The master bedroom was a little too warm, so she used the twist handle to open one side of the window near the bed. A powerful rush of night air smacked her in the face, sending her hair whipping about. She hoped it would only take a few minutes for the brisk wind to lower the room’s temperature to where she wanted it. Winter in Arizona wasn’t blistering cold, but the nights could get chilly, especially on the twentieth floor of a high-rise as dawn approached.
She stood motionless for another five minutes, looking through the sparkling glass, letting the stunning view of the cityscape and its sprawling sea of lights dazzle her vision. The moon was crisp and bright, floating halfway up from the horizon, showering downtown Phoenix with an eerie backlight, making everything appear medieval.
The room’s window was an impressive pair of rectangles that extended from two and a half feet off the floor all the way past where she could reach up with her hand, giving her an incredible wide-angle view of everything. Across the street was one of the city’s tallest buildings—seventy floors at least. It was an office building, if she remembered correctly from something she’d read in the library about its unique construction challenges. It rose up like a twisted DNA strand, reaching for the heavens with every story.
On one of the twisting sides facing her, some of the lights were on. They loosely formed the letter C. She smiled, thinking of her mother, Candi. Then sorrow tried to creep into her heart, but she wouldn’t let it. She turned it away in a second, wanting to enjoy the quiet moment and the picturesque view.
She leaned through the window opening and looked down at the intersecting streets, searching for signs of movement. There were none. The city was asleep for the night, resting until the new dawn arrived. She took her hands off the window frame and put her arms out like a preacher getting reading to bring it home at the end of a Sunday service. The breeze rocked her, making her heart race as she thought about what it would feel like to let herself fall. If she did jump, would she splat on the pavement before the jump process could carry her away to safety? Sometimes the jump happened quickly, and other times it was slow and methodical. Since she couldn’t control it either way, she decided to take one last refreshing breath of air and step back inside. She used the handle to shut the window, though she didn’t close it completely. The room’s current temperature was close to where she wanted it. She hoped that by cracking the window open an inch, it would remain that way all night until it was time to make an early exit before the staff showed up for work.
Emily focused on a wooden interior ledge that stuck out along the window’s bottom edge. It extended into the room about four inches and would be the perfect place for a few miniature houseplants, and maybe a stuffed animal or two. A little more greenery was all the place needed, channeling something her deceased mother had once said.
She studied the decorative, thick-grained wood frame around the window. It was a stunning accent to an already impressive design, though it needed a window covering. Not enough privacy, with all the creepers around with their telescopes. She switched off the lamp on the nightstand, removed the jumpsuit and let it fall to the floor, then climbed into bed. The silky-soft sheets slid past her bare feet and legs with ease, making her feel like a princess.
The lamp’s artificial luminance was replaced by brilliant moonlight piercing the glass as it danced its way through random patches of clouds in the night sky. It cascaded across the room, filling her eyes with a soft glow. She wondered if its intensity would keep her awake.
Her mind quickly wandered, thinking of what it would be like to sleep next to Derek every night in a bed like this. If she had a home of her own someday, she wanted grass in both the front and back yards, a vegetable garden on the side, and lots of trees everywhere—huge shade trees to keep the Arizona summer heat at bay. Maybe even a red and white Siberian husky named Sheena that she could teach to play fetch with a tennis ball. She knew none of it would ever happen, but still, she let herself relish the idea of living a normal life with Derek.
Twenty minutes later, her dreams were cut short when she heard a man’s voice that she didn’t recognize coming from outside the bedroom. Whoever it was had a gruff voice with a thick accent full of twangs. It sounded like he was just down the hall from her room, placing him in the central living area of the condo.
She sat bolt upright in bed to listen. Her hands and knees were shaking, but not nearly as fast as her heart was beating. It felt like she had a turbocharged piston in her chest and it was trying to break itself free.
“Marco, you and Slick spread out and grab all them appliances. Tex, you and I got da electronics. Fucking developer thinks he can skip a payment. When will dese assholes learn? Take everything dat’s not nailed down. It still won’t cover what he owes me, but it’s a start.”
Emily slid out of bed and put her jumpsuit on while she continued to listen, hoping to formulate an escape plan.
“When yur all done, trash ‘da place. We gonna send a strong message.”
“Should we call Rico and tell him to bring the truck around back? It’ll make loading up all this shit a lot easier.”
“Go ahead. I wanna check out da rest of the place. I’m sure there’s more stuff we can fence in them bedrooms.”
Emily gasped when she heard those words, feeling the jump tingle ignite inside of her. She was already weak from the recent pair of jumps, and worried that her body couldn’t handle another one so soon. Nevertheless, she didn’t want to stop the blue fire, hoping to escape the condo unharmed.
A moment later, footsteps made their way down the hallway. She froze, looking for someplace to hide, but the bedroom door flew open before she could decide what to do. A towering, skuzzy-looking biker-type came through wearing a chain vest, a tattered white undershirt, leather wraps on his wrists, dirty jeans covered with what Emily assumed was automotive grease, and a gold earring hanging from each ear.
