There was nothing. A kitchen was full of weapons, but none of them were on the floor.
He began tugging at her jeans, trying to pull them down.
Damn it, no! Both panicked and enraged, she instinctively fought back, slinging her elbows back as far as they would go, trying to hit him. She wiggled and bucked and squirmed, trying to throw him off, but he was too heavy and she was in a helpless position, flat on her stomach on the floor.
He couldn’t get her jeans down. He shoved his hand under her and fumbled with the button and zipper, grunting like an animal. Lolly pressed her hips harder to the floor, trying to mash his hand so he couldn’t get the zipper down, but he jerked her head up and slammed it down on the floor again and white spots swam in her vision. Dazed with pain, she went limp for a second and he shoved his rough hand inside her jeans, against her bare belly.
She was going to die. He was going to rape her, and kill her. Her last minutes alive would be filled with unspeakable terror.
Tears filled her eyes, and she screamed. The sound was rough and raw, like an animal’s, the noise tearing from her throat. She didn’t want to die; she didn’t want her last memory made in this house to be a nightmare. She screamed again and again, unable to stop herself.
He shifted upward, lifting his weight from her. She gulped in a deep breath and tried to gather her strength, then he rolled her over and started yanking again at her jeans.
“Don’t,” she said, sobbing. “Please. Please don’t.” She hated to beg but she couldn’t seem to stop herself, and what did pride matter anyway? She’d do anything to get him to stop. Desperately she searched for some reason she could give him, something that would appeal to him. “I can pay you. I can give you all the money I have.”
He didn’t seem to hear her at all.
The kitchen was dim, with only the scant light from the window, but she could see that he was almost as thin as the woman, most of his teeth were dark with rot, and his eyes … they were strangely wide open and feral, glittering with something that was inhuman.
Drugs. He had to be on drugs, both of them did. There wouldn’t be any reasoning with him, so she stopped trying. He continued jerking at her clothes and she kicked, she screamed, she clawed at any patch of skin on him she could reach, but his coat was heavy and protected him from her nails, so she went for his face. He couldn’t hold both her hands and undress her at the same time, so she punched and clawed at him with every ounce of strength she had, but the blows didn’t seem to affect him at all.
He got her jeans halfway down and reared back to unzip his own pants. Laughing, he clamped one hand around her throat and leaned his weight on it. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t reach him … her vision grayed, and she couldn’t see anything except his grinning face above hers. Tunnel vision, she thought vaguely, and knew she was about to pass out. If she did, she’d be entirely helpless, and his maniacal face with the rotten teeth would be the last thing she ever saw.
Desperate, on the verge of unconsciousness, she tried to jerk her knee up. He shifted, blocking the movement, and laughed.
“Darwin, you son of a bitch!” the woman yelled in a grating tone.
The overhead light came on, the lights shining right in Lolly’s eyes and blinding her. The weight on her throat eased and she coughed, sucking in air. Darwin was very still. “I was just having a little fun,” he said sulkily.
The woman with the stringy hair stood over them both, and with blurred vision Lolly looked up at her. There was no sympathy in the woman’s face, no woman-to-woman empathy, nothing but fury. She had a gun, too, and she had it pointed at Darwin’s head. “Get up.”
“Now, Niki,” he began, belatedly placating as he realized where the pistol was pointing. “Baby, I—”
“Don’t ‘baby’ me, you two-timing son of a bitch.”
Darwin’s gaze shifted from Niki, back to Lolly. She saw the animal in his eyes, saw him weighing his options. He smiled a little, and then he forced Lolly’s thighs farther apart.
Niki swung her pistol and hit Darwin on the side of the head with it. He yelped, and finally … finally … moved off of Lolly. “Fuck, Niki, you could’ve killed me!” he shouted, getting to his feet and pulling up his pants from where they’d drooped over his skinny ass. “Are you fucking crazy?” He grabbed a dish towel and pressed it to the bleeding wound on the side of his head, where the pistol had split the skin.
Lolly struggled to pull her jeans up, scooting across the floor as she did, toward the back door and icy freedom. Maybe these two bags of shit would kill each other. She was dimly shocked by the violence of her own thoughts, but if she could just get away, she didn’t care what happened to them.
Niki’s gaze swiveled from Darwin to Lolly, and so did the pistol barrel. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” she spat, then glanced at something in her hand. Lolly froze, blinking. “Lorelei Helton. Portland,” Niki said, and Lolly realized the something was her own driver’s license. Niki had apparently been going through Lolly’s purse while Darwin had been trying to rape her. “What the hell kind of name is ‘Lorelei’? It sounds like a hooker.”
Lolly didn’t bother arguing, just nodded her head in agreement.
“Get up,” Niki said, and Lolly obeyed, using the motion to take another step back, toward the door. Could she beat both of them, and a bullet? They were druggies, they were likely high right now … their eyes were wide, the pupils shrunk down to tiny dots. How clearly could they think?