracks webbing outward from where his nose had made impact. Blood sprayed from his face. She slammed it again a few more times for good measure. Then she pulled his head all the way back, as far as she could, until he fell to the ground. She didn’t give him even a second to react. She couldn’t. He was bigger than her. She knew from what had happened to her the year before that stopping was not an option. Not if she wanted to live. Or come out of this without scars.
He had dropped his phone but not the gun. She stomped on his wrist as hard as she could with her heel until he screamed and his fingers sprung open. She bent at the waist and reached for the gun, but his other arm swung upward wildly, catching her on the side of her head. Momentarily disoriented, she stumbled away from him. Her hands reached for the gun again, but her feet weren’t moving in tandem with the rest of her body. They lurched forward as if they were their own separate entities, moving a split second faster than her hands. Her left foot came into contact with the gun first, a clumsy, unintentional kick. The gun skidded away from both of them. Then Pantalone’s good hand wrapped around her calf, pulling her down. He had strong, meaty hands. His fingers were like steel pokers, squeezing her calf muscles until her eyes watered. He made a guttural sound deep in his throat. Blood continued to gush from his nose. As she tried to pull her leg away, he turned onto his stomach. He tried to get onto his knees but kept slipping in the blood.
Jocelyn used both hands to brace herself against the floor. With her free leg, she kicked and kicked until she felt flesh behind her. She made solid contact three times, and then her leg was free. She half limped, half ran toward the gun, vaguely aware of Pantalone’s writhing in her periphery. She heard her own breath, her own heartbeat, and Pantalone’s high-pitched moans. It was a cacophony, which is why it was a miracle when she heard Trent’s voice, low and like the scrape of sandpaper.
“Jocelyn.”
She froze and turned in time to see Pantalone on his back like a landed fish, struggling to get Trent’s gun out of his own waistband. His right hand, the one she had stomped, didn’t work. His fingers wouldn’t close around the handgrip. Blood was in his eyes, on his clothes, everywhere. It slowed him down. She ran at him as he pulled it out with his left hand.
He dropped it.
With a shriek, she dove over him, going for the gun at the same time he turned onto his side, in the direction of the gun. Then they were a tangle of blood-soaked, slippery limbs, both grunting and swearing, both trying to gain control of the gun. His left hand closed around the barrel. She slid both of her own hands over his, feeling for his pinky finger. She found its fleshy tip, worked her own fingers beneath it, and pulled back as hard and fast as she could. Somewhere deep inside, the sound of his bone snapping filled her with glee. Pantalone howled in pain. Jocelyn scrambled to her feet, Trent’s gun in her hand. Her chest felt full, and her head throbbed. Standing on wobbly legs, she turned, sighted in on Pantalone’s center mass, and fired.
The gun jammed.
“No,” she shrieked. “No, no, no, no.”
She stared at it momentarily, like it was a part of her own body that had betrayed her. Then Pantalone was on her, raging like a wild animal, like a bear, his paws swatting the gun out of her hand. He whacked her on the side of the head with a half-closed fist. Her skin stung, and a pain streaked down the back of her neck. She moved backward, away from him, until her hips hit against one of the sawhorses in the corner. She fell backward, ass over head, landing hard on her right shoulder. The pain took her breath away. The sawhorse had fallen on top of her. She thrashed, trying to get free of it, to gain purchase, to put some distance between her and Pantalone. But it was too late.
He straddled her and wrapped his hands around her throat.
“You fucking bitch,” he said as he squeezed.
Even with his grip weakened from her beating, the pressure on her windpipe was torture. With one hand, she yanked his hands down, and with the other, she reached blindly beside her, searching for anything she could use. As his weight settled more fully over her hips and stomach, she flashed back to the year before. Suddenly she was in her living room with a man on top of her. Her lungs screamed. Then, the nail—
Her hand closed around something hard and edged. It felt like aluminum. As she swung it wildly toward Pantalone’s head, she saw that it was the level. It glanced off his shoulder, only making him angrier. Making him squeeze harder. She wriggled beneath him, reaching, reaching, reaching.