Cut and Run

When she heard the muted but distinctive sound of glass breaking, she moved without further thought. The point was to find someplace out in the open yet hidden-how many times had that been drummed into her? Not a closet or an attic.

She spotted it that same second, her imagination fast at work given the breaking glass. She grabbed the bolster in this first of the two back bedrooms, the room having been converted into a television den. She unzipped the zipper the full length of the long round pillow that sat atop the twin bed converting it into a makeshift couch. Inside was a tube-shaped filler that she quickly hauled out and wrestled into the room’s only closet, pausing as she found herself faced with two buckets of cleaning supplies, and on the shelves, in typical government fashion, another six cans of each cleaning product, all neatly lined up like little soldiers. Deodorant. Toothbrushes. Aspirin. Tylenol. Tampax. Toothpaste. Hand cream. A mini-pharmacy. How many times had she schooled Pe

The words on a green-and-white can jumped out at her: Oven Cleaner.

Paolo opened the bedroom door a crack, his back against the wall and away from the door in case someone threw shots blindly. He sneaked it open to where he could get an eye out.

An empty hallway. No guards.

Razor in his left hand, the borrowed gun now in his right, he moved down the hall, his back to the wall. He paused. He tried the next door. A bathroom, longer than it was wide. Empty of people, but not of their presence-a tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush, both new, on the sink.

Another bedroom, next door, near the top of the stairs, its bed made, but ruffled. Someone had lain there. The air smelled cleaner, less dusty, less trapped, and Paolo could picture Hope Stevens airing out the stale air ahead of the blackout curtains being hung.

He took a glimpse down the staircase. With the hallway being empty, if there were other guards they were downstairs. Was she down there with them, or had he missed her somehow? But the woman was most likely upstairs. He retraced his steps, hurrying down the hall past where he’d come from, only to discover an unexpected hallway that emptied quickly into a television room.

He stopped cold. He smelled her: the sharp tang of fresh sweat. The pungency of woman. Close now.

He raised and lowered the gun as he stepped toward the room’s closet.

He yanked it open, gun now aimed into the darkness. Found a string dangling and yanked it. A bare bulb flashed on, revealing two plastic buckets and some rags on the floor. All kinds of personal items and cleaning supplies on the shelves. A regular storehouse. A long white pillow, like a bolster.

Paolo jerked his head to his right: the bolster on the bed. Misshapen.

He followed along the zipper with his eye. A small gap at the very end, the zipper not quite closed.

There.

Weapon in hand, Larson accidentally smeared the doorknob with Marland’s blood as he cracked open the farmhouse’s back door and slipped inside. Panic had invaded him and he couldn’t shake it. He left the blood-smudged key in the lock to avoid making any more noise than necessary. Settle down, he told himself, but he found it impossible. He’d come across the body of only one of his fallen deputies. It had been too dark to identify him, though he believed it to be Marland.

He’d abandoned Hope here. Left her. Again.

He moved, cautiously and alertly, through the kitchen. Clear.

He surveyed the living room. Clear.

As he passed through it and crossed the hall and continued into the small study, the structure’s old floorboards creaked beneath him with every step. No matter how fancy he got with his attempts at delicate footfalls, the boards still complained, some loudly. He decided distraction wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He cleared the study, now focusing on the staircase to the second floor. Climbing those stairs would leave him exposed and vulnerable.

His lower back pressed against the handrail, his shoulder blades dragging on the peeling wallpaper, Larson started up the stairs.

They a

With the first of the sounds, the reluctant bending of unwilling wood, Paolo turned toward the improvised hallway and the second-floor banister beyond. Someone was coming.

Hope saw the intruder fix on her. He’d not so much as given the bolster a second look until he’d seen the pillow that belonged in it at the bottom of the closet floor. Then he turned and looked right at her-right at the tiny gap in the zipper through which she looked. Right into her eye.

He took a cautious step toward her. Then another, to the edge of the bed.

As a sound in the hall distracted him, she made her move. With her left hand, she stripped the zipper open. With her right, she pushed the can of oven cleaner out of the bolster, sitting up simultaneously.

He sensed her and turned.

She threw herself forward, aimed for his face, and pressed the button, the can issuing a hiss of white spray that grew into foam as it contacted his skin. The cleaner covered the right side of his face, bringing a scream of pain, and she kept spraying.

The burning began at once.

With the pain, Paolo’s finger involuntarily flexed on the trigger and the weapon fired wildly. Its recoil sudden and more than he’d have expected, his wrist was jerked violently back and, as he reached to stem the agony in his right eye, he dropped the weapon completely.

He lashed out blindly with the razor in his left hand, transferring it effortlessly to his right, and continuing to slash the air. The back of his calf caught the low coffee table and he went down backward, first to sitting, then rolling off the table.

Footsteps charging up the stairs.

The burning in his eye and on his nose and lips was more severe than anything he’d imagined and only grew worse. More spray hit him and again he lashed out at his attacker. Coming to standing, he caught blurry sight of the open door to the next bedroom and, feeding down from it, a second stairway-a back stairs. Everything inside him resisted turning his back on someone approaching. The person would shoot him dead.

He leaped for the door.

Larson, now at the top of the stairs, ran toward the gun’s report. He slipped on the hallway rug, banged into the doorjamb of the small television room, and an arm came down onto him as a gray blur. Heat penetrated the back of his right hand and his gun fell out of his hand as he realized he’d been cut.

Hope lay on the floor in some kind of sleeping bag, struggling to get her legs out.

A swipe came at his neck.

Larson jerked away from the attempt. He kicked out and co

The razor whooshed past Larson’s right ear. He ducked and kicked out again, this time spi

Larson regained his balance and delivered the tight knot of a fist squarely into the space above the man’s hip bone, pounding deeply for the kidney and bending him backward in pain as he co

Incredibly, the intruder spun as if never struck. Their arms tangled. Larson defended against the razor by first blocking an intended blow and then grabbing the man’s wrist. They banged together like a pair of wrestlers, still on their feet. Larson won purchase on fabric and pulled. Buttons flew. Fabric tore. The intruder’s shirt tore open. Two dozen red raised scars screamed from his bare chest. Random lengths and shapes. Some old and thick and hardened, as if recut many times. Some pink and raw and new.

Larson froze. He’d never seen anything like this.

The intruder caught him with a toe in the groin, snapping Larson over in pain. Inexplicably, he did not feel the razor run its course down his back. Instead, he heard the familiar sound of feet fading away from him. A crashing downstairs.