Blood soaked through Davis’s jeans, making the fabric slippery, but she tightened her grip and dragged him closer. Going artery hunting with the Stanley knife again.
‘GET OFF ME! GET OFF ME!’
The knife bit into his other leg, inches from his groin, but it’d be infinitely more satisfying to castrate the bastardbeforehe died. So the next stab halved the distance.
Davis thrashed and screeched, bawling like a smacked child, writhing hard enough to tear the Stanley knife from her blood-slicked grip and send it clattering off into the darkness.
Fuck.
Unarmed now, she clenched her fist and slammed it right into Davis’s balls.
Whoomp– the air and the fight went right out of him with a strangulated whimper. He curled around his battered testicles, moaning.
Strange, you’d think the lacerated thighs would be worse, but that was men and their balls for you.
She ripped the torch from his head and went through his pockets.
Yes!
That foul little dog’s paw was in his back pocket, the collection of shiny metal keys dangling from the leg end. The tiny one he’d used to unlock her mouth was still there, as were a bunch of others.
One of these bastardshadto be for the padlock at the back of her collar, keeping her shackled to this galvanised bin full of bloody concrete.
Leaving him to groan and whimper, she spun the collar around her neck, till the padlock was at the front. A big brass Yale job. And there was only one Yale key dangling from Fido’s paw.
Please. After all this...
She skittered the key into the lock and twisted. Theclickof the mechanism as it swung open wasthemost beautiful sound in the world.
Soon as she pulled the lock out of her collar, the whole thing clattered to the ground, chain and all.
She was free.
She wasfinallyfree!
Now where’s the knife, so she can finish the job?
The torch beam swept across the dirty floor and the newspapers and the fallen rocks and big chunks of stone, but the Stanley knife had disappeared.
WHERE THE FUCK WAS HER STANLEY KNIFE?
Davis stopped whining – swapping the self-pitying snivel for a puce-faced hissing rage. Blue jeans turned a deep, glistening shade of claret from waist to shin as he cupped his poor little balls.
Try childbirth, then see what real pain—
His foot lashed out, catching Natasha’s left knee, making something insidepopas red-hot wires lanced through the joint, twisting and coiling, searing straight out the other side.
Natasha roared as the leg gave way, and she staggered back against her anchor, setting it rocking.
‘KILL YOU!’ He struggled to his feet. Teeth bared. Spittle frothing out with every Pitbull breath, one hand pressed against his torn, bleeding face. ‘I’LL BLOODY KILL YOU!’
And you justknewthe bastard meant every word.
And he was much bigger than she was.
And standing between her and the open door.
Natasha pulled the head torch on over her matted curls, and scrambled through the window hole. Grunting every time her throbbing knee took any weight, the joint yowling as she tumbled out onto the gravel. She landed with a whump on her back, hard enough to leave her gasping for air.