Slap Shot (18 page)

“I’m sure he hasn’t…forgotten all about you.” My voice was so shaky it vibrated through my mouth, chattering my teeth. She was mad, crazed. I could see it in the wild flashing of her eyes. They were glacial blue but the whites were shot with blood and broken capillaries. She wore too much black eyeliner and it had seeped into small lines beneath her lids and into her crow’s feet. I would never forget her eyes, they were the last thing I was going to see before I died.

I don’t want to die. Life has just gotten so damn good!

“What…what do you want me to do?” I asked, gasping as she stepped so close the gun was less than an arm’s length away from me.

“I want you to go away, disappear. I don’t want you to ever be able to come into his life again.” She leaned forward and bared her teeth. Her lips were as cracked as peeling paint. “And I want you never to be able to touch him again. He’s mine, you’ve been trespassing, you’re a thief, nothing but a common whore and a thief and I want you removed from this world, from the universe. You will be punished.”

The restroom door swung open.

“I already spoke to Dana. Yes, they were going there anyway… I know, it will be great, I’m just going to powder my nose and I’ll meet you at—” Carly appeared, cell at her ear.

She stopped in her tracks. Her gaze fixed on Laurie aiming a gun at my chest.

Her eyes widened, her face paled. She dropped the hand holding her phone to her hip but she didn’t click it shut. “What the hell is going on?” she said in a loud voice. “Why has that woman got a gun pointed at you, Dana?”

Laurie lunged at me. Clasped her arm around my neck and spun me to face Carly. Cold, hard metal rammed into my temple. I was only seconds away from death.

I tried to scream but the noise never materialized. I wanted to fight her, get away, but what could I do? She had a gun pressed into my head. There was a live bullet with my name on it only inches away. My whole body buzzed with terror, blood raged through my veins. How could this be happening?

Carly stepped forward, palms up in a gesture of surrender, still holding her cell. “Hold on,” she said in a slow, steady voice. “Keep calm, nobody is going to get hurt in the ladies’ restroom.”

I kept my arms at my sides. I wanted to try to pull Laurie off me but it wasn’t worth the risk. Moving wasn’t worth the risk. I hardly dared breathe. Breathing wasn’t worth the risk.

“I’m going to kill this bitch,” Laurie snarled by my ear. “I’m going to splatter her brains all over the place, it’s what she deserves.”

“No one deserves that. No one,” Carly said. “Why don’t we talk about it without the gun? Put the gun away.”

“No.” Laurie jabbed it harder into my head and my neck wrenched to the side. “There’s nothing to talk about. I warned her to stay away from Ramrod but she didn’t listen, so now it’s time for her to pay the price. She’s going to get what she deserves.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. Prayed it would be quick. Quick and painless. I hated to think how it would be for Carly to see me murdered so brutally and for Rick to think it was all his fault. A sob gurgled up from my chest, a tear spilled from my eye.

“What the fuck is going on?” Rick’s voice suddenly echoed around the restroom.

I flicked open my eyes. He stood in the doorway, hair dripping and wearing only jeans which were not quite done up. Behind him was Brick holding his cell. Though he was dressed he was barefoot. Both men were breathing hard.

I lifted my hand up, reaching out to Rick. But my arm was shaking so much I had no real control over it. My body no longer felt like mine.

“Laurie, what the hell are you playing at?” Rick stepped forward, putting himself between Laurie and me and Carly.

“I’m doing it all for you, for us,” Laurie said in a sickening, simpering voice.

He shook his head. “What you’re doing is not for me. What you’re doing is a terrible, manipulative thing.”

“No, no it isn’t,” she snapped. “It’s what I have to do.” She removed the gun from my head and waved it toward him. “To make you notice me. You’re so busy being captain of the Vipers you just don’t have time for me, don’t have time to see what’s in your heart.”

Rick didn’t move. Brick grabbed Carly and dragged her from sight.

