Hunter/Prey

Chapter 21

Police handcuffs consist of two cheek plates and the chain in the middle that connects them. The cheek plates themselves make up only half of the rings used to secure the captive’s wrists. The other half is the single strand, its end consisting of the ratchet that includes the “teeth” that is pushed into the plate in order to lock the device. This is what makes the clink-clink noise when a pair of handcuffs is secured. If properly locked, the teeth go all the way in, leaving no wiggling room for the captured wrist. It also hurt like a sonofabitch, but that’s the price of being a criminal.

Of course, when you toss the handcuffs to someone and don’t pay attention, it’s easy for him (or her) to not push the ratchet all the way in, thus leaving the handcuffs with a generous space for someone with slim hands to slide out of.

Like most women, Allie had slim hands. It was one of the reasons why it took her so long to become comfortable with handling weapons. “Girly hands,” one of her instructors called them. So when Beckard told her to cuff herself back inside the interrogation room, she did, just not all the way. Thank God he was too busy listening for signs of his fellow troopers out in the hallway to notice anything more than the clink-clink noise he had expected to hear (and did), and seconds later, the sight of her hands visibly secured as she stood across the table from him.

To keep Beckard from noticing, Allie hadn’t done anything to make him inspect her hands up close. He had believed her, because in fact the handcuffs were around her wrists and they did hurt, but they weren’t as all the way in as they could have been.

After that, she bided her time. Her best chance of escape was at the state police building, but that wouldn’t have worked. Beckard had made it perfectly clear he was willing to kill her if faced with capture. She believed him, too. This was a man who had murdered countless women, including her sister, in the last ten years. What was one more to him? She wanted Beckard dead in the worst way, but she didn’t want to die herself. Revenge was only sweet if you were alive to savor it.

When he gave her an extra pair of handcuffs and told her to “chain-link” herself to the metal spike in the bunker, Allie was worried. Beckard had proven himself unpredictable, and she wasn’t sure what he was going to do next.

But then he left, and she knew that was her chance. Maybe her only chance.

The only thing she wasn’t prepared for was the blood. There was a lot of it. All hers.

She started working on freeing herself five minutes after he closed the bunker door. Girly hands or not, it was far from easy. Her left hand was covered in blood, the skin along the thumb and pinky fingers raw and bleeding by the time she managed to pull the hand completely free of the encircling steel. She could barely hold her mangled hand up and felt sick to her stomach at the sight of so much blood dripping to the concrete floor.

Ten years of research, six years of training, and three years of getting ready for this moment, and I’m going to die from blood loss inside a stinking old bomb shelter from the fifties.

She fought back the nausea and went to work on her right hand.

A part of her thought it would be easier now that she had managed the left, but it wasn’t. If anything, it was more difficult because she knew what to expect — pain, blood, and tearing skin. She spent every second of it trying not to pass out and was able to do so by closing her eyes. That way, she didn’t actually have to see what she was doing to her hand. If she had a stick, she would have bitten down on it. But she didn’t, so Allie thought about Carmen instead.

Her little sister. Beautiful, vivacious, and so talented. Carmen would have been a dancer. A singer. An actress. Maybe all three, as long as it showed off the free spirit that she was, that Allie knew her to be.

Her little sister. Dead now, ten years gone.

And the man responsible could be coming back for her at any moment.

Maybe ten minutes.

Maybe twenty.

An hour?

But he was coming back, and she had to be ready.

Ten years of research, six years of training, and three years of getting ready for this moment, Carmen. I won’t let you down. I swear I won’t let you down.

Her right hand slipped out of the handcuff with a soft and sickening plop and she crumpled to the floor, where she lay on her back and tried to control her ragged breathing. Both her hands were bleeding, and terrible pain pulsed through every finger and every inch of torn and bleeding skin.

She didn’t want to move any part of her body, not even when she felt the wetness pooling under her.

Blood. Hers.

It was sticky. She had no idea blood would be that sticky…

No, no, no!

