“Bettina!” I hollered, loud enough for my coworker at the cash registers to hear. “Call 911!”
“Um . . . really?” came a small voice from the front. Bettina is a twenty-five-year-old single mother of two. She’s so passive that our store manager forbids her from working on Black Friday, for fear of a riot.
“NOW!” I screamed.
The couple exchanged a glance. The man nodded, and the woman took a few steps backward, slinking away. Then she abruptly vanished. It was startling, but I didn’t bother to process it. I kept my eyes trained on the baby. On Charlie. My scream had caused her to stir a little, but she was still mostly asleep. I edged closer.
The man reached toward me quickly, and I braced myself, ready to flip him on his ass. Instead of striking me or restraining me, however, he curled one hand around the back of my neck, bringing me in close, as if for a kiss. That surprised me enough that I was off balance when he tangled his fingers in my hair and dragged me backward, farther away from the baby.
Yelping with pain, I instinctively raised my hands to where he was gripping me. Then I remembered my combat training and relaxed my arms, trying to ignore the pain so I could pull together a strike to his solar plexus. Anticipating the movement, he gave my head a little jerk and arched it up so I would meet his eyes. He was handsome in a hawkish, angular kind of way.
“You never saw us,” he whispered, his voice suddenly a soothing arc of honey and promises. “We were never here, and neither was the kid.”
He was giving me the weirdest look, which I can only describe as significant, like he was trying to imply something I wasn’t getting. Acting on some instinct I didn’t really understand, I let myself slacken in his grip, my eyes unfocusing, my face relaxing. A small smile played at the corners of his mouth.
And then I kneed him as hard as I could in the testicles.
The blow should have floored him, but he just released me and bent over a little, wincing. Fine. I pulled back my leg to knee him in the face, but before I could do more than shift my weight, he looked up at me and snarled. I almost fell over at the sight.
His face wasn’t human.
I don’t know how else to describe it; it was like all the life had fled his face, replaced by a monster that now glared at me through the thin barrier of his eyes. I didn’t really register his moving, but suddenly my back was smacking into the linoleum floor, and the guy had my wrists pinned on either side of my head. He straddled me, snarling again, and all of a sudden I felt split in two: part of me was so frightened I couldn’t feel my limbs, while another part of me was oddly pleased. The more this guy focused on me, the less attention he could pay to Charlie.
But now the woman had returned, abruptly appearing behind the guy with an impatient look on her face. “Hurry up, Victor,” she complained, as though he was lingering over coffee. “We gotta get out of here before someone else shows up.”
“She won’t press,” Victor growled, keeping his eyes on me. I tried wiggling my wrist, hoping to break his hold, but his grip was like a piece of steel rebar bent around my limbs. Even for a big guy, he was freakishly strong.
“Then just kill her,” the woman said in a bored voice. “We’re leaving this shithole anyway.”
Victor darted his head down toward me, moving faster than should be possible, but the woman broke in. “No! It should look like a robbery or something. We’ll get the other one on the way out.”
I understood that “the other one” was Bettina. They were going to kill her too.
“Right,” Victor grunted. He released my left hand to reach into his pocket, pulling out a wicked, very illegal switchblade. He hit the button to release the weapon.
But now my left arm was free. And I happen to be left-handed. I reached toward the shelf next to me and grabbed a thick glass jar of baby food, swinging it as hard as I could to brain him in the temple. The jar cracked in my hand, sending liquid peas spurting through my fingers. Victor dropped the knife and recoiled slightly, but then he just gave his head a little shake and batted the ruined container from my hand with an easy swipe. He collected my wrist with another snap of movement, like grabbing a fly out of the air. I stared in surprise. That had been a perfect shot; it should have dented his skull and maybe even knocked him out. Who . . . or what . . . was this guy?
“Stop fucking around, Victor!” the woman said sharply. I risked a glance and registered that she’d been thrusting her hand into various boxes of diapers, taking handfuls and shoving them into her purse. “Kill her and let’s go.”
Her raised voice finally woke baby Charlie, who began to squall in her car seat. Both Victor and the woman turned to glance behind them at the baby, and I saw my opportunity: I twisted my wrist toward the weakest part of the guy’s grip, where his thumb and forefinger met, and managed to slip my right wrist out of his iron hold. His head snapped back around toward me, irritation in his eyes. Moving as fast as I could before he grabbed me again, I held my first two fingers as rigid as possible and thrust them into his eye sockets. I don’t care how hard your skull is: everybody has eyeballs, and nobody’s eyeballs are made of granite.
I jammed my fingers, spraining the joint with the force of the strike. It worked, though: Victor screamed and scrambled back, toward the baby. Then he screamed anew, like being near her had somehow wounded him further. He lurched back farther, toward the woman, wailing in pain.
I ignored both of them and scooted as fast as I could toward baby Charlie, keeping my injured left fingers off the ground. “It’s okay, pumpkin,” I crooned to her over her crying. She gave a startled hiccup and looked up at me, recognizing my voice. “It’s Aunt Lex, babe. Let’s get you out of there,” I whispered. I undid her car seat straps with my working fingers, which was easier than it sounds because I knew exactly where the buttons were and how they worked. They’d kidnapped Charlie in her own goddamned car seat.