I tried to step backward, my legs shaky and weak, but the gun butted into my head again, just behind my ear this time. I drew my hands to my cheeks. They were shaking like maracas and I could hardly make them connect. My stomach churned, my heart pounded. My eyesight had gone wonky, everything was blurred.

“You made me notice you, Laurie.” Rick’s voice was steady and calm. “You know you did.” He took a step forward.

“But you didn’t call, you didn’t answer my letters and then you started sending me horrid lawyer letters and the police came to my house. You just don’t seem to care. You just don’t make me feel special anymore.”

“But you
are
special, you know that. Now please put the gun down. Put the gun down and we can all go and get a coffee and talk about this like adults.”

She sucked in a breath. “I don’t want to drink coffee with this bitch,” she said angrily, jabbing the gun harder at my head.

“No, no, please,” I gasped, my eyes not leaving Rick’s face. If I was about to die, I wanted him to be the last thing I saw, I wanted his face to be the image that would be with me for all eternity.

“Don’t shoot her,” Rick said, his nostrils flared as the muscle in his cheek flexed.

“Why not? I hate her.” She shoved the end of the gun with more force into my skull. “I hate her so much it hurts.”

Pain sliced around my neck and down my spine. I whimpered and balled my fists.

“But you don’t know her.” Rick stepped forward again. He was so close now I would almost be able to touch him if I reached out.

“I know that she’s been staying at your house,
overnight
. You let me stay once, remember?” Laurie’s voice lifted. “It was perfect, beautiful, the best night of my life.”

Several drips snaked down Rick’s neck from his sopping-wet hair. They trickled into his dense thatch of chest hair and disappeared. I wanted to be those drips. I didn’t want to be me, about to be murdered in front of my boyfriend. I wanted to be a drip all safe and sound against Rick’s chest.

“We did have a great night,” Rick was saying. His voice had changed, or maybe it was my hearing. It was softer, gentler, as though coming through gauze. “It was one of the best nights of my life too, Laurie.”

“So why was it only once?” she whined.

Rick held up his big palms. “Initially I lost your number and then, I’ll be honest, Laurie, some of those letters were a bit needy.”

“But I
needed
you. I needed you so badly.”

“I know that now.” He smiled but it wasn’t a real smile. There were no dimples and his soul patch barely moved. “You’ve opened my eyes and I do think we should make a go of it.” He shrugged and pointed at me. “She was just a passing phase.”

“You mean you don’t love her?”

Rick shook his head, his dark eyes glued on Laurie. “No, not at all, a quick fling. It’s
you
I want, Laurie, you’re the one for me. We could be so great together.”

Quiet fell over the restroom, interrupted only by a dripping cistern.

“What do you think I am? Fucking stupid?” Laurie suddenly shouted.

“No, no of course not.” Rick reached out. I couldn’t quite see, but I thought he had a hand on her shoulder. “Can’t you feel it?” he asked, his voice amazingly calm and soothing. “Can’t you feel the energy between us? It’s not like that with me and Dana, it’s just you, Laurie, just you that gives me the feeling of electricity when I touch you.”

“So I should kill her, get rid of her. Then we won’t have to worry about her hassling us.” She scraped the mean point of the gun over my scalp, tearing my hair until she reached my temple once more.

“What would be the point,” Rick said. “I told you, she means nothing to me. We don’t have to see her again once we leave this room, ever. She’s already history to me.” His other hand reached out and I felt his knuckle brush my cheek. He’d taken hold of her wrist, the wrist holding the gun.

I hoped to hell he knew what he was doing. I didn’t have any chance of dodging this bullet.

“Besides,” he was saying, “if you commit murder you’ll be locked up for years, years that we could be spending together.”

“But you’d wait for me, wouldn’t you, you’d wait for me?”

“It would be an awful long wait, Laurie, you know that. You’d get life for murder.”

I sensed more movement behind Rick and flicked my gaze around his shoulder. Three burly security guards stood in a row by the door. I didn’t feel any relief. What could they do? My fate was in Rick’s hands. If only he could persuade her to move the gun from my head. I didn’t care what he had to say, he could promise her anything. I just wanted her to believe it.

