TICK TOCK RUN (Romantic Mystery Suspense) (46 page)

He marched forward and booted the door open and slammed me onto my feet in the kitchen.  “Bloody hell!” he yelled. 

For a moment my will wavered, the image of Laura was stuck in my mind.  But hearing Lee cry out in pain brought me to myself.  I had no need to wonder what had happened in my absence, I was now facing it. 

“Will someone tell me what the hell’s going—”  Mark didn’t finish. 

Livid, I threw a punch up at his face.

He seized my fist then pushed my hand down.

Lee and Paul were still fighting at full speed, biceps pumping, tearing up what remained of the kitchen. 

Paul’s shirt was in Lee’s hands, twisted into a length of rope and hooked around Paul’s throat, drawing him backwards.  Paul elbowed Lee in the ribs, then wormed free of the shirt.  He swivelled and dived onto Lee, sending both of them flying across the kitchen and into the back wall, right in front of us.

The crowbar came sliding in a spin towards my feet.

Both men were now on their bottoms with torn clothes and swollen boxer faces.

My friends were injured or worse, dead.  I’d lost Laura.  I couldn’t lose Lee.  “Mark,” I choked out, tugging his sleeve.  “Do something!”

“Help me, Mark,” Paul said in a pathetic voice.  “They’ve screwed me over.  They’re trying to kill me.”  Paul grunted at Lee, face glowing red, baring teeth.  Then he turned his head into shadow to the left.  He saw something… the knife in the skirting board? 

Oh, hell!
 

If I didn’t do something, Lee,
my Lee,
would be dead flesh.

“Get up, Lee,” I squalled.

Lee swiped his hand across his forehead, smearing blood across his skin.  He grimaced then struggled to push himself up. 

Shaking myself back to usefulness, I gave Mark a disappointed snarl, forced my timber-rigid legs to bend and grasped the end of the crowbar. 

“Catch!” I yelled to Lee. 

The bar stopped as I was about to throw.

Mark yanked it out of my grip. 

“Hey!”  My empty hand still in the air, I tried to engage Mark’s big brown eyes and hoped he could see the truth within mine.  “It’s Paul,” I said, having recovered my voice.  “He attacked us.  He tricked us into thinking it was you.  I’m so sorry.”

“Who hurt Laura?  Who else have you—”  Mark stopped shouting when Paul tried to rise to his feet.  Mark shifted his gaze between Paul and Lee, then it boomeranged back to me. 

“Paul planted evidence to frame you,” I said.

“Mark, my mate.”  Paul’s voice had a sickly-sweet quality while stretching an arm out, feeling for the knife.  “She’s off her head.  They’ve both gone nuts.  They’ve got photos on me, just like they have with you.  Have you seen what they did to Laura?” 

Mark’s face turned so red I expected it to explode. 

“He’s lying,” I screamed at Mark.  “I texted your blackmail photos to two mobiles.  One phone is yours, the unknown number belongs to Paul.  That’s how he knows I tried to blackmail you.”

Paul pointed to the cash spilling out from Laura’s white handbag and spoke in a convincing tone.  “Look, there’s the money I paid her.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Lee said, struggling for breath.  “He murdered my brother.”

“It’s true,” I said.  “Laura was sleeping with Daryl.  Paul blackmailed him, and killed him.”  I sucked in a shaky breath.  “Mark, Paul’s setting you up.  He knows how you feel about Laura.  That’s Laura’s cash, not his.  He blackmailed Laura with photos.  That’s how we got the idea for blackmailing you.”

“Hit the stinking bitch, Mark.”  Paul spat his words out.  “Before she turns on you.  They’re just after money and don’t care how they get it.”

A blast of frustration slammed me right in the guts.  “Ugh!  Can’t you see what’s going on here, Mark?”

Silence.

The tension was thick enough to choke me.

After what I’d done to Mark earlier, the odds were that he would indeed want to hit me, and then Lee.  I had to stop Mark, get the bar off him.

Crowbar bouncing in his right hand, Mark seemed to be trying to get his head around the shocking scene.  He fished around in his pocket and pulled out his Blackberry.  “The police can sort this mess out.  No one move an inch.”

Paul shuffled nearer to the knife that was sticking out of the skirting board. 

“Damn you.”  I reached up to snatch the crowbar from Mark.

The mobile fell out of his hand, hit the tiled floor behind us, broke apart and bounced away.  “Jesus, Chelsea.”  He took a painful hold of my upper arm. 

I couldn’t run away nor grab for the crowbar. 

“I... I can prove it’s Paul,” I blurted out, suddenly remembering.

Mark narrowed his eyes at me.

“I recorded it.”  I pointed at Emma’s bag that had been kicked away from the wall, praying the dictaphone worked.

“No!” Paul yelled.  “She’ll have a knife in there.  Don’t trust her.”

“Please, Mark.  Let me get it.  If you could just hear...”  With Mark still holding my arm, I stretched and hooked the bag strap, stuck my hand in and fished around.  “Got it.”  Slowly, I pulled out the Dictaphone.  “See?  No weapons.”  I pressed the stop button then began rewinding.  Impatient to convince him, I pressed play and listened: bashing sounds, thumps and clanging.  The sounds were crackled and came in bursts, like the Dictaphone was struggling.  It was just fighting sounds.  I guessed Paul was too busy trying to kill Lee to confess.  I glared down at him.

