All that remained was for Hannibal to leave with his prize. The alarm would sound again, but he would easily reach his car before Rod or Derek even made it to the door. The contents of the computer disc would make Anita’s life much more pleasant, and perhaps of equal importance, they would restore her father’s legacy. Maybe later he would make an anonymous call to the police about the drugs in the house, just for fun.
Hannibal again released the front door locks but as his fingers touched the cold brass knob a resounding slap snapped his head toward the stairs. He froze in place as a second slap reverberated through the house.
“Wake up, bitch,” Rod snarled above. Mariah, Hannibal thought. The brute must have at least reasoned as far as the identity of his thief and now he was trying to get confirmation from Mariah.
“You were in on it, weren’t you?” Rod said. It was a course bellow that betrayed no disappointment, only anger. “You brought him in here to try to rip me off.”
Well, it wasn’t Hannibal’s concern. He had what he had come for. Rod had been hitting women for a long time, and would continue to do so after Hannibal was long gone from his miserable life. Besides, Mariah wasn’t like Anita or Marquita. She was a volunteer. She actually liked this stuff.
But did she like this stuff when she was half unconscious? And hadn’t Marquita and even Anita initially volunteered for, and even asked for, Rod’s destructive attention? They enjoyed being told what to do, and maybe even the humiliation until the party got rough.
Could he just walk out?
Even while he was considering his options, Hannibal was tearing a small hole in the cloth beneath the sofa. When the hole was big enough, he slipped the disc into it for safekeeping. Only then did he realize that he had made a decision.
At the top of the stairs he heard yet another vicious slap. The bedroom door stood ajar. Hannibal pushed it with one finger, easing the door open just far enough for his body to pass through. Facing Rod’s broad back, thickly matted with hair, Hannibal knew he could take him. He could call him, face off, take a couple of good shots and then kick this vicious animal’s ass. Derek was in another room, probably deep into the action with Sheryl. By the time he appeared, it would be over. Hannibal set himself, raised his fists and settled into a comfortable fighting stance.
Then it all changed. Rod pulled Mariah up by her hair, shouted, “You lying bitch,” and slammed a fist into her face.
21
As Mariah floated backward toward the bed, time down-shifted to a sluggish pace and Hannibal found himself in one of those defining moments that we see in slow motion with high definition clarity. He saw Mariah’s eyes, clouded yet aware, set in a face expressing more confusion than pain. Then his focus shifted to the enormity of Rod’s fist extended from his body like a weapon wholly separate from Rod’s body. Thoughts of a fight faded in the face of blind rage.
“You bastard,” Hannibal said through clenched teeth. His own right fist launched forward as if of its own will. His body began to pivot, his hips and back and stomach driving that fist forward. He saw awareness pull Rod’s face to the side. Rod began to turn to his own left. Rod’s left arm was tensed but held too low as he spun toward Hannibal. No! This was not the way it was supposed to go.
But of course it was too late. Rod’s hate filled visage turned toward Hannibal powered by the full might of his thick bull neck. Hannibal’s right fist drove forward, a missile beyond guidance, and Rod’s jaw moved directly into its path. The impact was jarring. Shock waves rode up Hannibal’s arm and into his shoulder. Shock washed over Rod’s face, chased by oblivion. As Hannibal withdrew his arm Rod began to drop toward the floor as if his soul had suddenly departed his body.
As the hulk crashed onto the floor life jumped back to full speed. Hannibal’s knuckles pulsed with pain, reminding him why he usually worked in gloves. Now he had only seconds in which to choose a new path. A face-to-face battle with Rod would have been more satisfying, but he had learned long ago that the only direction to go in life was forward.
His shoulders feinted toward the door before his head yanked him back toward the bed. If Mariah was in sight when Rod awoke he might beat her to death. Leaving her behind could not be an option. He grabbed her wrist and saw a slight smile move her lips as he pulled her over his shoulders. Hooking an arm around one of her knees he hurried down the stairs. In the living room he lowered Mariah to the sofa, even as he watched seconds tick past in his head. Time mattered, but now sound mattered too. He didn’t want Rod awake any sooner than necessary.
The basement held a storage area and a laundry room, but when Hannibal turned on the light his eyes scanned only the walls. He knew that home security systems were designed to defend from outside the walls, not from within. He found the small metal box he was looking for hanging beside the furnace. It was locked, and that would cost more seconds. He pulled a small Swiss Army knife from his pocket and opened the shorter blade. With it he defeated the lock in less than thirty seconds. Then he had only to flip two switches to shut down the alarm system.
Upstairs, silence and darkness continued to reign. Mariah leaked a soft moan. Hannibal hefted his human burden, not knowing how close to awareness she might be. With some effort he managed to sidestep out the front door and pull it closed behind them.
The air was thick and damp as he scampered down the street with Mariah across his shoulders like an ox’s yoke. Hannibal dragged air deep into his lungs, wondering if the alarm company received a signal when the alarm was disabled from within. If they did, he hoped that they would send the police to the house right away.
Less than a minute after leaving Rod’s house Hannibal was loading Mariah into his back seat. He felt naked and exposed under a white-hot full moon. Cars, trees and buildings hugged pools of blackness and when he closed the door and stood to his full height. Hannibal had the feeling that his shadow was taller than his soul. Still, he had more business to attend to. He pulled his backup piece, the Smith and Wesson Centennial Airweight, out of the glove compartment and ran back toward Rod’s house.
In seconds he was crouching silently beneath a rear window, one that would lead into the computer room. He slipped the five shot thirty-eight caliber revolver into the back of his waistband. What had come to Hannibal when he was standing over Rod’s unconscious body was a reconfiguration of values. The data disc containing Anita Cooper’s legacy was one objective, but he couldn’t abandon human needs for it. Even as he reached for Mariah he knew that he couldn’t leave the other girls behind. Sheryl might escape danger since she clearly had nothing to do with the apparently unsuccessful attempted theft. Missy, on the other hand, was still an innocent in Hannibal’s eyes. If he was going to stop to pull Mariah out of harm’s way, he had to at least save Missy as well.
A car full of loud teenagers approached from the beach and rolled past, leaving Hannibal with only the sound of his heart, thumping in a world painted stark blue and white by the moon. Then the sound of crickets slowly swelled in the yard behind him. That sound grew until the racket was almost as painful as the alarm had been.
Hannibal stood, fingers locked into the edge of the windowsill. His stomach clenched in anticipation of the next effort. Sensing no movement inside, Hannibal raised the window. While he pulled himself slowly up and into the room, Hannibal wondered if Rod had regained consciousness. If he had, walking in through the front door would have been suicide.