Burn (44 page)

“No. The bullets did.”

Cinder’s eyes closed. She fell to one knee, bitter fluid
lurching from her stomach in a hot rush that ran through
her fingers. On her hands and knees, she couldn’t stop
the convulsions of her belly, even after it had emptied.

“Holy cow, that stinks!” Sumchai laughed. “I think I
might get sick, too.” Walking sideways to keep from
turning his back on her, he went to one of her living
room windows and opened it wide, the action awkward
because of the gun in his hand.

A gust of chill night air, faintly scented with burning
leaves and damp earth, helped cool Cinder’s brow and
settle her stomach. Most important, the fresh air helped
her think clearly.

“Remember the time we went to my brother’s rugby
game, and he got hit in the nuts?” Sumchai stood in the
window. The darkened windowpane his mirror, he used
the tail of his shirt to wipe blood from his chin. “He
vomited on the field, and it made two of his teammates
vomit. It started a chain reaction that had guys on both
teams vomiting everywhere.” He cackled again, the
sinewy muscles of his exposed abdomen jumping. “God,
that was funny!”

T
here was nothing funny to Cinder about his stop on
Memory Lane. The thing she best recalled about that
rugby game was his insistence that she wear a thin, tight
fitting sweater to the field, one that showed off her body
but did nothing to protect her from the frigid day. She
had been flattered at the time, pleased that he wanted to
show her off. Now, she wanted to slap herself for her stu
pidity in confusing his pride in her appearance with pride in a possession.

But I’m not stupid anymore.
She had learned his les
sons well, gaining an understanding he hadn’t counted
on. She stood and slowly walked into the bathroom.

Close behind her wielding the gun, Sumchai watched
her wash her hands, rinse her mouth, and splash cold water on her face. Sparkling droplets of water dripped from her eyebrows, nose, and chin as she stared at her
eyes in the mirror.

He’s not dead. He’s not. If he was, I’d know it. I’d
feel
it . . .

She gripped the clean white porcelain of the basin,
the sleek muscles of her arms and shoulders assuring her that she had the power to pay Sumchai Wyatt what she
owed him for every bruise, scar, nightmare, and tear he
had ever caused her.

She slowly turned to face her ex-husband. “Put the gun away, Chai.”

He giggled. “Why?”

“You aren’t going to shoot me.”

“The jury’s still out on that, kitten. I haven’t decided
what I’m going to do to you.” His black eyes zeroed in on
the front of her white tank top. The ribbed cotton was
wet and translucent in places, molding itself to her flesh.
Sumchai licked his lips, perhaps recalling the days when he’d been permitted access to that flesh.

“You’re not going to shoot me because you won’t have
your gun.”

He raised it, bringing it close to her head. “Is that righ—”

Cinder moved forward, meeting the nozzle of the
weapon. In seemingly one motion, she spun into
Sumchai’s body, her back to his chest. Before he could
complete a howl of pain, she had taken his gun arm, bent
it backwards over her own, and twisted the revolver from
his grip. She used the butt of it to strike him across the face before she helped him out of the bathroom with a very well-placed flat-footed kick to his solar plexus.

Sputtering for breath, Sumchai landed on the living
room floor, paralyzed and in pain long enough for Cinder
to grab the mesh lingerie bag on top of her laundry hamper.
She dropped the gun into the bag, pulled it closed, and
wrapped the drawstring around her fist a few times.

Standing over Sumchai, she clenched her teeth and
swung the bag as though it were a bolo. But instead of
throwing it to somehow ensnare Sumchai, she battered
him with it, landing a hard blow to his torso. He grunted
and struggled onto his elbows and knees. Cinder deliv
ered another vicious blow, this one hitting Sumchai’s ribs
with a sickening crack. She bit back a smile, hoping that
she’d broken at least one of his ribs. She deposited her
third shot in the same place.

H
is paralysis worn off, he shrieked, throwing himself
at her with one hand hooked into a claw while he
clutched his injured ribs with the other.

Cinder deftly dodged him, letting him crash into
her sofa. She ran for the front door, Sumchai close
behind her. She had the door open when he grabbed the back of her tank, yanking her off her feet. Swinging her
homemade bolo, she landed hard on her tailbone,
crying out more from anger than pain over having
missed her target.

Sumchai’s fingers burrowed into her hair, using it as a
handle to drag her back into the living room. Kicking
and screaming, Cinder dropped the bag containing the gun to claw at his fingers.

“I loved you more than anything, you bitch, and you
threw it away,” he roared at her. He heaved her ahead of
him.

“You never loved me! You wouldn’t know love if it sat
on your face! You gave me obsession, jealousy, distrust,
rage, selfishness, and your damn insecurity! You pos
sessed me. You never loved me.”

“I tried to give you everything.”

“You tried to kill me.” He blocked her path to the
front door, and there was every chance he would reach
the gun before she could if she tried to race him for it.
She drew her final weapon. “That night you tried to kill me? That wasn’t all you did to me, was it?”

Sumchai smiled. A filmy coat of blood covered his upper teeth. “A husband has the right to enjoy sexual
congress with his wife.”

