The Good Fight 4: Homefront Page 7

  He made some sort of low noise that turned my stomach, and I opened my mouth, trying to make my shift to heavier, more panicked breathing soundless. My eyes darted around the room as I realized I hadn’t brought anything to fight against this asshole, and they fixed on an empty glass soda bottle on a side table across the room from where my quarry knelt. With a blink, I appeared there, grabbed it, then a blink later I stood behind the man, who still seemed oblivious to my presence. With a flick of the wrist, I pushed the mouth of the bottle up to the edge of the man’s hairline, angled towards the rest of the man’s head.

  “Don’t move, you stupid rapist bastard,” I said.

  I cleared my throat afterwards, wondering how my voice had gotten so low, rough, and menacing, but a second later I noticed that the man had indeed frozen in place, and even whimpered as I pressed the bottle harder against his neck.

  “Get your fucking dirty ass paws off of her and put them together behind your back,” I continued, as I spotted his hands still on her, one on her upper thigh and the other near her knee. “If you move at all, other than that, I swear I will blow your worthless head off of your disgusting body.”

  Clutching the bottle so hard that I could see my knuckles whitening, I jabbed it into his neck hard enough to rock him forward in order to convince him I was serious. When his hands fell to his sides, and then he brought them behind him, I noticed him shaking.

  “Stay right there, and don’t think I can’t shoot you while I’m trussing you up like the pig you are,” I said.

  It had come out in a growl, but I didn’t mind by then, and I focused instead on moving the bottle under my arm as I grabbed his wrists with one hand and a zip tie with the other. I fastened the ends as fast as I could and pulled them tight enough to be uncomfortable, but not enough to bite into his skin if he didn’t squirm. Breathing out with a sense of relief, I frowned as I breathed in a familiar ammonia smell a moment later, and straightened up.

  “Yeah, you should be pissing yourself, you sick bastard,” I said, and shoved him with my foot, pushing him down prone on the floor.

  He just went with it, slumping over on his side with another whimper. The show of timidity didn’t appease me, though, I just felt more furious. I pushed him again, so that he rolled a foot away from the couch and turned my attention to the unconscious blonde. Pulling her dress down, I rearranged her on the couch so that she lay on it, not sitting in a half-slump like he’d thrown her. To my surprise, he remained in the same position as when I’d turned back to him.

  “What the fuck were you thinking?” I asked him, unable to help the way my voice rose in volume. “Haven’t you ever heard of how this works? You go to a club and just keep asking people you like until someone says yes. What on earth makes you think you can take something just because you want it?”

  He mumbled something and I kicked him, not hard, but enough so that he stopped. “If you have anything to say to me,” I added, “you can speak up so that I can hear you, or you can shut the fuck up and keep it to yourself.”

  “No one ever says yes,” he said, looking in my direction but not into my face.

  “Really? Did it ever occur to you that women have a lot of experience picking out crazy fucks like you? Guys who are always on the edge of assaulting you, sexually or otherwise? Let me assure you, it’s not because they’re all chasing after some James Bond or Bill Gates or something. There are plenty of everyday guys out there who are getting laid every fucking day, mostly because they have something to offer a partner other than rage and assault.”

  “That’s easy for you to say, you’re a woman.”

  I snorted a laugh of disbelief. “What, you think all I have to do is flash my pussy or my tits and I can get any swinging dick I want? That’s some bullshit people want you to believe. I’ve been turned down by plenty of men in my day, and women too, if you want to know. It’s some rank bullshit that men will always say yes to sex. Let me tell you, if you haven’t ever been on the asking side for men, there are plenty of guys out there who are completely able to control their sex drives. I know this might shock you, but there are some guys aren’t even into fucking at all. And, guess what? When I get turned down too many times, I just sulk, go home, have a dish of ice cream and a long bath and go to bed with my favorite toys. I don’t feel like I have to go out and drug and rape people. So, I call bullshit on your sob story, try to sell it somewhere else.”