“Well looky here,” the giant growled, pulling a knife from a sheath on his belt. He smiled, showing a disgusting set of missing and stained teeth. He stood at least six feet tall and probably weighed three hundred pounds. His black and gray-colored beard was frizzy and wide, and traveled down past his flabby chest and pair of man-boobs. Despite its length, the facial hair couldn’t hide the intruder’s massive belly that hung several inches below his waistline. He stood with an arch in his spine, tilting back on his hipbones to support the enormous weight he was hauling around the middle.
“Tonight’s my lucky night—I get revenge on an asshole who owes me money, and to top it off, I get you. You picked da wrong night to crash here, little lady. Whatta you, a runaway? Just some street trash with a horrible wardrobe problem?” He laughed. “A junkie no one’s gonna miss?”
Emily took a shuffle step to her left.
The intruder countered her move with his hands wide and knife at the ready. “Don’t even try to run. You ain’t gettin’ past dis old dog.”
When the ugly man took a step closer Emily backed up, pressing her body against the wall next to the closet. She stared into the man’s eyes as his smile seemed to grow wider and even more sinister with each passing second. Emily had seen a sadistic smile like that before when she was strapped naked to the storage shelves in Jim’s restaurant, and what had followed that night wasn’t pleasant.
She flashed on the fat man, hoping to gain an advantage by reading his thoughts and emotions. It only took a nanosecond to connect with the monster and feel his intense cruelty, violence, and hatred for everything female. His ex-wife had had him convicted and thrown in jail for ten years for the beatings he gave her. What nobody else knew was that he’d recently tracked down his ex-wife, beaten her unconscious and thrown her broken body into a deep mine shaft in the Arizona desert. Emily gasped when those memories entered her mind. She could see the woman’s bloody face and mangled body as he rolled her into the hole and smiled, watching her plunge to her death.
His evil continued to flow into her, turning everything inside her brai
n upside down and red like blood. Her head felt as though it was being pressurized from the inside out, bringing with it a surge of pain from the growing sickness he shared with her. She tried to terminate the connection, but she couldn’t. His psychic force was too strong, flowing into her with the power of a hydraulic press.
She couldn’t take the insanity of his thoughts or the throbbing misery that came with it. As the psychic pressure continued to mount, she slid down the wall and curled herself into a ball, with her hands wrapped around the sides of her head. She screamed in pain, feeling the jump tingle give way to the agony and fade away.
Just then, one of the other intruders came through the door and took the fat guy’s attention away from Emily. At that moment, her connection with him dropped and the pain vanished equally as fast.
“What’s going on in here?” the second biker-type asked. He was a tiny, trailer-trash looking man, maybe five foot four and half the size of the first guy. “Looks like we’re not alone tonight.”
“Found me a little honey.”
“Nice.”
“Something wrong with her, though.”
“What do ya mean?”
“Might be sick. In the head type thing.”
“What does that matter, Big Mike? I’ll do her for ya,” the skinny man said, taking a step toward Emily with fire in his eyes.
Big Mike moved his girth in front of the other man with an outstretched arm. “Hold on, Slick. This one is all mine.”
Mike curled the sausage fingers on his free hand to make a fist just as his jaw went stiff. His face turned a deep shade of red, and Emily could see the artery on the side of his neck stand at attention like a twisted length of rope.
She knew he was about to beat her senseless, and God only knows what else after that.
“I’ll guard the door, in case she makes a run for it,” Slick said.
“No need. I got this. You and the rest of da boys finish up and get everything to da truck. Dis won’t take long.”
Slick didn’t respond. He left the room, closing the door behind him.
Emily crawled to her knees and looked around the room, but there was nothing to use as a weapon. She was defenseless and out of options now that the jump process had been squashed and hadn’t restarted.
CHAPTER FOUR
The behemoth of a man took a short step toward her, his knife glistening in the light streaming in through the window. His eyes cut into hers, but she was prepared this time. The connection couldn’t force its way inside since she had erected a psychic shield capable of withstanding his mental force. It was something she hadn’t done before, but necessity had forced her skills to evolve, and evolve they had.
He twisted the blade in the air like he was screwing it into the ceiling. The room’s ambient light allowed Emily to see clearly, as if they were standing outside in the middle of a cloudy afternoon.
Instinct took over and Emily assumed her favorite karate stance; the one taught to her by a kindly old Chinese man named Master Liu. It was designed to create power, flexibility, and movement, something she’d practiced over and over until it had become second nature. She set her feet, one in front of the other, and turned her body with knees bent. She held her arms up at two different levels and angled her hands flat, turning them into flat-edged weapons.
“Dat Kung Fu shit ain’t gonna work on me, missy,” the man said, licking his lips and snorting like a bull ready to charge.
“Never again,” she whispered, promising herself she’d not be a helpless victim again. Not like what had happened to her at the hands of Rob the Rapist in Jim’s restaurant.
She focused all her thoughts on one plan—attack and escape. However, in the back of her mind she knew her karate skills were no match for his colossal size and weight. Her best hope was to strike quickly, then outrun the fat bastard. Hopefully, she could sneak past the rest of his crew and make a break for it.
