Page 10 of Wrong Turn

“Come back to party, little girl?” said a voice from her left. Lei glanced quickly at Joao, greasy hair mussed with sleep. “And just when we were getting tired of your friend.”

Kelly raised her head from the far corner of the room. Her mouth was taped, and her eyes looked like holes in the dim light.

Lei gritted her teeth in a snarl. “Hands up!”

Fernando had something in his hand. Lei couldn’t tell what it was, but the other man, on her right, had stood up too. He also held a weapon.

“Drop it!” Lei barked, as loudly and authoritatively as she could, but she’d never aimed a gun at another human before, let alone pulled the trigger. Her stomach roiled with panic. Her hands trembled, holding the Glock; her fingers were not obeying her mental order to fire.

Joao leaned over, reaching for the rifle at his feet as Fernando took a long step toward Lei. Lei recognized the shape in his hand—the giant Buck knife she was already familiar with. His teeth shone in a grin, and a trick of the light made them look pointed.

Where the hell was Harry?

A gunshot boomed in the enclosed space, so loud it seemed to explode Lei’s eardrums, and the unknown man on her right went down, a giant hole in his chest. Joao spun toward the sound, the rifle in his hands. Harry peered down through the hole where the rusted vent had been, holding a shotgun.

Lei shot Joao in the side as he raised the rifle and aimed for Harry.

The recoil of the handgun vibrated through her arms; the sound of the report much louder than she was prepared for. The expended brass flew up and hit her in the forehead, causing her next shot to go wide.

And she’d taken her eyes off Fernando.

The burly bald man hit her like a linebacker, bearing her backward to slam against the wall beside the door. His knife was at her throat, his teeth bared in a fierce grin as he pinned her against the wall.

“I’ve got you now,chica,” he breathed in her face, his breath foul.

Lei writhed beneath his heavy body, panic swamping her in a dark wave. Her vision telescoped. Her weapon dropped from nerveless fingers as he squeezed her wrist in a meaty grip. She twisted in Fernando’s grasp, breathless from the force of the impact.

Lei’s mind flew away to that dark place where it went when things were just too terrible to know. This man wasn’t the first to hold her down and touch her in unspeakable ways.

One moment Fernando was there, crushing her as her vision narrowed to a black dot. The next, Fernando’s head was gone, flying off his shoulders to land on the ground with a wet thump that sounded like a dropped melon.

Lei was bathed in hot, jetting blood as the man’s corpse, not yet knowing it was dead, leaned heavily on her, twitching. She pushed against it, and the body fell away, landing beside its head.

Lei didn’t feel the blood soaking her clothing, spattered across her face. She didn’t feel anything in the place she’d retreated to. But her eyes were strained, and when she blinked, they stung, and she could feel the blood cooling on her face.

“You injured?” Harry asked. The sword she held dripped onto the dirt floor.

“No.” Lei bent and picked the Glock up off the ground. She walked past the bodies to Kelly, squatting beside where her friend lay on a pallet. She pulled Joao’s knife from the scabbard at her waist and cut Kelly’s duct tape bindings. She carefully peeled the sticky silver tape from Kelly’s mouth. “You okay?”

“I am now,” Kelly said. “You look really, really gross.”

Lei laughed, and the sound of her harsh chuckle sucked her back into her body. She stood, trembling with the aftermath, and looked over to see Harry finish off Joao with a matter-of-fact stab to the back as the man crawled toward the fallen rifle.

Lei stumbled a few feet away and upchucked against the wall.

Kona nosed through the door. The dog’s muzzle was streaked with blood and he was limping, but he was clearly the victor of the tussle in front of the building.

Lei wiped her mouth on her blood-speckled shoulder. She had to breathe through another wave of nausea. She looked back at her friend. “Are you sure you’re okay, Kelly?”

Kelly had removed the last of the tape and she tossed off the Mexican blanket and stood up, brushing herself down vigorously, as if to get rid of every dirty thing that had touched her.

“I got groped and I had to give everybody a couple of blowjobs, but Fernando didn’t let them rape me. Said they’d get more money from my parents if I wasn’t damaged. They contacted my folks this afternoon and sent them pictures. I think the money was going to be on its way tomorrow.”

“You got lucky, then.” Harry wiped the long gleaming blade of the sword on Joao’s shirt before sheathing it. “Let’s get out of here and destroy the evidence.”

“How?” Lei gestured to the three fallen bodies.

“We’ll fire the place.” Harry said. “I’ve done this before, so listen up. We need to make sure there’s nothing identifying on these bodies.”

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