He smiles. “I like to think so.”
He stands.
He’s taller than I remembered from the wedding, or maybe it’s just that he’s so much taller than me right now, with my back against a stone wall and my hands hanging useless at my sides. Even now, he looks almost presidential.
Some people just have the gift of aura, I suppose. Halfway to the murder of a pregnant woman and he still just has the glow.
“Nothing but a tiny prick in the thigh,” he says. “Less of a scene that way. We’ll get you onto the bed first. The story’s tidier if you’re already lying down when Collins finds you.”
He flicks the side of the syringe twice with his fingernail. A small bead of liquid blooms at the tip and runs down the side of the needle.
“Come here, sweetheart.”
I don’t.
He sighs again, thattoddler-refusing-to-eat-her-broccolisigh, and takes a step toward me.
Inside my head, very far away, the screaming has stopped. There’s only one voice left, and it isn’t mine, and it isn’t even Giana’s.
It’s lower than that. Quieter. A voice I’d never heard until eight weeks ago, when I stepped into a bar with murder on my mind.
Dikarka,it says,now is when you fight.
So when DeMaris takes his second step, with the syringe held delicately between his fingers?—
I move.
51
CASS
It is, in retrospect, the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.
Given my track record over the last eight weeks, that is really saying something.
I am five-foot-three in heels and one hundred and twelve pounds with my coat on. DeMaris is a two hundred and fifty pound male. The math, as Giana would say, is not mathing.
But I lunge anyway, because the alternative is just standing there and letting him stick me, and I refuse to go quietly into the maroon polyester night.
I get one good swipe at his wrist. My nails catch skin, and I feel a thin rip open up under my middle finger. Then his free hand catches me by the throat and the back of my skull cracks against the cinderblock hard enough that little black floaters explode in the corners of my vision.
“There, there,” he croons. “There, there, sweetheart. None of that.”
He’s stronger than he looks under that suit. His thumb pushes up under my jaw and my feet skid on the linoleum as he walks me sideways, two steps, three, until the backs of my knees hit the edge of the mattress and gravity does the rest.
The coverlet, drawn tight as a drum, doesn’t even give as I land on it. DeMaris follows me down with one knee planted between my thighs, his weight pinning my hip to the bed.
“Easy, darling. Easy.”
“Getoffme?—”
His hand leaves my throat just long enough to find the elastic waistband of the gray prison-issue sweatpants. He yanks, and the cheap fabric peels down my hips and my thighs and bunches around my knees.Cold, institutional air kisses the bare skin of my exposed legs.
“It won’t hurt,” he murmurs. He has the syringe in his right hand still, held up and away. “One little pinch. It’ll be just like going to sleep.”
I thrash and buck, but it doesn’t accomplish a damn thing. The bed doesn’t even creak, because it’s made of metal and screwed into the floor.
The needle lowers.