“Ya really think you can stop me ‘n my knife? Hell, I crap bigger dan you.”
She knew he was right. She didn’t stand a chance in a direct confrontation against this enormous predator. Especially if he was any good with the scary knife.
“I can make this quick or bleed you slow. Up to you, bitch.”
Just then, a new idea occurred to her. She decided to change tactics and use her brain for a change. He’d never expect it, and it just might work. But the timing had to be perfect, or this would be the last time anyone ever saw her. A vision of her broken body flashed in her mind, showing Big Mike tossing her into the same mine shaft where he’d disposed of his ex-wife’s body.
Emily let go of her karate pose and put her hands down. She moved across the room and stood near the foot of the bed, facing him. The glow of the moonlight washed across her back, sending her slender shadow sprawling across the floor to his feet. It looked like a runway, paving the path from him to her.
“Dat’s better,” he said, slipping his knife back into its sheath. “Smart girl.”
Emily took a deep breath and bolstered her resolve, waiting for the malevolent sociopath to come at her.
* * *
Four minutes earlier, Derek had been dead asleep when a wicked nightmare shocked him awake. He sat upright in bed and looked around to get his bearings. He still wasn’t used to the top bunk, and certainly wasn’t comfortable sharing a room with five other wayward boys in the group home on Monte Vista Avenue in downtown Phoenix.
His mind was still able to recall the nightmare he’d just had, reliving pieces of it before it faded into nothing more than a feeling. The person he saw in his dream was Emily. She was in trouble, and needed help. He had a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach that something was horribly wrong.
Normally he didn’t put much stock in dreams or visions, but he couldn’t shake the lingering sense of peril from this one. He’d left Emily safe and sound—well, as safe as possible, given the situation—at the condo complex they’d snuck into earlier that evening. He’d made it to the group home on time, but just barely. He’d checked in with the house monitors and made sure his name was on all the right lists—clothes, food, school bus—it all seemed so mundane after what he’d been through, but that’s the deal when you’ve been processed through juvenile corrections in Arizona: you had to try to resume the life of a normal teenager. How that was going to be possible, he had no idea.
He scanned the room and checked the bunk below: his roommates looked to all be asleep. Derek checked the digital clock next to the door: 12:18 a.m. He’d only been asleep for eleven minutes after the last bed check at midnight. The monitors didn’t typically come around again until it was time for morning checks at 6:00 a.m., though sometimes they’d change the schedule and pop in for an unscheduled visit to keep everyone honest. Based on his own observations and from information shared by one of his roommates when he first moved in, he figured there was a two in five chance that they’d pick tonight to change it up.
He put his head on the pillow and considered his options: he could go back to sleep, which was going to be impossible with the gnawing feeling swirling inside his chest. That meant lying in bed all night worrying about Emily.
Or, he could sneak out the window, jump across to the branch of the mulberry tree that stood guard alongside the house, shimmy down its wide trunk and head for the condo to check on her. Then make it back to his rack by the regular morning check.
The second option came with the risk of getting caught and being sent back to Durango to serve out the remainder of his sentence. He weighed the Durango risk against the possibility that his dream was accurate and Emily might actually be in trouble. If she was, how would he live with himself if he didn’t go to her? He’d already made that mistake once, and if he’d hadn’t stopped Rob the Rapist just in time, Emily would be nothing more than a painful statistic today.
It didn’t take him long to make a decision. In half a second he was out of bed, dressing as quietly as possible. Five minutes later he was on the street, running at
full speed, heading south toward Evans Churchill, and the condo complex that stood near The Fourth Street Café and Eatery, and Emily Heart.
* * *
Emily watched the rolls of flab begin to heave under the man’s t-shirt. They were bouncing and wiggling with every step Big Mike took after starting his sprint. He was moving across the room faster than she expected, especially for a man of his size.
Just before he got to her, she dropped to the ground and rolled onto her back with the bottoms of her bare feet pointing up and parallel to each other. She hoped her body position was correct, otherwise her plan would fail and she’d just piss him off even further.
The man’s eyes flew wide when he saw her drop to the floor, realizing what she was about to do to him, but his forward momentum continued. His belly found her feet, allowing her to use her legs as a fulcrum to disperse the weight. She let his inertia continue moving above her as she coiled her legs like a powerful spring, then she pushed with all her might, propelling him past her. He was incredibly heavy, but her adrenaline kicked in, giving her the extra strength she needed to complete the maneuver.
“Shiiiiit!” he screamed, as she flung him toward the window. The same window she’d left open earlier for fresh air to seep in. She watched his flight path from below, hoping her aim was on the mark. It was. His head and face made impact with the window first, sending it flying open before the sadistic man’s body sailed through the opening.
Emily rolled over and hopped to her feet, making it to the window just in time to see Big Mike land on the pavement twenty stories below. He didn’t bounce or roll—he just hit the ground with a thud and stuck there like a giant sack of dog shit.
“Thirty-two feet per second, per second,” she snorted, remembering some of the physics she had taught herself in the library. “Try to crap that, asshole.”
Glassford Girl: Part 3 (The Emily Heart Time Jumper) Page 3
