The Sixth Man (Sean King & Michelle Maxwell 5)

But in her weakened state she arrived a second too late.

Megan flipped the knife to her left hand a moment before impact. As the women fell backward Megan slammed the knife deeply into the other woman’s back.

They hit the floor and Megan kicked Michelle off, rolled, and stood on a single wobbly leg.

Michelle tried to rise but then fell back to her knees. The knife was still in her. The blood now poured from three wounds, the last one in her back being the most damaging. She was seeing fuzzy images in front of her, and her breaths were becoming increasingly labored.

I’m dying.

She reached behind her, and with her last bit of strength she pulled the blade free.

She eyed Megan, her breaths coming in quick gasps.

“You’re dead,” taunted Megan.

“So are you, bitch,” snarled Michelle, blood pooling in her mouth and garbling her words.

She threw the knife.

It missed badly and hit the wall, falling harmlessly to the floor.

As Michelle sat there helplessly on her haunches, her life rapidly draining away, Megan lined up the kill shot: an elbow strike to the back of Michelle’s neck that would shatter her medulla and instantly end her life.

She leaped to deliver this final shot.

And Edgar Roy pivoted.

In his one-of-a-kind brain it was suddenly thirty years ago and Edgar Roy, then only six years old and the object of his father’s sexual assault, pivoted. And struck. The man fell. The eyes turned glassy. The breathing ceased. The man died. Right there in the farmhouse kitchen.

Then, like an old black-and-white TV suddenly transformed to an HD flatscreen, the old images vanished and Roy was squarely returned to the present.

The six-foot-eight Edgar Roy slammed the kitchen knife he’d snatched off the floor into Megan Riley’s torso with such force that the petite woman was lifted a foot off the floor. A moment later the staggering velocity of Roy’s thrust catapulted Megan Riley violently against the wall. She struck it hard and slid down to the floor. She looked dumbly at the knife buried to the hilt in her heaving chest; the other end had cut her heart nearly in two. She attempted to pull it free. Her hands were around it. They gave one tug and then stopped. The fingers slipped off the handle. Her arms fell to her sides. Her head leaned against her shoulder. She gave one last shuddering breath.

And then she died.

Edgar Roy stood there for a few moments.

I pivoted. My sister did not pivot. I buried the knife into my father. My sister did not. I pivoted. I killed the beast. I killed my father.

His long-lost memory, his only such one, was finally back with him.

He rushed to Michelle’s side and checked her pulse.

He couldn’t find one.

The door burst open.

He turned to see Sean and his sister standing there.

“Please, help her,” cried out Roy.

Sean raced forward. They had phoned for an ambulance on the way over, just in case.

It had been a good call.

The EMTs flooded into the room seconds later and started feverishly working on Michelle. It did not look good. Too many pints of her blood already lay spilled on the floor. They rushed her out on a stretcher, and Sean climbed into the ambulance right before the doors clunked shut.

The FBI agents started assessing what had happened inside the safe house that had turned out to be anything but.