Chapter 26 Maria

Chapter 26

?Maria

Maria runs. She runs as fast as she has ever run and it still feels too slow.

She pelts across the hot terrace flagstone, her eyes flashing in every direction, certain she will catch the glimpse of another runner as she goes. Somewhere, she knows, the other man is still searching for her. And every second she does not see him, her fear mounts. Because she knows he is out here and as soon as he sees her he will be on her. Every second she does not see him coming is a second of advantage he will have over her. And Maria has nothing if she loses her advantage. At half the weight, strength, and fitness of these men, she knows she only stands a chance if she sees them coming and has time to outmaneuver them.

She skids to a halt as she reaches the steep stone steps leading down to the beach.

There is a chance he's down there already, that she might meet him coming back up the narrow staircase and be trapped. She glances back to the house and curses herself for not having kept hold of that knife. Instead, she left it as evidence.

Her mind briefly rakes over the coals of what she just did. She killed a man. Not just killed him but really, really killed him. She wonders fleetingly if that level of killing still falls under the banner of self-defense.

One stab would have saved her; twenty or so had perhaps been unnecessary solely for self-preservation. But the animal part of her is the only thing keeping her alive and Maria has absolutely no intention of trying to rein it in until she knows she is safe. Safe back in her home, back in New York, back in her bed, duvet pulled up snug and tight.

She isn't safe yet.

If he is on the stairs, if she runs into him, she will kill him. She promises herself that. Even if she has to die in the process, she will kill him. Or rather the primal part of her will, it promises her, and she feels safe because it hasn't let her down yet.

Maria launches herself down the stairs two, three, four at a time in massive leaps, her bones jarring with each. Sharp stones embedding and freeing themselves from her bleeding feet as she flies on.

At the midpoint bend in the staircase, Maria notices for the first time the camera positioned high on the rail post. They can see her still; she is still part of it, she is still in it. She considers again her plan, to swim to the public cove, grab the nearest stranger, and scream until they pull her from the water and call the authorities. That no longer seems safe. How can she know who the people in the public cove are, who they work for, who they know? And the local police: how can they not know what is going on behind closed doors in this house? Maria knows she is not the first and will not be the last.

No, it isn't safe to scream for help. It isn't safe to swim to the public cove. As she nears the base of the stairs she slows, her senses heightening, as if already picking up on the presence of another person. There is no one there that she can see, but then she can't see past the rocky outcrop that blocks the public cove from view and keeps the house's beach private. She pauses in the foliage and waits, but nothing changes. No figure appears. So she takes a deep breath in and a slow steady breath out to calm her nerves and bolts from her hiding spot toward the water.

Her plan is to swim out, to swim in the opposite direction from the cove, to swim toward the next private beach and the next until she finds an empty stretch of public sand. Then she will clamber out and run.

She is almost at the water's edge when she sees him and stutters to a halt. He has been crouched by the rocks. As he stands, she sees what is in his hand, and on a cellular level she knows what it means.

A long black rod hangs from his hand. She has only seen them on TV but she knows what it is: some kind of tasing device, but longer, a cattle prod of sorts. Maria watches as the end of it crackles. Even from this distance, she understands the implication.

She turns to look back at the stairs up to the house. She can go back, try another way. But then who is to say there aren't more men up there. Down here there is only one man and one weapon.

Basic physics tell her that the weapon's charge will not conduct through water—but if she enters the water and begins to swim and that man reaches her and tases her, she will simply slip beneath the waves. She will in essence be killing herself.

Of course, that would be perfect for them. Her cause of death would appear natural, a drowning—she is sure those happen every day across the islands. The momentary shock of that Taser will not show on an autopsy.

It suddenly seems crazy to her that she has thought even for a second that they didn't have a backup plan, this whole time, in case of her escape. Crazy that after everything they have shown her already about how they operate, and about their level of efficiency and rigor, she would still think they would let things run on to this degree without good reason. They are going to dispose of her in the simplest way possible: she will kill herself. A solo swimmer who got tired and slipped under, her bruises and bangs explainable by an accident on the surrounding rocks.

Maria feels sick at the cleanness of it all and a new anger begins to rise inside her, an anger at the idea that her pain could be so easily deleted, hidden, erased.

Well, I will not make it that easy. Oh no.

Maria will get her murderer's blood and hair and cells under her nails and take him with her if she can. She will make their plan an impossibility. And even if she has to die herself just to fuck them over, she will.

Instead of continuing into the waves Maria begins to walk directly toward the man on the rocks.

He seems momentarily surprised, his eyes flashing to the blood splashed across her dirty cream polo shirt, soaked into her cream shorts, drying into the skin of her hands and splattered across her set face.

Maria wonders if perhaps this is the moment the man on the rocks realizes that he might have to try a little harder than he'd thought; or if perhaps he thinks nothing at all.

Either way it doesn't matter—she is going to die and she is angry as hell and whatever happens she is going to take it all out on him.

Maria's walk turns into a run. She is running directly toward the man on the rocks at full speed. The man seems unsure about what is happening and though he raises the crackling stick and prepares himself for her attack he is somehow back-footed and that appears ever so slightly to unnerve him: after all he has the weapon, he is taller, stronger, not covered in his own and other people's blood. He surely has the upper hand.

Except he doesn't.

