Face of Death

Too late, Zoe realized the truth. He had not leaped out the window at all; that was why there was no evidence of it. She heard the creak of a door behind her and dimly remembered seeing a janitor’s closet, and one footstep on the tiled floor, and she knew that she had made a mistake in turning her back on him.

Instinctively, Zoe’s arm shot up, holding the gun. She wanted to turn and point it at him, but there was no time.

All she succeeded in doing was catching her arm in the wire that was intended for her neck, her hand and wrist knocking into her own face as he pulled tightly, drawing it into a loop. She managed only to articulate a strangled gasp as she dropped the gun, flinching as it hit the floor with a loud clatter.

It was sheer luck that it did not go off—good or bad—perhaps it might have hit him if it did. But he was pulling resolutely, hard, with the same determination that had dispatched all of his victims so far. Zoe heard herself cry out involuntarily as the fabric of her jacket gave way, the wire cutting through into the flesh of her arm.

She could not go down like this. She could not allow the three-centimeter wound to grow larger, could not allow the wire closer to her neck. The killer had a strong grip, but he was off balance, his usual stance thrown off by the interference of her arm.

She threw the other elbow back, connecting fully with his lower chest, hearing him wheeze as some of the air was knocked out of him. He stumbled back but took the wire with him, making Zoe cry out again as the wire bit deeper into her skin. She could feel hot blood running down her arm already inside her sleeve, pooling inside the material where it bent.

He was standing just an inch or an inch and a half outside of her elbow range now, still pulling hard, the wire so sharp Zoe feared it might go through her arm before she could defend herself. He was bent forward slightly in her peripheral vision as she turned her head, his neck bent at thirty degrees, his hips at sixty. Top-heavy. Unbalanced. Humans had been designed with finesse, but they had weak points.

Zoe dropped to her knees, going down without any safety net, knowing it would likely hurt. Her kneecaps collided with the tiled floor with a dull thud that echoed through her body, shaking more blood from the wound of her arm, splattering it across the tiles in front of her. A clue for investigators in the future. The killer held on tight, but as the wire dipped under the weight of Zoe’s body dropping, he was pulled further off balance, tumbling down with her.

His body struck hers with a heavy weight, shoulder colliding against spine, head glancing off shoulder. They were on the floor and Zoe was free of the wire at least for a moment, falling loose like a halo around her, but her arm was gushing blood and the gun was out of her reach on the other side of the bathroom…

He saw it at the same moment that she realized it, and then they were both lunging for it, fighting to get their hands on it first. Zoe undercut him at a leaner angle and knocked him out of the way, down again, as she struggled to her feet. The wire forgotten behind her, she had not a moment to hesitate as she saw him lunging forward again. She had not succeeded in winding him a second time. He would reach it first.

She had to do something. In desperation, Zoe whirled, seeking something that would provide a moment of advantage. Distraction. There! Flinging out her elbow, using the arm that had already been damaged, she struck a mirror and shattered it into pieces.

“Look!” she shouted, her voice underpinned by the tinkling of shattered glass falling down. “The pattern!”

The killer glanced back toward her, startled. She saw his eyes change, widen, in recognition and surprise at the understanding. His gaze darted then toward the floor, as if unable to resist. The glass was settling, some of it fallen into the sink, some in a semicircle around it on the floor. The empty space within, the curved shape, the spray of errant pieces—it was irresistible to him.

Zoe leaped forward and got her hands on the gun as she slid along the floor. Her shoulder hit the back wall, and she ignored the pain racing through not just that spot but her whole arm as she rolled to raise the gun. She got it up in front of her, waiting for the world to stabilize just long enough to see him lunging for her again, and she pulled the trigger.

Point blank range, almost. Only a millisecond more and he would have been on her. Even if she hadn’t known how to aim, she almost certainly would not have hit him.

He slumped to the floor, taken back a few inches by the impact of the bullet, and raised a hand to his chest to examine the hole that had suddenly appeared there.