“Laurie, come on, put the gun down, you know it makes sense.”

“No. No and get off me.” Laurie had also seen the security men. “Get the fuck off me or she gets it. Now!”

Rick lifted his hands in the air, his eye contact with her not breaking for a second. He swiped his tongue over his bottom lip.

I wanted to fold onto the floor, my legs were like noodles. I didn’t think they could hold me up much longer. But I didn’t dare collapse, that might be all the excuse Laurie needed to pull the trigger.

“Take the gun from Dana’s head. It’s me you’re mad at, not her,” Rick’s voice lowered to a persuasive rumble. “Point the gun at me, not at her, Laurie. Come on, me not her.”

In an instant she released me. The hard end of the gun disappeared and I watched in horror as she jabbed it into Rick’s bare chest.

“No,” I cried, wanting to grab for it, my arms twitching. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t grab it and guarantee she wouldn’t fire straight into his heart.

“That’s it, good girl,” he said, “That’s better.” There was relief in his voice. He must be the only man in the world who could speak with relief when a psycho aimed a gun at his chest at point-blank range.

“
Now
we can talk about us,” he said.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “We have to talk about us.”

“You know what I think we should do first though?”

“What?”

“I think we should kiss. Do you remember that night, Laurie, that night when we had so much fun, we kissed and kissed, do you remember? Do you remember that, Laurie?”

My guts clenched, I was going to vomit, fear and disgust rivaling for supremacy at the sight of the gun pressed into his chest.

“Kiss?” she asked.

“Yes, let’s recreate the magic. Kiss me again, Laurie, like you did back then.” He leaned forward, the gun digging harder into his curls of chest hair and denting his flesh. He ignored it.

I wanted to step away, I wanted to collapse. I wanted to fling myself into his arms but I just stood, frozen to the spot—my head dizzy, tears flowing down my cheeks.

Laurie tipped her head. Her breaths were ragged, her stench overpowering.

Rick smiled at her, his eyes so black and intense. “That’s it, Laurie, kiss me.”

She stepped forward, touched her cracked lips to his in the briefest of kisses then pulled away.

“Is that it?” he asked, acting as if he didn’t have a gun against him and she was a wonderful, desirable woman. “That’s not the passionate, sexy kiss I remember. You can do better than that, come on, show me. Show me what I’ve been missing out on.”

In a sudden flurry, she lunged upward, threw her arms around his neck and sucked onto him, her high-pitched squeal of crazed pleasure filling the room.

Then it all happened so fast my mind couldn’t keep up with my eyes.

Rick spun Laurie around so her back hit his chest. The hand holding the gun was flung into the air, his fingers wrapped around her wrist.

An explosive bang blasted around the restroom. White plaster rained down from the ceiling as a bullet hurtled upward.

I screamed. Laurie screamed.

“Fucking bitch,” Rick shouted, stepping forward and ramming Laurie’s writhing body against the wall. The impact of her chest banging into the tiles sent a grunt from her lungs and the gun skittering under a cubicle door, spinning as it went.

The security men ran in, the dark navy of their uniforms instantly peppered by the snowy debris in the air.

“Stay the fuck away from me,” Rick snarled into Laurie’s ear. “Got it?”

Her face was squashed up against the tiles, her cheeks puffing in and out as she breathed and her eyes squeezed shut.

He loomed over her, teeth gritted, every single tendon and muscle in his back, shoulders and arms taut and prominent and coated in both sweat and plaster. “Because if you ever, ever come near me or anyone I care about again,” he snarled, “then you won’t just be going to prison. I’ll see to it that you lose function of all four fucking limbs and that’s if I’m feeling generous that day, got it? You fucking got it, bitch?”

“But you love me,” she cried, foamy spittle leaving her lips and dribbling to her chin. “Why would you say that? Why would you do this?”

“I don’t love you. I never have and never will, get that into your crazy fucking head, woman.” His body shoved into her harder and she cried out as she was squashed against the wall.