Leave Her Hanging: A Noir Thriller

Chapter Forty

Stephanie’s apartment building was dark, everyone asleep and dreaming. I moved silently up the stairs and pressed my ear against Stephanie’s front door. No voices, just a muffled hissing sound, like water running. I tried the door. Unlocked. Some luck for once. I pulled down on the handle and gently eased the door open.

It was dark inside, the only light coming from the green LED clock on the microwave and some reflected city lights spilling through the lounge window. The shower was running, and I could see a crack of yellow light slipping out under the bathroom door. Heart thudding, I crept inside and slowly closed the door behind me.

A suitcase and a packed sports bag were stacked near the front door. So she was trying to run. She’d played Malcolm and Dennis, blackmailing them with the footage she’d stolen. Then when they came after her, she pinned it on Ella, let her take the fall. She’d let Dennis slip into Ella’s house and choke the life out of her. But that wasn’t enough for Stephanie. She hadn’t got all the cash she wanted, and she’d lost her bargaining chip when she’d planted the footage in Ella’s house. Then she got her claws on something else to sell.

Me.

But I wasn’t going to let her give me up to Dennis and his buddies. And she wasn’t going to get away with what she did to Ella. She was going to tell me how to get to Dennis. I was going to bring the sky down on all of them.

I crossed the room silently. The faint sound of sad humming drifted out of the bathroom. I adjusted my bag on my shoulders and put my hand on the bathroom doorknob.

I didn’t hear the footsteps; I only heard the whistling of something arcing towards my ear. Pain exploded through the side of my head and my eyes were filled with fireworks. My legs went out and I went down, the world rotating around me like a playground roundabout. I got as far as grunting before a hand clamped over my mouth and an arm wrapped around my throat.

I tried to fight but my arms weren’t going where I told them to. I was being dragged away from the bathroom door, keeping me from kicking out, keeping me from making a sound. I recognised the cologne filling my nostrils. Not that it did me much good.

The fireworks were fading, but so was everything else. The sound of the shower echoed like water dripping in a damp basement. My vision narrowed, first into a tunnel, then a tiny candle flame of light in the distance. And then the light flickered out, and I was left in darkness.

~~~

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