S
triking away sudden tears, Cinder pressed on. “Tell
me, was it good for you? Did you like it better with your
partner unconscious? Bleeding. Dying! As horrible as
that day was, you actually managed to give me the one
thing I’d ever wanted from you.”

Sumchai stared at her, perplexed. Then, under
standing broke over his face. For the merest second, his
expression relaxed, and he looked like the man she’d once
loved. “A baby?” His head whipped left and right as he
scanned her bookshelves, walls, and tabletops. “Why
don’t you have any photos? Where is—”

“He’s dead.”

“He? You aborted him,” Sumchai shouted. “You
killed my son?”

Cinder closed her eyes and took a few quick, deep
breaths. She had spent most of her marriage and the
months following Sumchai’s attack in a state of constant
anxiety. Sumchai’s absurd, cruel accusation was the catalyst she needed to allow that sickening, tense feeling to
evolve into the one emotion she had kept corralled deep
inside for too long. It seeped from its hiding place, perme
ating her cells, flooding her brain, hardening her heart.

Anger. That was the one thing Sumchai had never tolerated, the thing that earned his wrath fastest.

From the first time he had hurt her for being cross with him, she had kept her anger caged as one would any wild,
unpredictable thing. With her hair around his neck, her
skin under his nails, and her future beyond this night in
peril, the anger within her began to smolder. The heat of it
reached Cinder’s skin, searing her from the inside out.

She began to burn.

“
YOU KILLED HIM!
” Her arms stiff at her sides, her
fingers rigidly splayed, Cinder screamed so loud, she
tasted blood at the back of her throat. “I didn’t know I
was pregnant until almost three months after you
attacked me. I was still in the hospital, and I started to
bleed. He couldn’t survive.” She hooked her fingers into her abdomen. “How could he, not after the way you cut
me!
You
killed him, Chai. You killed your own son.”

“My son . . .” The words quivered from his lips as he
stared at Cinder, tears shining in his black eyes.

“When he died, so did any shred of forgiveness or
pity I might have had for you.”

Sumchai wavered on his feet, and Cinder hoped he might actually pass out. He ground his fists into his eyes,
his shoulders quaking. “My son,” he moaned, staggering
toward the front door. He picked up the bag containing the gun and returned to the living room, taking the gun
from the lingerie bag. “He would have been my legacy. He would have had my name.”

“He would never have known you existed,” Cinder
declared, her teeth clenched.

His misery turned to fury, Sumchai roared and flung
forward his gun hand.

Cinder dropped to the floor, sweeping her right leg in
a circle as hard as she could. Her inner right ankle struck
Sumchai’s shins, bringing him crashing to the floor. The
shot meant for her went wild, shattering one of her living
room windows instead of her chest.

Still on the floor, Cinder raised her right foot and
brought it crashing down on Sumchai’s right hand. The
bones cracked around the gun and he shrieked, calling
her the worst names hateful men had for women. Faintly
from outside, Cinder heard activity, then a man’s voice,
loud and clear through a bullhorn. “Sumchai Wyatt, this
is the Webster Groves Police Department.”

On her hands and feet, her butt in the air, Cinder crawled clear of Sumchai’s reach while he used his left
hand to uncurl the fingers of his right from his gun. “The
residents of the building have been evacuated and armed
officers with authorization to fire are located throughout
and around the residence. Exit the building and sur
render yourself and your hostage.”

Cinder found her feet and ran for the door. The gun
now in his left hand, Sumchai fired at her once more, the
sound of the shot startling her. Clipping the doorframe
with her left hip, she spun into the stairwell and into
three policemen crowding the landing outside her door.

The officers passed Cinder down the stairs as though
she weighed no more than a doll, her feet scarcely
touching the floor. On the lower landing, in full combat
gear, they surrounded her, shielding her.

Eleven steps above on the landing outside her door,
Sumchai emerged, his gun drawn, to find three auto
matic rifles pointed at his head and chest. Through the
officers in their heavy black gear, he searched for Cinder.
Spotting her, he smiled, cracking the blood drying on his
face.

“
Lower the gun, mister,” one of the officers said, his
voice slightly muffled by his helmet. “You’ve still got a
chance to walk out of here.”

Cinder wanted to look away, but she couldn’t, not
with Sumchai so intensely holding her gaze. “He won’t,” Cinder murmured. “He won’t stop until he does what he
came here to do.”

The officer nearest her pressed closer to Cinder.
“What’s that?”

“Kill me.”

Sumchai gritted his teeth and fired at Cinder. She drew in her shoulders, closed her eyes. The officers
around her huddled tighter, leaving her too little room to expand her chest to breathe. Gunfire erupted in the close
stairwell, temporarily deafening Cinder. When the offi
cers eased off her, she opened her eyes. Two of them
started to hustle her down the stairs, but she looked back
over her shoulder. Before she lost sight of her doorway,
she saw an officer on one knee tucking Sumchai’s gun
into a chest pocket of his flak jacket. The soles of
Sumchai’s feet faced the narrow balusters of the railing.
He lay flat on his back, unmoving, his blood spilling over
the landing in a ruby trickle.