“I’m not gonna let you!” The man’s voice was high pitched, unstable, and . . . scared?
Not gonna let me what?
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, Rachel turned the gun light back on. She knew the layout of the house in the dark. The intruder did not. The foyer off the stairs split off into two paths: the dining room to Rachel’s left and the living room to the right. The living room flowed into the kitchen, which was connected to the laundry room, which then circled around back to the dining room. The man was somewhere in this circle. Rachel didn’t hear any sirens. It had been, by her estimate, just under two minutes since the initial gunshot.
She turned right and crept into the living room. She looked at the TV, hoping to catch a reflection. Nothing.
She heard a crunching sound and wheeled around. Her right hand was tight on the shotgun’s forearm, the stock nestled into her shoulder. She swept the gun light over the room. Nothing.
Rachel stayed low. She was sweating, blood pounding in her temples. She duck-walked into the kitchen. Empty. As was the laundry room.
Then she heard a creaking noise that was unmistakably the sound of someone going up a flight of stairs. He’d circled around behind her and was heading up toward the bedrooms.
Rachel turned the gun light off, inched back to the stairs, and raised the shotgun.
“Freeze!” she yelled, turning the gun light back on.
The light illuminated a man standing halfway up the staircase. His back was to her. He held a SIG Sauer P226 in his right hand. The hilt of a large hunting knife protruded from a leather sheath clipped to his waist. Rachel aimed the shotgun at the center of the man’s back. She flicked the gun’s safety button off. No way she’d miss.
“Put the gun down!” The man remained still. He was wearing a black sweatshirt. A balaclava was pulled over his head. She couldn’t make out his face, hair, or features.
Rachel heard sirens. The man flinched. The gun remained at his side.
“Please,” she said, her finger on the trigger. Her breathing was even. “Put it down. The police will be here in seconds. Nobody has to get hurt.”
“I can’t let you,” the man said. She thought she heard him weeping.
“I promise you this can be worked out.”
He shook his head. “It can’t.”
The man swung around and raised his gun. Rachel tilted her shotgun slightly up and to the left, breathed out, and squeezed the trigger.
The sound was deafening, a rocket blast that made Rachel’s ears ring. The gun recoiled sharply into her right shoulder, pain shooting down her body. But she kept the gun in place and fed another shell.
The blast hit the man in the right shoulder and knocked him backward onto the steps. The SIG Sauer flew from his grasp as he let loose a howl of pain. Without a moment’s hesitation, Rachel sprinted up the steps and grabbed his gun. She noticed that the hammer was back, and the safety was off. The gun was ready to fire. He was here to hurt someone. She released the hammer and tucked the gun into her waistband.
The man writhed on the staircase, hand on his wounded shoulder, blood oozing between his fingers. The sirens outside were growing louder as they neared. Rachel squatted over the man, knelt down, took the knife from his pants, and tossed it down the steps. She searched him quickly and couldn’t find any other weapons.
“I told you it didn’t have to go like this,” she said. She pressed the shotgun barrel against his neck.
Rachel could see the man’s eyes. They were hazel, bloodshot. His pupils were dilated. He was on something. She reached down, gripped the balaclava from underneath his neck, and slid it off.
“Oh bloody hell,” Rachel said.
Staring up at her, bleeding all over her staircase, was Christopher Robles.
CHAPTER 14
Five Years Ago
The sign on the door read “Slugfest Boxing” in faded red lettering painted on heavily rusted aluminum. The dot over the i in “Boxing” was a ring bell. She took the wadded-up napkin from her purse and double-checked the address in southwest Torrington. She was in the right place. She still didn’t have the faintest idea what she was doing here . . . only knew that she needed to be.
Her son had woken up screaming again last night, a bloodcurdling howl that had had her running to his bedroom before the neighbors could call 911. She’d gathered him up in her arms, felt a sense of utter helplessness as his tears spilled onto her skin, his cries of terror tearing her heart to pieces.
I saw it again.
She’d rocked him and told him it would be all right. She would take care of him. Protect him. But she was barely holding on herself.
Her children could lean on her, but she had only herself. With no support, her only option was to strengthen her resolve, her mind, her body. She’d unpacked all the books, spent hours after the children went down, churning through them. For the first time in years, she’d felt invigorated, challenged. But God, what it had taken to get there . . .
They couldn’t stay in Connecticut. The memories covered their lives like moss. Eventually they would have to move. Far away. Start over. Uprooting the children would cause even more chaos, but it was necessary to move on.
Jim Franklin had told her about the secret classes at Slugfest. A client had gone there after leaving her abusive husband. It was a haven for those hurting, he’d said. A dojo for the damned.
The front door took two hands and a grunt to budge. The scent of perspiration and chemical cleanser wafted out.
She slid inside, her heels sinking deep into the rolled rubber floor. Poor choice of footwear, she thought. She looked around. Heavy bags were chained to the ceiling, speed bags mounted to wooden beams. The walls were covered in posters and illustrations of boxers, none of whom she recognized save Muhammad Ali and Rocky Balboa, the latter of whom, to the best of her recollection, was not a real person.
“Hey, Blondie! Over here!”
She turned around. A group of twenty or so people of varying ages, shapes, and sizes sat on rows of bleachers facing an empty boxing ring. A woman stood in front of the bleachers, looking at her impatiently.
The woman—the instructor, she presumed—was about five ten, with long red hair tied back in a ponytail. She looked to be in her early thirties, wearing a tight gray tank top and black leggings. She was pure muscle from the thighs to the shoulders and looked like she could pick the bleachers up and carry them around without breaking a sweat.
“Over here,” the instructor shouted. She walked over to the group. She was nervous, and it showed. A gym bag was slung over her shoulder, filled with a change of clothes, a water bottle, baby wipes, feminine hygiene products, lipstick, ChapStick, deodorant, and a protein bar. She climbed into the stands and sat down next to a timid-looking man in his midforties with a terrible comb-over and an awful case of halitosis.
The instructor pulled a cell phone from her bra and then looked from the phone to the stands, counting.
“Looks like that’s everyone,” she said. “So let’s get started. My name is Myra. That’s not my real name, but that’s what you’re going to call me. We don’t use real names here because even though I’m going to kick your ass into the next century, I want you all to feel safe. Protected. You’re all here because you’ve been through some shit. Bad shit. Shit that would make weaker people lie down and die. But not you, right? You’re here because you’ve already been through the worst of it. You’re here to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Right?”