She sat up on the floor gasping, feeling as if the filthy walls had collapsed in on her, making the simple act of breathing a monumental task. It took a few moments before she could calm herself down and confirm she wasn’t dead, and that the light shining in her face wasn’t the entry to the afterlife.

The pain brought her back to the moment, and Allie glanced down at her bloodied hands and stared at them for the longest time.

The exposed skin at the edges of both hands were red and raw, and the thick layer of blood that covered them were still wet so she couldn’t have been unconscious for that long, though she wouldn’t have known that by the generous amount of plasma pooling under her. Both her pants and shirt were sticky with blood, and there was a smell in the room that wasn’t there when her eyes were last open.

She slowly stood up, careful not to use her hands as crutches. The sight of ruined skin (was that bone underneath?) made her want to gag all over again, and it was only through a lot of effort that she managed to hold everything in. Her stomach was too light, and she realized, almost as an afterthought, that she hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday’s lunch.

Her hands…had she permanently damaged them? All of this was going to be for nothing if she couldn’t use them again, especially when he came back—

She froze.

That noise!

It was barely audible, but clearly the same low rumbling she had heard earlier when Beckard left in the Crown Vic.

Beckard. He was back!

How long had she been unconscious? Ten minutes? Thirty? An hour?

She needed a weapon. Any weapon.

She glanced back at the handcuffs hanging off the metal spike. The long, sharp metal would have made a fine weapon (she imagined shoving it through Beckard’s skull), but that would mean prying it loose from the wall. She couldn’t have done that even with good hands, and right now…

Blood. Hers. Dripping from the handcuffs.

She almost threw up at the sight, but managed to get a hold of herself at the very last moment because—

The vibrations along the bunker’s concrete walls had stopped, which meant Beckard had parked the car and turned off the engine.

Find a weapon! Any weapon!

The cot was no good. Bashing Beckard’s head in with a fluffy (albeit nasty and stained) mattress wasn’t going to work. No, she needed something solid, firm, and maybe—

It was right in front of her the entire time and was the only reason she wasn’t standing in darkness at the moment: one of the portable LED lamps hanging off the wall from a hook.

She grabbed it, wincing at the contact of the lamp’s plastic handle against her still-bleeding fingers. Every inch of her hands hurt, as if she was constantly being shocked with electricity. She grimaced her way through them and thought about Carmen instead.

Her little sister. Everyone who had ever met Carmen loved her. You couldn’t help yourself. She was kind and giving and beautiful. So beautiful. Even in a hundred years, Allie would never come close to matching her little sister’s—

The harsh grinding of the door opening behind her snapped her back again.

She raced up the steps, dripping blood the entire way but refusing to acknowledge it. What was one or a dozen more drips when her clothes were still damp from lying down earlier? She imagined she must look like the girl in the movie Carrie, at the prom, covered in pig’s blood.

She reached the top landing when the door was halfway open. Beckard was slightly bent over and had his shoulder pressed against the door, so his back was partially turned to her as she hurried up the steps and slid, gasping for breath (and praying he didn’t hear), behind the moving thick slab of wood.

He was holding two large bulging plastic bags in his good hand, while a third smaller bag dangled from his heavily bandaged one. He stood in the open door for a moment to catch his breath, which came out shallow and labored, and for a split second she took pleasure in knowing he was probably in nearly as much pain as she was at the moment.

She tightened her grip around the lamp’s handle, grimacing at the searing pain that caused, as he straightened up and stepped through the door, exposing his left side to her. Unfortunately that meant his holstered Glock was on the other side, and she wanted that gun. The knife was facing her and within easier reach, but she wanted that gun. She needed that gun.

With no choice, she swung the lamp and caught him in the back of the head.

He might have let out a guttural grunt just before he stumbled forward, the LED lightbulbs popping and showering the landing with sparks. As his body moved away from her, she dropped the lamp and followed and reached for the handle of the gun in the holster—

No! her mind screamed as Beckard tripped on the top step and went tumbling down one, two — ten steps to the bottom of the landing.