  I waited for a while, but he didn’t seem to have anything else to say. “Is that it? Because it sounds to me like you think you’re owed because you have a dick and can’t convince anyone to give you somewhere to put it. I’ll tell you what, I’ve heard that guys in prison have a really low opinion of shitty rapists like you. I think I should figure out a way to throw you over the wall of one with ‘rapist’ written all over your sorry ass.”

  I laughed as he let out a wordless exclamation of terror and began trying to wriggle towards the direction of the door, with little success. I let him try for as long as it took me to rummage through a desk nearby and locate a thick black magic marker.

  “All right, scum, time to head out,” I said as I reached him again, just a foot from the couch.

  Leaning down, I knelt on his chest to hold him still as I uncapped the marker. “Hold still, asshole!” I said in a cheery voice as I used one hand to push his head to the floor. I held him down at the eyebrows as I wrote, ‘RAPIST’ in capital letters across his forehead. As I got back up, I could see him crying.

  “What’s the problem, jackass?” I asked, clenching my fingers together against the urge to slap the taste out of his mouth.

  “I don’t want to get raped,” he said in a whisper.

  My muscles contracted as my whole being fought to belt him with one of my fists, but I took a deep breath and waited for the feeling to pass. “Oh, so it’s good enough for women that have done nothing to harm you, but somehow it’s too good for you? You disgusting fucking worm, I should kill you, but that would be too good for some shit cake like you.”

  Shoving my foot beneath his back, I closed my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them again, the wind whipped around me. I blinked as one gust pushed my hood back, feeling the clean air wash over me and rid me of some of the vile sickness I’d been feeling. I took in a deep breath as I put my foot on his chest, and looked out over the dark water below.

  I could see a few ships in the harbor, but beyond I could see the lights of the city, skyscrapers lit up and blazing against the darkness. I had a lot of memories of this city, from as early back as I could remember, and there are a lot of things I like about it. Lots of interesting people, things going on day and night, and you can find pretty much anything you’re looking for there. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things I don’t like about it, as well, but there’s one thing about it I always loved, and that was the look of it from a distance.

  After I’d had my fill of glancing in every direction, I tuned back in enough to hear the sack of shit I’d brought along with me making whimpering noises.

  “Oh, buck up shitheel. Just take a look through the railings there. No, turn your head and have a glance; don’t move too much. Millions of people live in that city below. And guess what? Most of them are better people than you!”

  I fished in my pocket for another zip tie and grabbed his ankle, then fastened it to the iron railing nearby.

  “They should put people like you under the jail,” I muttered, pulling the tie tight enough to bind him to the rail but not tight enough to dig into his skin, if he remained still.

  “Where are we?” he said after I finished, his voice quavering and sounding full of tears.

  “Someplace special,” I replied, giving him a smile that must have looked more like a shark’s open mouth. “You’re in the torch on the Statue of Liberty. No one else can come up here, either. They say someone fucked it up years ago and it hasn’t ever been the same since. So, hopefully it doesn’t fall down or something while you’re up here.”


  “You’re joking, right?”

  I shook my head, and I guess he could see the gesture well enough in the ambient light that he threw out some more panicked words a second later.

  “How the hell did we get up here?”

  I chuckled as I grabbed his arm, directing his hands closer to the railing, where I zip tied the loop holding his hands together to the railing, as well. Standing up again, I took a couple of steps away from him to lean and glance out over the city once more.

  “You’re not going to leave me here, are you?”

  Looking back at him then, I narrowed my eyes and glared until he dropped his panicked gaze.

  “I could just as easily have dropped you over the side of this building, chump. I think it’s such a fine evening that you should just stay here a while, thinking about how lucky you are, and about how you shouldn’t have the right to associate with the rest of us civilized folk, since your behavior is much worse than that of most wild animals. Maybe if you’re really lucky, I’ll come back for you at some point. They refurbished this a couple years ago, by the way, so it isn’t likely anyone else will come along, even for maintenance. Bye!”

