94 - Better Off Dead

“Or at least I think I did,” Petey qualified dully, feeling as though she were swimming through Jell-O.  “There was an awful lot of blood.”

“Jesus,” Jon breathed, pulling her into the apartment.  “Are you hurt anywhere besides your face?  Do I need to get to you a hospital?”

She mutely shook her head.  “No.  I’m okay.” 

Face crumpled into an unhappy scowl, he guided her into the living room, flipping on one lamp and parking her on the couch.  “Sit.” 

She dumbly did as he ordered, and allowed her eyes to dazedly dance around the room.  Petey saw the familiar surroundings, but was unable to acknowledge that they were real.  Too many other visions were vying for attention, effectively crowding out reality.

They began with the moment she heard Daniel’s disdainful drawl.

“Daniel,” Petey said on a breathy laugh, hand resting lightly over her throat. 

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil

Pretending this was perfectly normal was the best way to diffuse any potential ugliness.  Just a social call amongst friends, and all that.  “You frightened me.  How did you get in here?”

Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;

Lanky legs uncrossed themselves and he rose to his feet, no doubt so that he could loom over her.  She noted with a flare of concern that his eyes were…  vacant.

Forcing herself to be casual, she tucked her hands into the pockets of the wool coat.  Her iPhone was nestled in the right pocket, and she glided her index finger across the cool glass screen.  Was there any chance of operating the touch screen effectively without sight?

You have a fucking photographic memory.  You know where everything is on the screen.  Make it work.

“I would think,” he intoned sarcastically, “that after the photographs I showed you, you would have invested in better security around the fire escape and bedroom window.  Quite negligent of you, Patience.”

“Here, Baby,” Jon interrupted the vivid memory by pushing a shot glass in her hand.  The amber liquid looked to be his dear friend, Jack.  “Drink this.  It will calm your nerves.”

Nodding mutely, she threw the small dose of liquid back into her throat and shuddered at the burn it produced when sliding into the angry, churning pool of stomach acid.  Any remnants of her food had been thrown up in an unexpected pit stop during her run over here. 

When she put the glass on the table, he eased her out of the wool coat and curled her hand into his.  He was trying to be comforting, she knew, but he was poised on the edge of a sofa like a jaguar ready to pounce.  The lines around his mouth were set in granite as he tried to smooth her hair back to some of its former order.

“Where is he?”

Assuming that ‘he’ was Daniel – or, rather, Daniel’s body – she informed him in a monotone voice, “My living room.”

“You left him in your apartment??”  She nodded desolately.  “Give me two seconds and I want the whole story.” 

Out came the phone and he angrily tapped a series of buttons and recaptured her hand.  His thumb stroked soothingly along the back of it even as he snarled at the mysterious person on the other end of the line, “What the fuck happened?  I’m paying you out the ass to watch that place and he gets in anyway?  You may as well consider – “

Petey tuned out the string of threats and profanity and retreated into the movie theater of her mind.

“What is it you want, Daniel?”

His eyes went from vacant to a rapidly swirling nebulae of wrath.  One long, skinny hand rose out of nowhere and struck her across the cheek.  A cry tumbled unbidden from her lips, and Petey’s head snapped around, her hand immediately lifting to cover the throbbing spot where his knuckles impacted.

“For a supposedly ‘intelligent’ woman, you persist in being an absolute dolt!  You’ll do well to remember that consorting with simpletons from ‘Joisey’ robs you of any intellect you might actually possess.”

He was so much a snob that his efforts to use the New Jersey accent and lingo fell short.  His ‘Joisey’ came out more like ‘Joirsey’.

“You said I had a week,” she reminded him, scrambling for logic that would appeal to him.  Blinking away tears of pain, she moved away from him and sidled toward the kitchen.  “Tomorrow is a week.  I’m still within the time constraints of your decree.”

“Technically, perhaps, but you were out whoring around with that Bon Jovi man in front of God and everyone tonight.  I won’t allow you to paint me the fool, nor shame my reputation that way, Patience.  You will give me the formula for the electrode composition and you’ll do it now.”

“Sugar?”  Jon’s fingertips lightly brushed the still aching cheekbone, begging her attention.  “Somebody is gonna to check out your apartment and call me back.  Tell me what happened, and we’ll get this all under control, okay?”

The casual reaction to such a life-altering occurrence snapped her detachment.  “How do you get it under control?  I killed a man, Jon!”

Killed a man.  Her stomach threatened to revolt again, and only the distraction of his arms tugging her onto his lap prevented it. 

“Sugar, I know you,” he spoke quietly into her hair.  His body was fraught with tension, yet the arms that held her close were comforting.  “And I don’t believe you killed anybody.  If you did, it was self-defense, and you had no other choice.  Now tell me what went on after I left.  You went in the apartment, and then what?”

She willed his heat to seep into her cold skin, unsure as to whether she’d ever be warm again.  Was this what killing someone did?  Steal everything inside of you?  How did people live after doing something like this?

“He was there waiting for me.  Sitting on my couch.”  She explained her attempt to reason with Daniel, and his less-than-gracious reception of her efforts, which had Jon tensing up.  She could feel his thigh muscles bunching beneath her, and his arms became bands of steel around her.  “Jon, he saw us at the game tonight.  He was infuriated.”

