The Society Karen Guyler (best books to read .TXT) 📖

The truth in heeled boots was walking away. Eva’s numb feet step-limped, step-limped behind her into the next street, past a row of closed restaurants and nail salons. The woman turned the corner, the distance between them growing. Did she know about Eva, Charles’ wife, about Lily?

“Hey!” Eva’s yell surprised the night, made the woman jump. A glance behind her at Eva’s all-in-black figure made her hurry away faster. “I just want to talk.”

The woman didn’t.

Eva sped up, gritting her teeth, trying to weight bear on her right leg. But rushing round the corner, a spectacular agony tore through her. Her knee gave way as if it wasn’t there and she keeled over onto the stack of rubbish bags at the kerb. Her short, sharp cry sounded like a scream in the quietness. Clasping her knee, she screwed her eyes shut, seeing flashes. Hard edges dug at her back, into her side, as she rolled on the unsolid surface.

The woman was at the door of a small block of flats, the white ball of fur on the top of her hat bobbing up and down as she wrestled with a difficult lock. Eva wasn’t that terrifying. She yanked off her beanie that her stitches had forced her to wear instead of Lily’s cycle helmet. The bright beacon of her hair should reassure.

The chink of dropped metal and a cry—surprise, fear?—then the woman was running towards her. Eva elbowed her way up out of the grip of the rubbish bags. The smell of rotten food greased into her nose, whipping the churning in her stomach into a frenzy. Pushing, shoving, her hands disappearing into hard-edged crevices between slithering masses of food waste, Eva wrestled to be free.

The woman’s heels rat-a-tat-tatted as she ran down the middle of the road. Then a new sound, London intruding. A car. An everyday, expected thing, until the crump. The terrible deadened sound of metal smashing into human, a half-strangled scream, the falling, falling, breaking of bones, ripping of skin, the almost unremarkableness of the car accelerating away.

Oh God, oh God. A whisper of a moan urged Eva, hurry. Her elbow jarred through the bags’ contents, smacking onto the pavement.

Footsteps coming from where the woman had tried to get into the building. A long stride, rushing, not rushed. Someone else to help, thank God.

Eva’s useless knee dared her to trust it.

Her mirror image dressed all in black knelt beside the woman. The man cupped her face; he knew her? Did she need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?

“Is she okay?” Eva’s question jolted him.

She rolled onto her side, levered herself up onto her hands, an awkward press-up.

He moved both gloved hands, one over the woman’s nose, one over her mouth and her heels made a different sound then, a desperate drumroll.

“What’re you doing?” Eva asked, struggling to get upright, awkwardly on her good leg, not trusting her damaged knee. “Hey!”

She took a step towards him. Her body screamed at her to run, get away, but she closed the distance between them with another awkward step, another.

“Leave her alone.”

She sounded as authoritative as you’d expect an injured 5’3” woman to be when facing off against a man who looked like he’d just stepped off the cover of MMA Monthly.

He rolled up to standing, interlaced his gloved hands, pressed the palms towards Eva. Any hope she had vanished as she recognised him.

29

How was he there now?

Eva fled out of the street where the woman lay still in the road. The next was just as deserted. But by the first pile of rubbish, a gift. Eva snatched up a bottle from the box of glass recycling, rapped it on the pavement.

“You can’t get away from me.” He toyed with her. “Even without a bad leg, even if you hadn’t killed my buddy.”

Eva ran faster, harder in a clumsy limping that jarred her spine, screaming, screaming, screaming. She lunged for the end of the street. The man who’d taunted her from outside the fire exit door at Charles’ lab sauntered behind her. His slowness, his assurance he’d catch her and make her pay, made her frantic efforts feel pointless.

“I might have made it quick, like for the other woman. But for what you did to him, I’m gonna make it real slow.”

Her jacket hood cut into her throat, jerking her to a clumsy stop. Her throat was already raw. Someone must be able to hear her.

“I’m gonna make you scream like he did, you’ll beg me to die.”

Pretending both knees had given way, making her a surprising dead weight, she dropped to the pavement. She heard the air moving past her as his punch skimmed just above her head. He kneed the air out of her lungs, knocking her onto her side.

“Go on then, you’re so hard. You think you can suffocate me too?” she wheezed.

He grabbed her by her throat and squeezed.

“Coward.” she could barely force the word out.

He leant closer over her, closer. Close enough.

She snapped her arm up and stabbed his face with the broken-ended bottle. Again, again, until his grip loosened. He roared with fury at her. Eva jabbed with everything she had, catching his open mouth. She dragged her weapon through his skin. Warm drips splattered her face. Her grip on the glass was slipping.

She dragged in a raggedy breath and twisted away from him as a punch rocketed towards her, connected with the pavement. He yelled louder, rocked upwards, holding his ribboned face. Eva rammed the bottle at the side of his neck, scrabbled to her feet. Fled away from him.

Ahead, a beacon of safety. She burst through the café door.

“Call the police!”

“What’s occurring?” The lad behind the counter looked up from his phone. “Holy crap.”

“It’s not me, it’s not my blood. There’s a woman out in the road, she was knocked over, I don’t know if she’s okay.”

The guy got busy on his phone. “I know what time it is, listen, yeah, I’ve got a lady in here