Paul shot me a crazed pit bull glance, then his voice came broken, barely legible from the Dictaphone.  “They got what... deserved.  Daryl, Laura, Mark—”

Mark released my arm.  Had he heard Paul say his name in the recording?  “There!  Did you hear that?”  I fell to my knees, lifted my head and stared.

Paul, a few feet in front of me, was an inch short of grabbing the knife.  His arm stretched to the limit, gloved fingers walking over the tiles toward it. 

“Stop him!”  I couldn’t reach to kick it away.  One fast swipe and he’d stab Lee. 

Then, abruptly, Lee’s angry voice came through the Dictaphone.  “I’ve been waiting for this moment all week.  Had it all planned out... what I’d do to you, what I’d do to...” 

“Rewind it,” I screamed, raising my voice over the recording.  What Lee had said probably convinced Mark that he was to blame.  “Mark, please listen.  Listen to what Paul said a minute ago.  He said your name!  Why would he do that if he wasn’t guilty?  He’s framing you.”

Lee groaned in pain.  “Open your eyes, Mark.”

“Mark,” I said.  “Paul’s punishing you because you love Laura.”

Mark didn’t respond. 

“Listen to what she’s saying,” Lee croaked.

I turned swiftly onto my butt and looked up at him, trying to plead with my eyes.  Tears ran down my face and into my ears.  “Mark, please.  Don’t let Paul get that knife.”  Jesus! 
What will it take to convince him?
  “Remember what I told you yesterday?  About trying to get proof to help Laura?  About being onto you?  Think about it.  Paul has set you up, and it worked.  We thought it was you.  I blackmailed you, thinking it would help Laura.”

“It’s nonsense,” Paul said.

Mark pointed the crowbar at each of us in turn.  “One of you three killed Laura.” 

I held my breath.  It was like Russian roulette.

He raised the bar and paused, suspending it in mid-air strike mode above us.  “You blackmailed me, Chelsea.  You, and your boyfriend over there.  Paul didn’t.  I’m his best man.  What am I meant to think?”

“Please, Mark.”  I fell back onto my elbows, heard the scrape of metal against tile behind me. 
Shit!
 
Paul’s got the knife.
 

Mark lifted his foot to step over my legs, and raised the bar higher.

“Hit him!” Paul rasped.

“It’s Paul,” Lee yelled, and tried to throw himself at Mark.

“No!  Lee!”  I lost balance and rolled onto my back.  Then I heard a whack. 

The sickening crack of bone made me shudder. 

The world went still.  I lay there, paralysed, afraid to open my eyes. 

And then, suddenly, crackling in the background, Paul’s voice kicked in on the dictaphone.  “When I’m done with you, I’m going after that bitch girlfriend of yours.  Nice ‘n’ slow.  Then I’ll watch Mark go to the slammer for...” 

“Mark!” I cried.  “You bastard!”  The confession coming out too late was like the devil himself laughing at me.  I couldn’t believe he’d struck Lee. 
Now I’ve lost everyone.

Hot with outrage, I booted Mark’s shin.  But when I looked over my shoulder, fully prepared to see Paul pounce on me, I was soon stunned into stillness.  “What the fuck?”

Mark’s reputation for solving puzzles had certainly
not
exceeded him.

“I can’t believe it,” I yelped, blinked and looked again.

Lee’s jaw was hanging open, but not because he’d been hit.

Paul writhed in a bloodied heap on the floor beside Lee, head flopping to the side.  His left shoulder had collapsed into mush.  The knife had flown out of his open hand and he started yelling.  The pain and shock hitting him.

Lee finally staggered to his feet.  “Jesus.  Mark, you had me worried there, mate.”

Mark said, “No one hurts the girl I love.  There, I’ve finally said it.”

“How did you...?”

“Paul always ripped me for wearing those gloves.  Said he’d never be seen dead in them.”

While Mark helped to steady Lee, I saw movement. 

“I have to check on Laura,” Mark said.

Before I could warn them, Paul growled, “I’ll kill the lot of you.”  He swiped the blade in an arc and plunged it into Lee’s lower leg.

Lee cried out, snatched the crowbar from Mark, and struck Paul on the head.  “People have to pay for what they’ve done, asshole.” 

CHAPTER 36

T
he threat had been neutralized, the nightmare ended, and I had nothing left in me.  Fear and panic left me, but I now felt numb, empty and raw.  My best friend was dead, my other friends brutally, if not fatally injured, and I’d kissed a huge chunk of my heart goodbye.  Gone forever and I knew it.

Mark said, “Take Chelsea outside.  I’ll check on the girls, and phone for an ambulance.”

I heard the tearing of fabric.

“Thanks,” Lee said. 

“Knot it tight to stem the bleed,” Mark said, then his footsteps tapped across the room.

I lay helpless on the kitchen floor, eyes squeezed shut, feeling like my insides had been ripped out through my chest.  I pressed my hands harder over my ears.  Unable and unwilling to absorb the enormity of the devastation around me, I wanted to stay here, balled on the floor in a near soundproof chamber of darkness, and never endure the awaiting reality.

But then, Lee placed a jacket around me.  He scooped me up and hobbled, struggling to carry me outdoors.  “Put your arms around my neck,” he said.