Near Death by Glenn Cooper Page B

season.
    The girl’s hair and shoulders were sprinkled in snowflakes. They melted one by one when she climbed into his heated car. He didn’t really get a good look at her until he’d driven a block. She was the prettiest yet and disconcertingly similar in appearance to his Jessie. If her hair had been red he probably would have been tempted to let her out at the next light with twenty bucks for her trouble. But her hair was brown. And she was young. No more than twenty, he thought.
    She was a chatty one—a self-described motormouth—who kept up a stream of nervous banter until he’d parked inside his Cambridge garage, closed the door and sat back beside her. She made it clear she wasn’t going to play along with his desire to talk first. She didn’t like the setup and let him know she wanted to get on with it. As he sputtered, she took matters into her own hands, unzipped his fly, peeled down his shorts and started to go down on him.
    He didn’t want any of his DNA inside her mouth!
    As her lips were about to encircle his soft cock he panicked and pushed her shoulders hard, ramming her against the passenger-side door.
    “Hey!” she shouted in alarm and pain. “What’s your goddamn problem?”
    He couldn’t think of anything to say.
    Instead, his big hands shot out like projectiles but she was too far away for a surprise attack and he failed to get a good purchase on her neck. She wriggled free and unleashed a verbal and physical counterattack that bewildered him with its ferocity. Arms, hands and fingernails moved in eggbeater frenzy. High-pitched screams pierced his ears, an untidy torrent of profanities and animalistic noises.
    “Quiet, quiet, quiet,” he implored blindly, his eyes tightly closed to protect his corneas from her razor-sharp nails. He was leaning over the console, pushing off against the driver’s side door for leverage until his hands found their mark again, this time firmly. He felt the flat planes of throat cartilage, hard and satisfying under his thumbs, and began to squeeze. This one would get no narrative to send her off. She was too feisty and determined. No lullabies for—
    He didn’t know her name.
    Suddenly, the flailing stopped and so did the punches. He tasted warm blood, his own blood. It would be over soon.Then he’d check his watch for time zero and get about his business.
    He finally opened his eyes to see what she looked like at the last moments of consciousness. That much he owed her.
    She was staring back with hatred.
    The burning!
    All at once he was enveloped in a cloud of hissing, searing pain.
    His eyes smoldered so caustically he had to let her go to rub his stinging eyes.
    Through the lachrymose haze he caught something in her fist, an object like a black lipstick.
    Mace!
    The girl was scrambling for her freedom and before he could react she’d slid over the console onto the rear seat with the alacrity of a big cat slipping its cage.
    Coughing and spluttering, he lunged for her. His left hand grabbed onto her bejeweled low-slung belt that had been part of her seductive gear and was now only a liability. The leather held fast over her hips and allowed him to tug her away from the door handle.
    He held onto the belt for dear life and used it to pull himself into the backseat where he wiggled his way ontop of her. In doing so, his jeans and undershorts curled down to his thighs and if someone had come upon them, the first impression would be of an overheated couple about to make love, doggy-style.
    But this wasn’t love.
    Alex managed to push his right arm around her neck far enough to get the crook of his elbow into position, surrendering to some primitive part of his brain that instinctively knew how to kill.
    He pulled her neck into hyperextension and her screams became guttural. The upward force drove his face into the soft fabric of her jacket and he took advantage of the cloth to blot his stinging eyes.
    She began to buck like an angry mare trying to unseat