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Shit. She’d been hoping to buy more time.
“Be right there,” she said, leaving the kitchen with a full mug.
Becca kept her other hand up her sleeve, hanging on to the paring knife tightly. She kept her shoulder hunched a little like she was cold, to try to keep up the illusion that her hands were cold and that was why her hand was up her sleeve.
“So what do you and Griz talk about?” Ripper said when she got back into the living room.
“Nothing in particular,” she said with a shrug.
“Nothing?” he said, looking at her carefully.
She knew it, then, saw it in his eyes, he knew that she suspected him, and now the game was up and she was out of time. His expression started to change into a grimace as he reached out a hand toward her and before she knew what she was doing, she flung the hot coffee from the mug straight into his face.
He screamed and waved his arms blindly, searching for her even in the midst of his agony, stumbling towards her. She took an awkward step backward, almost falling over, when one of his searching hands found her arm and gripped it like a steel vice.
“Got you, you fucking bitch!” he said.
Everything inside of Becca felt like it was going to explode. Her heart was pounding in her throat as she yanked the paring knife out of her sleeve and jabbed it at Ripper, stabbing low and blind. She felt the point go in and then the knife hit resistance and her hand was torn off of the handle by Ripper flinging her away from him.
“Fuck!” he shouted, doubled over in pain around the knife sticking out of the top of his thigh.
Becca didn’t think, didn’t plan, she just ran as fast as she could in the opposite direction of Ripper. Her flight took her down the hallway, toward the bedroom, with Ripper limping after her, shouting bloody murder.
Then, she was in the bedroom and she slammed the door shut behind her. There was a heavy thud against the wood as Ripper crashed against it the second it was closed, and Becca barely was able to lock it in time to keep Ripper out.
“You fucking bitch!” he shouted on the other side of the door. “You stabbed me in the leg!”
“I was trying to stab your pathetic little dick, you fucking asshole!” Becca shouted back.
She leaned her back against the door as hard as she could, but she still wasn’t sure how long it would hold if Ripper tried to break it down. She looked around the room desperately, wondering if she could somehow pull the dresser over in front of the door to help barricade it, terrified to try it because that would mean taking her back off of the door and then she’d no longer be able to keep it from getting kicked in.
“Fuck, that hurts!” Ripper swore. “That was Griz who texted earlier, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, that’s right!” Becca said. “He knows you’re a piece of shit and he’s going to snap your neck like a chicken!”
There was a series of heavy blows on the door, Ripper’s banging fists, that made Becca jump a little from the sudden sound and impact. They stopped almost as quickly as they started.
“Let me in there, Becca. Let me in and this can go easy.”
“Yeah, right,” she said. “I totally believe you.”
“Fuck! Fucking bleeding everywhere.”
A few more slams on the door, and then Becca heard him moving away and down the hall. She strained her ears to try to figure out where he was going, what he was doing. It sounded from his muffled muttering like he’d gone into the bathroom.
Probably looking for something to stop the bleeding, she thought.Good. The longer he takes, the more time Griz has to get here.
She looked around the room wildly, her mind spinning, trying to come up with some way to escape. There was no way out of the bedroom, though. She was trapped. Trapped here, with Ripper somewhere on the other side of the door, and it was only a matter of time before he returned.
Soon enough, she heard him coming back. She needed to keep him talking, distract him, to keep him from focusing on breaking the door down.
“You were the one who told Death’s Head about the cabin,” she said. “Where Griz and I were. Weren’t you?”
“Yeah, I told them,” Ripper said. “I even met up with them when I left, showed them exactly where the cabin was. Then, after they shot up the place, I approached them all friendly like and shot them both.”
“You lying weasel.”
“It wasn’t supposed to kill the two of you. I mean, if it did, I could’ve made that work, but the point was to get Griz on board with hooking up with the cartel.”
