“Come here, fuckin’ wifey bitch,” he said in a jagged voice.
Terror spiking her heart, she lunged for the mattress to dig the pipe from underneath, but he moved spider-quick and seized her arm in an iron grip. He flung her across the room. She crashed against the wall, her sore shoulder absorbing the crushing impact, and the pain dropped her to her knees.
Dizziness and confusion spun through her. What had happened between him and Corey? Why weren’t they being set free?
Leon charged her again. She tried to scramble away, but he grabbed her around the waist, smoky breath hot against her neck. He tugged at her sweatpants, and the realization of what he was going to do shot through her like a burst of chilled air.
Rape, oh, God, he’s going to rape me.
As he snatched her pants down, the fabric got knotted around her thighs. She swung back and forth wildly, got free, and pitched forward, her hands driving into her belly as she slammed against the floor, plunging a sword of pain so deep into her tender abdomen that she couldn’t get enough breath to scream.
Grunting, Leon climbed her body like a ladder. One of his hands grabbed a fistful of her hair and mashed her face against the floor. His other hand yanked down her underwear.
“Fuckin betray me, home boy, I’m gonna get me a piece of wifey, see how you like that.”
She had no idea what he was talking about, couldn’t process his furious ranting. She heard his zipper unfurling. His fingernails dug into her buttocks like meat hooks.
In a far off, detached segment of her mind, she saw how it would unfold. He would fuck here right there on the dirty floor of an empty house, slobbering and cursing, hammering into her with punishing force, and she would never be the same afterward. She had treated many, many rape victims, had seen them struggle to regain a sense of dignity and, most of all, battle to overcome the fear. Some of them healed, but some of them did not, were scarred forever, prisoners of their past, and she could not know into which group she would fall-no one could, until it happened to them. .
No.
Blood boiling in her head, she gritted her teeth and put everything she had into rolling over. He was so strong, with the strength of the possessed, that it was like getting from underneath a crushing weight.
She squirmed. Shrieked. Wriggled.
Leon grunted, hand palming her hip, his hardness pressing insistently against her thigh.
No!
Finally, she tore free. She jerked her knee upward and felt a satisfying impact with his testicles. He let out a bleat of pain.
She log-rolled away, winding up on her back. Dizziness swayed through her as she sat up. Her panties and sweatpants were tangled around her legs. Frantic, she tugged them up, shimmying her legs and hips, while beside her, Leon was bent over, wracked with dry heaves.
That’s what you get, asshole, a savage voice whispered in her mind.
As she got her panties and pants around her again, he reached for her. She clenched her hands into fists and swung them in a wide arc.
He ducked, dodging the blow. Her hands whacked against the floor, the attempt leaving her upper body twisted, and he quickly took advantage and dragged her toward him by her foot.
As she tried to pull away, he clamped his teeth over her ankle and bit her.
She screamed. Out of reflex, she drew back her other leg and kicked at his head. Her heel smashed into his chin, his head snapping back as if by whiplash. He let her go.
Using her elbows and knees, she crawled toward the mattress. She heard a tortured sound, realized it came from her. She was screaming, cursing.
Behind her, Leon was babbling incoherently, too.
She dug under the mattress, and for a terrifying instant, couldn’t find the pipe, became certain that Leon somehow had taken it away, but then her fingers closed around it, the metal cool and heavy.
She whirled around just as Leon was lunging at her. She swung the pipe at him like a baseball bat. It whacked against his temple with a hollow, ringing sound. He tumbled backward, an almost erotic sigh escaping his lips.
She gathered her legs under her and pushed to her feet, ignoring the pulsing agony in her ankle.
“I’ll beat your ass like your mama used to beat you!” she screamed. “Get the fuck away from me!”
He lay sprawled on his back, chest rising and falling slowly. Was he unconscious? She looked to the door, remembering that it locked from the outside. If she could get to it. .
But then Leon groaned, sat up. He gingerly touched his head.
Bosom heaving, she hefted the pipe over her shoulder, ready to swing again. Keeping his eyes averted from her, he unsnapped the pistol from the holster and withdrew it.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said in a paper-thin voice, as if he’d read her mind.
Grinding her teeth, she stared at the gun, wishing she had something more substantial than a pipe with which to defend herself. Leon weighed the pistol in his hand as if considering what to do with it, and she had the crazy notion-maybe it was wishful thinking-that he was going to put the muzzle to his head and pull the trigger.
She licked her chapped lips. “I don’t. . I don’t want to fight you, Leon. I just want my daughter back. . I–I just want to go home.”
He didn’t look at her, but his finger crept toward the trigger.
“Drop it,” he whispered.
She hesitated for a moment, and tossed the pipe onto the floor.
He picked it up and tucked away the pistol. Without another word, and without glancing at her, he got up and walked to the door. His shoulders were slumped, his normally quick gait a slow shuffle, and she had the sudden impression that if he somehow lived to be an old man, he would look just like that, defeated by a long life of crime.
He closed the door and locked her inside.
She turned away-and her stomach suddenly convulsed. She doubled over and threw up onto the floor.
When she was done, she wiped her lips with the edge of her T-shirt and pulled the mattress across the mess. She carefully stretched out on top of it, her body mapped with a hundred assorted aches and pains.
Staring at the shadowed ceiling, she knew she had won a small victory. But the war was far from over.
40
In the quiet living room, Otis held Corey in his bespectacled gaze.
“You request money, and the use of my vehicle,” Otis said. It wasn’t a question.
“I know how crazy it sounds,” Corey said. “But you’re the only one I can turn to.”
“Is there anything else you require?” Otis asked, as if Corey had not already requested enough.
Corey shook his head.
Otis fingered his beard. “You undoubtedly realize, Brother Webb, that I have considerable concern regarding the, ah. . circumstances surrounding this unusual visit.”
“Of course, sure,” Corey said. “And I promise I’ll explain everything, after it’s over. You have my word, Reverend.”
With a thoughtful grunt, Otis got up from his armchair, went down the hallway to his bedroom, and came back and gave Corey two hundred dollars cash and the key to his Chevy Silverado.
“Thank you,” Corey said. “Thank you so much.”
“Where is your car?” Otis asked.
“It’s parked around the corner.”
“I suggest that you garage it here as well.”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Corey said. “The cops’ll be looking for it.”
Sitting across from him again, Otis folded his hands across his stomach. “I don’t know anything about that, sir. All I know is that Mr. Corey Webb, who is like a son to me, visited me this evening distraught about a predicament that he declined to describe in detail. I’ve known Mr. Webb for sixteen years and trust him to be an honorable man, therefore, as you would expect, when he requested a favor, I offered him a small amount of money and the use of my vehicle. I also asked him to garage his own vehicle on my property, as I had the space available. I do not know where Mr. Webb went after he departed my residence, and I did not inquire. But as I stated, Mr. Webb is a man of esteemed character who has earned a sterling reputation in his community, and I can therefore only assume that whatever the nature of his situation, he is assiduously engaged in activity that will lift the light of suspicion off his hard-earned good name.”