  I still had a mean smile on my face when I got back to his apartment, at the look of panic on his face and the way he’d opened his mouth to scream. It faded as I looked to see the woman on the couch, still passed out. I went to her after a moment, because she seemed so still, but I sighed out a big breath as I felt the rise and fall of her chest and her heart still beat when I checked the big artery in her neck.

  I smoothed her skirt down again and noted that she still had her purse looped over one shoulder. When I turned to get her underwear off the floor, however, I swore when I saw that he’d damaged them. She’d been wearing a pair of string bikini panties, and he’d ripped them apart on one side.

  I sighed, thinking that maybe I should just try to put them back on her as is, but then I thought about what I’d feel in the same situation, and my stomach started to ache. Biting back the nausea I felt, I rooted around in the rapist’s desk until I found a tiny sewing kit, the kind you might get from a well-stocked hotel.

  Somehow, through a lot of swearing and false starts, I managed to thread the needle and began to sew the string back onto the underwear. Because of the layers of fabric, however, I found it slow going and hazardous, stabbing my first finger halfway through the sewing experiment.

  With a gasp, I put my finger into my mouth, then felt stupid, throwing my sewing project down and stalking to the kitchen sink. Using the rapist’s dish soap, I muttered every swear word I knew as I washed out the wound, but my view of the scene grew hazier until I felt other water dropping onto my hands. Snuffling, I bent my head to wipe my cheeks on my shoulder as I turned the water off, then shook my hands to get the water off of them.

  “I’m being ridiculous,” I growled to no one in particular, and dried my hands on my jeans before I went back out to the living room to finish the sewing. Once done, I eased the underwear back onto the blonde, rearranged her dress again, and then reached for her purse.

  Fortunately, I found her driver’s license in her wallet, but the address threw me. I knew a spot in the neighborhood several blocks from her, but it wasn’t the nicest to go out in at night, especially walking. With a sigh, I levered her up and shouldered her, then blinked and appeared in an alley near a hotel about a mile from her house that had cabs waiting most of the time. To my great pleasure, when I poked my head around the corner, I spotted one idling at the curb.

  When he gave me a funny look as I pushed her limp body into the cab, I just shrugged. “My friend here had too much to drink, so I’ve got to get her home.”

  He nodded as I gave him the address I’d read off her license and drove off the minute I tucked myself in beside her. I sighed as I sat back on the seat, then shifted as my movement made her lean towards me. I looked out the window at the changing scenery a moment before realizing that in my great hurry to get changed, I’d forgotten to grab my purse again when I’d left my own room.

  Cursing under my breath, I looked in the rear-view mirror before reaching around the blonde beside me to fish around in her purse. The driver seemed oblivious to my actions, instead swerving around some other car that had stopped in the travel lane for no reason I could tell. To my relief, she’d prepared for her night out, so she seemed to have enough cash to cover the cab ride.

  When the cab stopped, I handed the driver enough for the fare and a decent tip, but not enough to be memorable, and somehow managed to get the blonde out and up to the front door of her building. Of course it took a key to open, but at least she only lived on the second floor. By the time I’d dragged her up to her place, I felt glad I had a sweatshirt on rather than the clothes I’d worn clubbing, because I hate having to go to the dry cleaners.

  In the blink of an eye, I went back to my room, grabbed my purse, and replaced the money when I got back to the blonde’s—Michelle’s, as I now remembered from her ID—place. I’d laid her out on the couch, which looked as if it opened out into a bed, but I couldn’t figure out how, so I left it as I’d found it. I was about to get out of there when I thought for a moment about how I’d feel if I’d woken up in similar circumstances, not knowing how I’d gotten home or what happened that evening.

  With a sigh, I located a pen and paper and began to write.

