Page 49 of The Perfect Crime

After several seconds of confusion, she was able to discern her situation.She was lying on her back in the hallway between the laundry room and the breakfast room.She was dazed but didn’t think she’d lost consciousness when the back of the shovel made contact with her head.

Looking up at where she’d shoved Ryan against the washing machine, she saw that he was no longer there.She could hear him groaning in the distance, now more intensely than before.She also noted that someone had closed and locked the laundry room door.

Ignoring the throbbing in her cheekbone and blood dripping off her face, she rolled onto her side.A few more blinks and things became clearer.A man dressed all in black, including a ski mask, had dragged Ryan into the breakfast room.He was pulling out zip ties.

She allowed herself a moment to process the horror of the situation.Somehow, without their knowledge, the man they'd been after had been hunting them right back.Now, they were in the same situation as the prior victims.Jessie thought back to the warnings she'd given to the public at the press conference and realized that she'd ignored all of them.She wanted to get angry with herself, but there wasn't time for that.Ryan was in danger.

Jessie rolled onto her stomach and pushed herself up onto all fours.She took a moment to evaluate herself.She didn’t think she had a concussion.She didn’t feel any of the typical symptoms.

The man must have heard her moving because he looked up just as he was grabbing Ryan’s left wrist.Instead of continuing what he was doing, he started toward her.

Still foggy, she forced herself into a standing position.The man grabbed the shovel, which was resting against the kitchen counter, and gripped it with both hands as he approached her.

Jessie’s legs felt wobbly, but she did her best to focus, waiting for him to make his move.When he raised the shovel above his head, she leapt, taking him by surprise.She slammed into his chest as the shovel came down hard on her lower back before slipping from his grasp and landing on the floor.

She winced in pain but kept propelling herself forward until she smashed him into a kitchen cupboard.Plates came tumbling out, crashing onto the counter and then to the floor below, where they shattered.Even though her back was screaming at her and she could barely see through her blood-soaked eyes, she brought up an open palm from her free right hand, hoping to connect with the man’s lower jaw and get him to release the bear hug he had her in.

But the man saw it coming and swayed left, avoiding the contact.Her palm missed by an inch as it shot up in the air.The man wasted no time in responding.He flung himself forward, and his forehead hit her nose.In addition to the sting from the impact, her blood-filled eyes were now watery too.

The man released her from the hug and reached out for her neck.She tried to avoid him but lost her balance as she stumbled back, colliding into the butcher block in the middle of the kitchen.She couldn’t see him clearly, but when she felt his fingers dig into her neck, she knew where he was.Even as she began to struggle for air, she tried to stay clear-headed.

She reached out, grabbed the man by the hips, then brought up her right knee as hard as she could.When his grip on her throat relaxed, she knew she'd hit paydirt.She thrust her forearms upward, knocking his hands loose.Then, praying that the fuzzy image she saw in front of her was the man’s head, she smashed the side of his cheek with her palm.She knew she’d landed a good blow as the fuzzy image stumbled away.

She looked down at her hand and saw that she was holding the ski mask.She must have ripped it off the man’s face without even realizing it.It didn’t really matter as she couldn’t see his face clearly anyway.

She turned in the direction of Ryan, who was still slumped on the floor by the breakfast table.He looked to be trying to shuffle himself in their direction but could only move a matter of inches.She desperately wanted to go to him, to ease his suffering, but until the man was subdued, that wasn’t an option.

She turned back around to finish him off.Her vision wasn’t clear, but she could still make out what was happening.The man had gotten hold of a rolling pin—the one that Hannah had used the other night when she was making a pie for them.

Before she could act, he swung the pin at her.It connected with her lower ribs, making her double over involuntarily.But that only lasted a moment.The man, hands gripping the ends of the pin, thrust it under her chin and jammed it upward as he backed her up against the counter.

He pressed the rolling pin against her trachea.With her head lodged against another cupboard, she couldn't writhe away or move her head at all.Again, air became hard to come by.She tried to gasp, but nothing came in.She extended her arms to the side, preparing to box the man's ears, but when she tried to bring them up and inward, she found that she couldn't.She had no strength.She had no air.

And then her bloody, watery vision went black.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

Ryan pretended that everything didn’t hurt.

Instead of focusing on how his entire body seemed to be burning from the inside out, he tried to shuffle on his backside toward the man attacking his wife.If he could get close enough to trip him, maybe that would give Jessie enough time to regroup and get the advantage back.

But since the two of them had started fighting, he’d only made it about a foot.And now, as the man used a rolling pin to press the life out of his wife, Ryan found that moving even an inch was impossible.And then it was too late.

The man released his grip on Jessie’s neck, and she dropped heavily to the ground.She was unconscious—or worse.Ryan ordered himself not to believe the worst as he watched the man methodically drag her over to the butcher block.He pulled out a zip tie, attached it to her wrist, and then to a leg of the block.

“Don’t worry,” the man said.“She’s still alive.I can hear her breathing.You should be less worried about her than yourself.She’s here for the show.And you’re the show.”

Ryan wanted to kill the guy but knew that was a pipe dream.Breathing was hard.Thinking clearly was becoming more difficult with each passing second.And if his situation was anything like the prior victims, he estimated he had about an hour and a half left to live.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

When Jessie woke up, she found herself zip-tied to the butcher block.

Ryan was curled up in a ball at the base of the breakfast table.He wasn’t tied up.The man must have figured he was no longer a threat.She tried to ascertain the intruder’s location, but it hurt too much to turn her neck.A moment after she realized that, the pain in her forehead, cheek and ribs all joined the party too.Her nose and lower back weren’t much better.

“I was worried you’d miss all the fun,” a male voice said from somewhere behind her.

He stepped into view, and she saw their assailant.He hadn’t put the ski mask that she’d ripped off back on.That wasn’t a good sign.It meant that he didn’t care that she could identify him.

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