Hostage

17

There was a fat yellow moon rising over the Colorado prairie, and immediately after the frame splintered and the lock parts scattered and a wall of cooler air came whooshing into the room, the silhouette of a man appeared in the doorway.

Maybe it was a combination of the lighting and the abrupt and violent nature of the entrance, but the man appeared to be about ten feet tall. Arms fashioned from tree trunks, chest as broad as a ‘58 Cadillac.

And he had gun.

Sozinho rolled off the bed, expecting a barrage of hot lead projectiles to come tearing into the mattress and maybe into his flesh, but all he got was a rapid series of metallic clicks. Apparently the man’s weapon was jammed.

Officer Vaughan’s pistol was still on the table by the window, several feet away and well out of Sozinho’s reach, but he’d slid his folding straight razor into his pocket before lying down on the bed. He pulled it out and snapped it open as he waited for the intruder to advance.

He didn’t have to wait long.

The man came charging forward, jumping over Vaughan and lunging toward the space on the other side of the bed where Sozinho had landed. The man reared back and came down hard with his fist, a blow that would have crushed Sozinho’s skull if it had connected. But it didn’t. Sozinho managed to dodge the punch, and before the man could deliver another one, Sozinho swiped the sharp steel edge of his expensive professional shaving tool across the man’s abdomen, ripping through the fabric of his shirt and opening a gash at least eight inches wide.

Frantic, moving quickly and fiercely to avoid a second assault with the blade, the man grabbed Sozinho’s arm, banging his wrist and hand against the top edge of the nightstand until the razor skittered away.

Then the man wrapped his fingers around Sozinho’s throat.

Sozinho struggled, clawing at the man’s face, trying to push him away, but he couldn’t. He grunted and gurgled and bucked and twisted, but it was no use. The man was too powerful.

It quickly became apparent to Sozinho that any effort to resist was a waste of energy, so he made a conscious and rational decision to stop fighting and let his body go limp.

Silence.

“What’s going on?” Vaughan shouted.

The man didn’t say anything.

Sozinho’s airway was occluded, but he’d decided not to panic. He’d decided to relax. He was an excellent swimmer. He could hold his breath for three minutes, no problem. And the man would bleed to death long before then.

It was still dark in the room, and Sozinho couldn’t see much of anything, but he knew that the cut to the man’s abdomen had gone deep. He’d felt it. He was surprised that the man had lasted this long. Soon he would collapse and Sozinho could breathe again.

But the man didn’t collapse.

If anything, his grip around Sozinho’s neck got even tighter.

And tighter.

And tighter.

And tighter.

And then a searing explosion of light flashed behind Sozinho’s eyeballs-a result of his brain being deprived of oxygen, he thought-and the man simultaneously and inexplicably let go and shouted out in pain.

Sozinho turned away and started gasping for air. The man fell back against the wall. Shaking. Moaning. Arms folded over his torso like he was hugging himself.

Maybe he was just now feeling the full effect of the gaping wound to his gut, Sozinho thought. Maybe his intestines had oozed out onto the floor.

Blinking his eyes back into focus, confident that the man was incapacitated now, Sozinho got up and staggered toward the table on the other side of the room, planning to finish the man off with a shot to the head. He grabbed the pistol, but before he could turn and pull the trigger, a veil of utter blackness fell over his visual field, as if he’d suddenly been thrown into a cave. He felt a burning sensation on the side of his neck, building gradually over a second or two, rising up into his brain like mercury through a glass tube, a dozen and then a hundred and then a thousand sulfur match heads flaring all at once, the pain more intense than anything he’d ever experienced in his life.

Sozinho went to his knees, and then he fell facedown on the floor, and then he felt a tingling sensation wash over his body like a wave, and then he felt nothing.