The Law of Nines

When Henry lunged at her, she dodged to the side and, with a good grip on her improvised wooden handles, gave the wire attached to his belt a mighty yank. It jerked him around. He stumbled a few steps. In a blink she circled around behind him.

Jax whipped a loop of wire over Henry’s head as she bounded up onto his back, compressing her body as she planted a foot between his shoulder blades. She let out a mighty cry of rage and effort as she used all her strength to straighten her coiled body while at the same time pulling on her improvised wooden handles.

For an instant, as he realized the danger, Henry’s meaty hands clawed at the wire around his throat. It was too late. As Jax screamed with effort the wire sliced cleanly down through his throat. Henry’s eyes bulged.

As Jax, her foot on his back, pulled the wooden handles she’d made, the wire knifed down through the carotid arteries as well as the esophagus and windpipe. It sliced all the way through everything but a bundle of the tougher tendons.

With most of the supporting neck muscles severed, his head flopped to the side. Alex could see that the wire had to have hit perfectly between two vertebrae, rupturing the disc.

The nurse screamed at the sight of Henry toppling over. Jax, a foot against his back and her hands holding the wooden handles as if she were holding the reins to a monster, rode the towering orderly all the way down. He hit the tile floor hard. His head smacked the hardest, making a sickening crack on impact. A thick red pool spread across the white tiles.

The instant Henry landed, Jax snatched the knife from his hand and sprang catlike up off the man, using him as a launching pad to make a dive for the nurse.

Just as the woman turned to run, Jax landed on her back. They both sprawled forward. Before they hit the floor Jax sliced the woman’s throat just as efficiently as she had once sliced Bethany’s throat in Alex’s bed.

Alex had been holding the orderly in a headlock for only a moment, yet already the man’s arms moved slowly, blindly, as he tried to fight for his life. When his arms swung, the hand with the severed tendons flopped without control. As he lost consciousness the fight was going out of him.

Alex used the opening to swiftly reverse his hold and throw a leg over the man. He used the leverage to give power to a quick twist that snapped the big man’s neck.

As the orderly went limp, Alex untangled himself and scrambled across the floor to Jax. She was just pushing herself up off the back of the dead nurse.

When she saw Alex her look of lethal rage instantly switched to tears of deliverance. She threw her arms around his neck. He felt a lump in his own throat. With the strength of her hold on him she wordlessly conveyed her profound sense of relief.

In the sudden silence, their breathing echoed softly in the shower room.

“Are you all right?” Alex asked as he held her head to his shoulder.

“I’m not sure. I felt like I’d become lost in some dark nightmare. I couldn’t understand it. I’m better, but I still feel strange, like I’ve lost my mind, lost myself.”

“You’re going to be fine. It’s the drugs they gave us. The rest of them will wear off in another day or so. Just stay with me. It will get better, I promise.”

She nodded against his shoulder. Now that the desperate fight had abruptly come to an end, the adrenaline rush was fading. Her arms loosened around his neck as her strength ebbed. Her voice, too, was weak.

“I thought it was over. I thought I was going to die hanging there. But when I saw you I knew it would be all right.”

He smiled as he held her shoulders and lifted her away from him. “We’re not out of this yet. I need you to stay strong a little longer. Get dressed. Hurry.”

Alex found the keys at the end of the wire cable that had nearly decapitated Henry. He hurriedly worked to disconnect the keys from the fitting at the end of the cable.

“I guess now I know how you felt,” Jax said as she pulled the jeans up her muscular legs, trying to cover herself as swiftly as possible.

“How I felt? What do you mean?”

“When I came to save you at your house and caught you with your pants down.”

Against all odds, despite the blood everywhere, despite the way his heart still pounded from the terror and rage, Alex laughed.

38.

HURRY, ” ALEXSAID, avoiding looking at Jax in her half-naked condition. “Hoffmann is probably raising an alarm, getting together help. The last thing we need is to get trapped in here.”

“Yuri is due to show up, too,” Jax reminded him as she pulled her boots on. “Yuri is not someone to mess with. He’s not like these two in here were, or even Henry. He’s better than good with a knife.”

“Let’s see if we can get out of here before we have to worry about him.”