Because while Maria might not have seen a Taser in real life, she has witnessed the medical treatment of tasered patients in the hospital at Cornell. She knows that the short five-second bursts of electricity Tasers deploy intermittently are not enough to cause injury in and of themselves. As soon as the five-second burst lapses faculties are resumed. You are only in danger of dying during that loss of control. If people end up in the ER after being tased then it is due to a secondary injury. Falling, drowning, choking. Tasers stun the nervous system, and apparently hurt like hell, but they can't kill you. The only way you can actually kill someone with a Taser burst itself is to apply the pulse directly to the heart and keep going over and over again.

Maria knows that. All she needs to do is not die in the five-second increments that freeze her nervous system.

As she reaches the rocks, she dips to grab a fist full of hard wet sand and scrambles up to standing six feet from the man. He is big and she is small, but she reasons that this means he has farther to fall, and falling from higher up causes more damage.

Her bare feet cling to the rocks as the two face each other, their bodies instinctively crouched, their centers of gravity low. He is farther out, nearer the water, waves crashing sporadically into the rocks behind him, clearly forcing the issue. As the next massive wave crashes behind him, she flings the contents of her hand at his eyes, his hands flying up to protect himself. His vision must momentarily blur because, fearful of attack, he lunges forward toward her, stick crackling. Maria dodges to the side but even her reflexes adapted over the last six days cannot quite escape it in time, the edge of the stick making brief contact with her upper arm as she pulls away. The sharp stab and tug of white-hot pain grab at her skin like a claw and pulse through her as if trying to hold on to her indefinitely as she slips past it. And that was only a glancing blow.

The man pulls back hastily and regroups, wiping his face, the lunge having cost him his footing.

Maria sucks in a sharp involuntary inhale as the charge dissipates and she focuses. That was probably a one-second shock. She will need to withstand five seconds. It's doable, she can easily remain conscious, it will hurt like all hell but as long as she doesn't fall, she'll be fine. And that is when the plan forms.

Maria can pull the goalie.

She backs up, feet clinging to the jagged rocks as she puts distance between herself and the man. He duly advances, cautious, alive to her unpredictability, his weapon raised. A brief glance tells her she has reached the edge of the rocks and she leaps back down onto the wet sand, eyes still set on the man and his weapon.

She needs to get somewhere flat and far enough from the water that there can be no risk of drowning. Luckily, she has a whole wide flat empty stretch of beach to choose from. As the man becomes occupied in making his own labored descent from the rocks, Maria spins and sprints out to a section of dry beach and lies down and waits, limbs stretched out on the warm soft sand.

Every fiber in her body tells her not to do what she is doing. Every cell yells at her to stand, to run, to move. But she refuses to listen. She has a plan. She is pulling the goalie.

She knows the strategy from ice hockey. It is only ever employed in the final stages of a losing game. You remove all your defense and switch it to offense to gain an advantage. The goal is wide open, but you have an extra man on the ice.

And right here and now, the facts are the facts: you cannot die from a Taser—unless it is repeatedly applied to your heart, all it can do to you is shock your nervous system into falling, choking, or drowning. Well, now she is lying down so she can't fall, or drown, or choke unless the man carries her somewhere. And if he carries her, he can't shock her at the same time—she can fight, claw, bite, struggle, and all the while he keeps hold of that weapon, he will have only one hand to fend her off.

Each Taser burst lasts only five seconds and then the stick recharges before sparking again. If she can stay calm, if she can count out five, knowing how much it hurts but how little damage it's doing, if she can save her energy for that break—then she can get his weapon.

It makes sense in her mind but not in her body. Every muscle in her shudders to move as he tentatively approaches her. Maria wonders if he knows what she is doing. Even as the fear courses through her she thinks that he looks wary, but perhaps that's just her wishful thinking.

But when he stops near her, he keeps as much distance as he can between them, only the tip of his stick reaching her abdomen. And as it lowers toward her flesh, she squeezes her eyes gently shut and tries to relax every muscle in her body. She will not fight it until she knows it will matter. She takes a deep breath but does not get to finish it before the pain shocks through her. White light fills the darkness behind her closed eyes.

One.

Her body curves and arches beneath her and she lets the stabbing lashes of it roll through every muscle.

Two.

Her palms clench and release unbidden. She feels her bladder empty, warm and slow under her.

Three.

The stick is pushed deeper into her skin, the current running deeper, to her bones almost, as her spine flicks and spasms like a frog in a science lab.

Four.

It's almost over. Thoughts impossible to keep ahold of and meaning intermittent. She clings to the arrival of the next number.

Five.

And her body slacks into the sand. Now is her chance. Thought and the world are bleary but she knows she has only a moment before it begins again. And she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt where on her body the stick rests. She grabs for it, eyes flashing open, and tugs with all her strength.

And instead of letting go the man clings on, toppling forward onto her rather than releasing the weapon. But that is enough. She tumbles him down, under her, releasing her hold on the stick and double-fisting hunks of sand directly into the man's eyes and rubbing down hard—blinding him.

He yells out, writhing and kicking, but she stays low on him hugged tight to his core like a limpet. He releases the weapon and flails at her to get her off and she obliges, scrambling from his violent body onto the sand and snatching up the weapon. She turns it to face him, activates the charge, and applies it directly to his heart.

He fights it. She kicks more sand in his face, then applies a knee to his throat. At the end of five seconds, she pulls back, the stick recharges, she applies it again to his heart. And again. And again. And again. Until his movements stop.

Then she slides down onto the sand beside him, crying in deep shuddering sobs.

After a moment she calms her breath, carefully clambers up to standing, and makes her way toward the water.