  Michelle, I saw the man who drugged you, mostly because he tried to do it to me earlier in the evening. I couldn’t get to you soon enough to stop him from taking you from the club, but I caught up to you before he could do anything really bad. In the future, if a jackass like that tries to give you a drink, just do what I did and pour it on his shoes. Your friend, Serena

  Shrugging, I put the note on her coffee table before I blinked away. I sighed again as I appeared in the middle of the rapist’s living room and began my search. It didn’t take me long to find what I figured were his knockout drugs, in an unlabeled bottle in his medicine cabinet. I poured the shit down the toilet, then found a piece of paper and a pen.

  Rapist scum, I have my eye on you. If you ever try to use crap like this on any other woman, I will be back, and you’ll think the Statue of Liberty is the nicest vacation location you ever saw in comparison to where you’ll end up next.

  I attached it to his fucked up wooden kitchen table with a knife, putting the empty bottle next to it, and then realized I still had the fat magic marker I’d written on the shithead with. So that I didn’t surprise anyone, I walked to the front door and wrote on it, ‘A rapist lives here,’ in letters a foot tall. Glancing out one of his windows, I found a fire escape out there, and so went out and wrote, ‘RAPIST HERE’ across his three windows. Putting the magic marker back in the desk drawer, I glanced around to make sure nothing else of Michelle’s or mine was still lying around, then sighed and blinked, ending up in my room.

  I thought for a few moments about going back downstairs to see if Lex or Riss was still up when I realized that I’d only been gone about an hour, but for some reason, I didn’t think I could face them right then. With a sigh, I changed for the third time that night, ditching my hoodie and putting on a black t-shirt instead, then grabbed my black leather jacket and closed my eyes, thinking. After a moment, a bar came to mind, one just down the street from the club I’d been at, but a much lower key place that didn’t hold a crowd, where people seemed to go to talk or have a few quiet drinks. With a nod, I opened my eyes in the alley I’d gone to earlier, but turned in the opposite direction when I got to the mouth of it.

  After I’d walked half a block, I opened the door and went inside. Going past the tables at the front, I headed for the bar that ran along the back wall. The tables seemed to be about half full, and a man and another couple sat near one end of the bar, so I headed for the other. I took a seat near the opposite end and watched the bartender as she opened a beer for the man sitting alone.

  She stood maybe a few inches taller than me and looked slim and willowy compared to my curves.
I admired the way her black hair hung straight and heavy across her cheek as she bent her head to hear something the customer said, and then at the way she’d had it cropped close in the back so that I could see her long neck. I couldn’t help the smile on my face as she finished with him and came my way.

  I took a moment to admire her as I brought my gaze up, studying her delicate hands, smiling at her goofy t-shirt with some kind of animated characters on it that looked like something Lex would wear, and ending up meeting her eyes. I couldn’t help but suck in a big breath at her lovely face, high cheekbones, and the deep brown eyes that met mine. From her features, I figured she had some sort of Asian heritage, but otherwise I couldn’t guess much else about her.

  “Hello, beautiful. Could you please get me a margarita on the rocks? No salt, please, I’ve had a salty enough day as it is.”

  Wincing as I spotted her raised eyebrow as she half-turned to grab a bottle of tequila on the bar behind her. “I’m sorry, I know, it’s bad of me to hit on the bartender. I’ll have to ask you to forgive me, my normal charm seems to have left me high and dry after today.”

  Chancing a look back up at her, I felt happy to see her smile as she finished up my drink and put it in front of me. “Sounds like something happened to you.”

  I just shook my head as I took a sip of the drink, then smiled in return. “You wouldn’t believe the half of it.”

  “Try me,” she said, and seemed serious as I looked up at her this time.

  “It’s kind of a long story,” I hedged, wondering whether I wanted to tell it, but she gave a huffed laugh in return.

  “It isn’t going to pick up in here for another hour or two, depending on how crowded the clubs nearby get. People come over here to drink when they can’t get into the clubs, or close the deal once they’ve found someone they want to talk to, so I’d say you’ve got a solid hour, at least, to tell me what happened.”

  I raised an eyebrow and grinned. “Oh, so that’s what excites you, a good story?”