Desperation and regret quickly gave way to optimism at the sight of him crumpled down there like a pretzel.

Maybe that did it. Maybe he broke his neck. Did I hear a crack?

Maybe…

She took the first step down after him when he opened his eyes and looked back up at her from the concrete floor below, his body wedged at the turn. He was on his back and the bags he had been carrying had gone flying. Food, drinks, and some cheap off-the-rack T-shirts and a cap were scattered around him.

Then he was reaching for the Glock—

She turned and fled and heard the bang! as Beckard fired behind her.

A big chunk of the concrete wall above the door exploded and showered her as she ran through the falling debris.

Another bang! but this one didn’t do anything, because she was already outside and running through the glowing dawn. The woods seemed to have come alive and birds were chirping wildly from the trees. She swore there were animals running around the underbrush and bushes to the left and right of her.

The police car was close by, and she made a beeline for it. There were two bullet holes in the windshield that hadn’t been there earlier. What did that mean? Had Harper caught up to Beckard while he was out there? Was the state police sergeant on his way here now? Maybe she should hunker down and wait for him. Maybe—

The shotgun!

It leaned between the two front seats, but even as she lunged for the door, she knew it wouldn’t open. She jerked on the handle anyway — ignoring the screaming pain from the contact of her raw and bleeding fingers against the cold metal — just to be sure.

The door wouldn’t budge.

She thought about breaking the window.

How? With her hands? What hands?

With her elbows? Her feet?

If she could find something stronger — a rock, maybe — she might be able to gain access. Of course, she’d need time for that, which was something she didn’t have at the moment.

She ran past the car and saw the rough trail Beckard had carved out for himself with his travels back and forth from the bunker. It was barely noticeable, but the trampled grass told her where to go. Or, at least, the direction.

Allie didn’t run down the road. Instead, she darted into the thick patch of woods alongside it and burst into the trees, lifting her arms over her head like a shield to batter away branches in her path.

There was just enough light for her to see where she was going. All she had to do was keep following the road while staying out of sight. Eventually, it would take her back to the highway. Harper would have mobilized the state police by now and would be looking for them. There would be cops on the road. She might not have needed — or wanted — them last night, but she could use one (or a dozen) of them right about now.

She wasn’t sure how long she had been running when she saw it — a large bump lying in front of her, like some creature that had dug its way out of the ground to block her path. Her instincts were to jump over it, but knowing what she should have done and actually doing it were two different things. Her body was tired and her hands hurt so damn much, and she ended up tripping on it instead. Allie stumbled forward but still managed to turn her entire body, ending up on the slightly damp ground on her butt.

She stared forward at the body. It was the state trooper she had seen in the backseat of the squad car when Beckard first put her inside. Jones something. She hadn’t seen it last time, but in the growing daylight the gaping hole in the back of his head, facing her, was hard to miss.

Allie scrambled to her feet and started off again, but she hadn’t gone very far when she stopped and looked back at Jones.

Weapons. She needed weapons!

But Jones didn’t have one to give her. He was unarmed and wasn’t even wearing his gun belt. Instead, she began unbuttoning his khaki shirt, when—

“Allie!”

The only reason she didn’t get up right away and race off, Jones’s shirt be damned, was the realization that Beckard’s voice was coming from a distance. Though near enough she could hear it echoing across the woods, she concluded he was still back at the bunker. That helped her to finish unbuttoning Jones’s shirt.

“You can run, but you can’t hide!” he shouted.

Who says I’m hiding, asshole?

She pulled Jones’s shirt off and staggered up to her feet a second time and turned and began jogging through the woods. She ripped the shirt apart as she went, then began wrapping the pieces around her damaged hands. The feel of the soft fabric cocooning her raw skin stung briefly before becoming a soothing glove.

After about thirty more yards of constantly moving, she could barely feel the pain anymore.

Or, at least, that’s what she told herself.