The door opened. Up close, she could see that his gut hung over his pants and a light sheen of sweat covered his brow. He held the doorknob with one hand and a can of beer with the other. His brown wiry hair curled around two monstrous ears.
Kitally shivered.
“What are you selling, little girl?”
“Nothing.” She tried to peek over his shoulder. “I’m having car troubles.” Without looking behind her, she gestured across the street toward her car. “Would it be possible to use your phone?”
He glanced at the car, then gave her a once-over before taking another look across the street. “That’s a nice car. Where’s your cell phone?”
“I forgot to charge it last night,” she lied. She couldn’t understand why Hayley wasn’t making a run for it, but maybe by calling him to the door she’d given her a chance to climb out a window or run out the back door. “Maybe I’ll just try the engine one more time. Sorry to have bothered you.”
Before she could leave, he grabbed hold of her shoulder, his hand clamped so tight she could feel the rough edges of his fingernails through her shirt. “You can use my phone,” he said.
She stepped inside. The door shut behind her. A lock clicked into place. She headed left toward the kitchen, but he stopped her again and pointed to the right. “The phone is this way.”
She followed him down a narrow hallway. The place smelled like body odor. The guy obviously didn’t own a bar of soap.
There were two bedrooms. Both doors were open. Holmes walked ahead while she stopped to look inside the first bedroom. There was a futon covered with dirty clothes. A desk with a computer sat in front of the bedroom window. Where is Hayley hiding? “Don’t you have a phone in your—”
A hand clamped over her mouth.
She hadn’t seen or heard him step up from behind her. He dragged her backward into the next room. Not only was he overweight, he was strong, and he had her flat on the ground with her hands wrenched back behind her, nearly three hundred pounds keeping her down. She wriggled, tried to get air to her lungs. It was no use.
Moving an inch or two at a time, Hayley wriggled her way out from under the bed. What was Kitally thinking, coming into the house? She had single-handedly compromised their plans.
On her feet, Hayley looked around the room. All that came to hand was an old stapler on the desk. It was a real warhorse, at least. The thing felt as if it were made of wrought iron.
It shouldn’t have surprised her to see Kitally beneath the big man in the next bedroom, but it did. She swung the stapler with all her might at his head, but merely clipped him when he turned at the last instant. The effort she put into the swing caused her to lose her footing and stagger backward into a dresser.
He was fast for a big man. He jumped to his feet and reached out for Hayley before she could catch her balance. Yanking her arm behind her, he twisted until she had no choice but to give in. He had her in a headlock.
Kitally was on all fours, her chest heaving as she caught her breath. Hayley watched her use the wood frame of the bed to slowly pull herself upward. Her legs wobbled like a newborn deer’s.
They were fucked.
But apparently it was all show. When Kitally whirled around, Hayley wrenched her head to one side, giving Kitally room to jam the heel of her hand into Holmes’s nose.
Bone crunched.
Hayley yanked herself free, but Holmes reeled around, blood gushing from his nose as he blindly planted his knuckles into Hayley’s left cheekbone.
Growling, Kitally struck him in the throat, then used her body weight to throw a sharp elbow dead center into his torso, finishing with a right knee to the groin.
Holmes grunted and fell to the ground.
Hayley and Kitally took off at the same time, down the hall and out the door. Hayley slammed the hood of the car down just as Kitally jumped in behind the wheel. Hayley leaped into the passenger seat right before Kitally hit the gas.
When Hayley looked back, she saw Holmes charge out the door holding his face, stopping in the middle of the street. He was still standing there when Kitally took a sharp left and disappeared out of sight.
Hayley opened the mirror on the visor. There was already some discoloration, and her eye was swollen and half-shut. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Why did you come after me? That was never part of the plan.”
“All you had to do was text me,” Kitally said, “and let me know you were having problems getting shit done in there. I thought you had fallen into a black hole. When Holmes drove up and I didn’t see you drop out of a window or come running around the side of the house, I knew I had to do something.”
“Stupid move,” Hayley said. “I had it under control. And the reason I didn’t text you back was because I had crawled under the bed and I couldn’t reach my phone. I could hear Holmes in the kitchen, rifling through the refrigerator. Once he settled down, I was going to sneak out the back door.”
“You were on the wrong side of the house. The back door, if there was one, was on the other side.”
“Then I would have crawled through the fucking window.”
“You said you would be fifteen minutes.”
“No, I told you to give me thirty.”
Kitally shook her head as she kept her eyes on the road in front of her. “That’s not what you said.”
Hayley opened the glove box and pulled out the throwaway phone. Then she called 911 and reported a rape taking place inside the house on 1273 Florence Drive in Sacramento. She told them to hurry, and then she hung up the phone before they could ask for a name.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lizzy had worked late last night and didn’t get home until well past midnight, when the only noise outside was the chirping of crickets. By the time she awoke, the sun was up and the day had started without her.
She staggered into the bathroom. A dizzy head prompted her to hang on to the counter for support. She felt hungover; with dark circles under her eyes, she looked hungover, too, and yet she hadn’t had a drink since Hayley found her in the office drowning her sorrows in a bottle of scotch three months ago.
It took her fifteen minutes to get through her morning routine. Downstairs, she found Kitally at the kitchen table, eating scrambled eggs.
“Morning,” Lizzy mumbled. “How did everything go with the prison guard? Any problems getting in and out?”
A girl stepped out of the main part of the kitchen and into view. Her black hair was pulled back into a bun. She was olive-skinned, ridiculously young, and pregnant.
Lizzy cocked her head and said, “Who are you?”
“I’m Salma. Who are you?”
Lizzy looked at Kitally. “What’s going on?”
“Hayley and I were driving around looking for the Ghost when we happened upon Salma sleeping in the park.”
“So you brought her here?”
“There’s plenty of room,” Hayley said from the main living area.
Lizzy lifted both palms in question. “Are we opening up some sort of home for misfits?”
Kitally’s eyes widened in surprise. “I don’t know. Is that what we are—misfits?”
“I can cook,” Salma said, “and I—”
Ignoring the girl, Lizzy turned around and walked into the other room, where Hayley was sitting on the couch, tapping away on the keyboard, absorbed in whatever she was working on. “We can’t talk openly if she’s going to be staying here,” Lizzy said.
Hayley looked up.
“What happened to your face?” Lizzy asked. “Who did that to you?”