“I don’t give a fuck if he saw us or not, and I don't want you to dwell on it.  You aren't going to live your life under the rule of some psycho."  One corner of his mouth tipped up ruefully.  "Unless it's me. What else?”

Petey shook her head.  He didn’t understand what he’d been provoking.  “He said he wouldn’t have me play him for a fool or shame him by whoring around.  He decided he didn't want me, just the information I could provide.  He demanded the formula for electrode composition.”

“You didn’t give it to him did you?“ 

She really couldn’t have if she wanted to.  The information was stored in two places – the flash drives she’d loaded the night of the break-in.  One of those was in storage, zippered away in the small pocket of the backpack she recently replaced.  The other was in Jon’s guest room under the mattress.  Petey had deleted all other discernible copies of the formula.  The only other place it resided was in her head.

“No.  I didn’t have it to give, and that didn’t sit well either.”  Her fingers came up to tentatively probe her tender mouth.  “He didn’t believe me, and totally lost touch with reality.”

She saw flashes of images in her mind.  There was Daniel losing the last of his tenuous grip on social conventions and falling into a psychopathic snit.  He ranted and stormed around the room, swearing up a blue streak.  She’d never seen Daniel engage in something so plebian as swearing.  It was her clearest indicator that he'd slipped over the edge of reason. 

Rifling through her bookshelf as though he would find the formula just lying around, he grew more and more agitated, randomly throwing anything he could get his hands on.  Papers and books went flying around the room, along with various knick knacks that she had on the shelf.  One of those proved to be particularly dangerous.

Petey barely ducked out of the way when he flung something heavy at her head.  The glass object took a chunk out of the plaster wall behind her and tumbled loudly to the floor.  It was the poker paperweight that matched the one she got Jon for Christmas.

While he was busy emptying out the last remnants of the bookcase looking for something that didn’t exist, she knelt quietly down and palmed the heavy glass disk.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life

“You repugnant fucking harlot!” he was screaming to the walls.  “What do you mean you don’t have the formula?!?  What dim-witted fool doesn't keep a copy??  You’re not a genius, you're a retarded ignoramus who doesn’t deserve to live!”

With that as her only warning, he spun on his heel and charged at her like savaged beast, hands outstretched.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil:

About the time his fingers were close enough to begin furling around her throat, Petey sharply brought up the hand holding the paperweight.  One sharp blow smashed in his pointed beak of a nose with a disturbing 'crunch'.  Blood spurted everywhere as he howled like a wounded animal, dropping to his knees and clutching at his face.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil:

Petey launched herself at Daniel, knowing that if she didn’t incapacitate him now, he may do worse than that to her.  Still wielding the paperweight, she pounded it into the side of his head over and over again until his body went lax and slumped over onto the floor with a sickening ‘thud’.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil:

Without bothering to check for vital signs, she fled the apartment, leaving the door swinging wide, and ran down the three flights of stairs to the street.  Thanking God for her treadmill, she ran all the way to Mercer Street at top speed.  The only time she slowed was when the vision of Daniel’s bloody face on his oddly angled body blitzed through her head, cementing the fact that she’d killed him.  That was when she stopped and hunched over a trash can, throwing up the entire contents of her stomach. 

“That’s it?” Jon inquired softly, rocking her like a small child.  “You’ve told me everything, Sugar?”

She nodded against his shoulder, stiffening when his phone pealed out on the cushion next to them.  Petey moved to get off of him, but he clamped his arm down more tightly and held her in place.  “No.  Sit still. I can talk with you there.”

Curling against him, she nodded into his shoulder once more and blatantly listened to his side of the conversation.

“What do you got?” was the brusque, and only, greeting he offered.  “Yeah……  Nothing?...... Could you make out what happened?...... Which neighbor?...... Call the cops.  She’s staying with me tonight.  They can talk to her in the morning…… I don’t give a shit.  She’s staying with me tonight.  Period.   You fucked this up, now make it work.”

He tapped the screen with his thumb and tossed the phone aside, enfolding her fully in his arms once again. His nose burrowed into the fragrant curtain of her hair and Jon sighed.  “He wasn’t in your apartment, and at least one of the neighbors can confirm hearing the whole thing, including someone stumbling down the stairs after you left.  That’s good,” he commented soothingly, one hand making long, sweeping strokes on her back.  “Because it means he’s not dead.  You didn’t kill him.”

A bit of tension escaped, only to be replaced by another, different kind of tension.  “But it means he’s out there,” she muttered, correctly interpreting what he wasn’t saying.  “And he’s waiting for me.”

Jon snorted softly, angling her jaw so that he could look down upon her face with complete and utter sureness.  “Don’t worry about that.  My guys are all over it, and will probably find him before morning.  When they do, he’ll be delivered directly to New York’s finest.”  He stroked her hair reassuringly.  “You’ll be safe here with me until then.”

That sounded all well and good in the land of Happily Ever After, but it didn’t necessarily equate to reality.  Jon couldn’t substantiate the guarantees he was trying to placate her with.  Chances were that Daniel was out there skulking around, waiting for his next opportunity.  While he knew she didn’t have the formula documented, he had to know she could reproduce it from memory.  There was no way he was going to let this go.  He had too much at stake.

Her voice was reed thin when intoning the question, “And if they don’t find him?”

“They will,” was his blindly confident promise.  Jon was, after all, a cocky man from Jersey.  What else was he going to do?  “They will.”