Portia released her outside the door to the receiver room, dumping her unceremoniously into a heap on the floor. Squatting down beside her, he cupped Rebecca’s chin in his rough—skinned hand and pulled her face close to his.
“Sweetie? I need you to focus for a moment, okay? Come on.” He snapped the fingers of his free hand in front of her eyes. Rebecca flinched uncontrollably and let out a quiet whimper, but it had the desired effect; she met his gaze.
“Focus! That’s it, good girl. Now tell me, is there anybody else I need to know about besides that little bitch? Any other surprises I should be worrying over?” Rebecca shook her head. “You wouldn’t tell me anyway would you? Hmmm?” Portia let out a bellowing laugh, grabbed his hostage by the arm, kicked open the door to the receiver room, and dragged the weeping woman inside.
Fifty
“Well doesn’t this just goes to show, you can’t trust anybody these days.” Portia directed his sarcasm at Rebecca. She lay in a crumpled heap where he had thrown her in the center of the floor, but his eyes had fixed on the other occupant of the transmission room.
Simone had frozen where she stood when the killer kicked open the door to the room, separated from Portia and Rebecca by the midriff—high cupboard holding the now useless experimental receiver.
Portia scanned the room, sniffing the air like a cat checking out a newly installed appliance, suspicious and wary of a trap.
“So where’s that little bitch I chased in here?” he asked, his lips drawn back in a distrustful half smile.
“Don’t tell—” Rebecca began to say from the floor, but her sentence was cut short with a swift kick to the stomach from Portia.
“Was I talking to you? No,” he screamed at her writhing form. Then more quietly, “Now, Simone, where is Doctor Drake?”
A vein of anxiety pulsed just beneath the surface of Simone’s voice when she answered. “I don’t know, she left to go check on Rebecca and hasn’t come back yet. Please, I don’t understand what’s going on? Why are you doing this?”
“Well, it’s a long story, sweetie and unfortunately, I don’t have the time to explain it to you, so why don’t I just show you?” Stepping astride the prone woman, he grabbed Rebecca’s hair and forced her head back exposing the white curve of her throat again. She could feel the tip of his razor cold and sharp against her skin.
“Actions speak louder than words. That’s what my Daddy always used to say,” he continued, as he sank to his knees, straddling Rebecca’s body. He drew the knifepoint down her throat, across her breastbone until he reached the first button of her stained blouse.
“Please, no,” Rebecca whimpered. “Not again.”
SNICK! Her first button disappeared with a flick of his wrist, bouncing off under a table.
“Oh my God, no. What are you doing? Get away from her.” Simone took a step around the cupboard towards them.
“Stay right where you are, bitch,” bellowed Portia, “or I swear I will pop her eyeballs right out of her head.” He moved the point of the knife to Rebecca’s bruised eye to illustrate his intention. Portia’s grin widened and his breathing began to increase as he saw the fear turn to terror in Simone’s eyes.
“Please,” Rebecca begged.
SNICK! Her second button was gone.
“Too late for you, baby,” he said through a maniac grin as he worked the knife between the cotton of her shirt and the final button. A subtle flick of his wrist sent it rolling away into a corner. Using the tip of his knife, he pushed each side of her shirt aside. Sweat glistened on his forehead and his breathing picked up.
“Mmmmmmmmm!” he whistled appreciatively. “I’d forgotten just how sweet you were.” He ran the blade back up over her breastbone until the tip rested just below her chin.
“Leave her alone, you son of a bitch,” Simone cried, fighting back tears of anger and frustration.
Portia turned his head to face her, grinning at the distraught woman. “Don’t worry, sweetie. You’ll get your turn.”
In the cupboard to his left something rattled.
Portia’s attention flicked instantly toward the sound. “Well, what do you know? Looks like you have rats,” he said, his eyes narrowing to slits of suspicion. “Stay right where you are, sweetie. I’ll be right back.” He glanced at Simone. “If you move, I’ll split her open,” he warned.
The noise from the cupboard came again, this time louder, the sound of something shifting its weight.
Climbing off the prone woman, Portia crawled on his knees the few feet to the cupboard door.
With the butt of the knife he knocked twice, hard and loud. “Hello little mousy. Come on out.” Silence was his only answer. A cloud of anger crossed his face and he drew back his arm for a more vicious swing at the closed door. “I said,” he bellowed, “Come on—”
Before he could finish, the door exploded outward, and with a banshee scream, Adrianna Drake launched herself from her hiding place. Leaping around Portia’s guard, she clung to the killer’s face like a deranged chimpanzee. Portia let out a scream of pain as the diminutive professor of Physics sank her teeth deep into his nose, tearing away a chunk the size of her thumb. Blood splattered her face as she spat the lump of flesh over his shoulder, where it landed with a wet plop beside a stunned Simone.
Portia’s hand instinctively flashed toward his ruptured nose, forming a fist that smashed into the little girl’s face and sent her sprawling onto her back on the lab floor.
“You little—”he began, but stopped mid-sentence as his peripheral vision caught the movement of Rebecca’s now free hand flashing upwards, palm up, toward his knife hand. Her upturned hand caught the butt of the knife and forced it, point first, into Portia’s exposed throat.
The blade sank deep into the fleshy tissue, just above his Adam’s apple. He immediately fell sideways, his hands clasping at the hilt of the dagger and the remaining two inches of blade protruding from his neck, a look of stunned amazement in his eyes. Blood began to pour from the wound. Portia’s eyes widened with shock, his mouth worked spastically and a sound that could have been an expletive but instead turned into a wet Ughmpph rasped from between his lips as blood filled his mouth, spilling out in a thick red ribbon over his chin.
Rebecca rose uneasily to her feet.
“Bish,” her killer rasped, “You lishle Bish.” His voice was now nothing more than a weak blood-soaked gurgle.
Rebecca stood over the prostrate form of Byron Portia for a moment. Then without a word she raised her knee to chest height and stomped her foot down on the protruding butt of the knife, driving the remaining few inches of blade deeper into his throat until it could go no further.
With a look of utter astonishment in his eyes, Byron Portia, until that moment the world’s most successful and luckiest serial killer, choked to death on his own blood in under a minute.
Fifty-One