Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

vulnerable to a comb—he’d get me in the ribs or the back. So I kept circling, hoping for an opening. I had another worry, too. My eyes were getting accustomed to the dark, which meant that his probably were, too. Any second he might figure out that I had no weapon at all.
    Could I trip him? I couldn’t see a way. But I had to get him off-balance. I figured I had exactly one ploy available—the realization made me wonder why I hadn’t thought of it before. I was in a hotel full of people and I was being attacked. I could yell for help. But then I had second thoughts. If I yelled, Chris would probably come running, and I was afraid that, unarmed, she’d get hurt.
    My left arm was bleeding badly and beginning to hurt. So when Mean-Mouth struck again, I stepped back instead of parrying. In retrospect I shudder to think how my survivors would have felt if I’d caught the blow—there was so much force behind it that, deprived of his target, Mean-Mouth stumbled. It was the opening I’d been waiting for. I squeezed the thing between my fingers—one of the blood capsules from the magic store—and used the comb to jab him in the eye as hard as I could. With a sound like “arrr;” he fell back.
    I covered his face with my hand, leaving him with simulated blood all over it. Then, as his left hand went to his eye, I jumped up on the bed, stepping on Miranda’s leg, but remaining somehow upright, and shouted my own “arrr.” Without a word or a sound—but also without dropping the knife—Mean-Mouth ran from the room. I hoped Chris was in the clear, but didn’t dare yell for fear she’d step into the open just as he reached the second floor.
    Instead, I chased him. Down the corridor, down the stairs to the second floor. But I stopped there. “Chris?” She stepped from the shadows. There wasn’t a sound from anywhere in the flophouse. I supposed the denizens laid low when they heard a fight.
    “Omigod,” said Chris, looking at my arm, and then, seeing my face, “Jesus! Lie down.”
    I didn’t have to be told. I’d suddenly started feeling very queasy indeed. I started to sink, looking forward to passing out, but remembered that Mean-Mouth would soon figure out he wasn’t badly injured. I sat instead of lying, put my head between my knees, and closed my eyes. The last thing I saw was Chris pulling off her T-shirt. She was starting to wrap it around my left arm when I heard an army coming up the stairs. The cops, I thought, not knowing how they’d got the word, but grateful, anyhow. I opened my eyes. Old Ralph from downstairs, now wearing a pair of pants, was charging toward us. “Sweet thing, you all right?”
    “You almost got me killed, you elephant.”
    “That ain’t no way to talk, sweet thing. I s’pose I did wrong to tease you, but I figured you’d find out what Mean-Mouth looked like when you found him.”
    Chris said, “That was Mean-Mouth? The guy you were chasing?”
    I nodded. She spoke to me, but looked straight at Ralph: “I could have warned you if I’d known what he looked like.”
    “Yeah,” said Ralph. “We were just discussing that.”
    I said, “Rob and Miranda are tied up upstairs. We’ve got to get them out of here before he comes back.”
    Ralph said, “I’ll take care of Mean-Mouth. I guess I owe you that.”
    “That,” I said, “and twenty bucks.”
    He didn’t respond, just settled his blubber on the stairs.
    By now, I had a fresh surge of adrenaline; I went back upstairs with Chris. Ungagged, Miranda said, “There’s a knife under the mattress.” After I’d assured Rob I wasn’t badly hurt and he’d congratulated me on the rescue, Chris and I cut their ropes with Miranda’s knife and the four of us got the hell out, silently. We were back on the second floor in about forty-five seconds, Chris wearing Rob’s jacket over her bra, Rob and me dragging Miranda.
    Ralph was still standing guard—or rather sitting it—but he heaved himself to his feet to see us out. “No sign of him,” he said. “But you be careful, hear?”
    “Thanks for the help.”
    “I left the second twenty in my room. You come back and get it, okay?”
    “Oh, never mind.” I figured I owed it to him for sentry duty but I was too peeved to be gracious about it.
    I guess Miranda had been conscious for most of the excitement—she’d certainly seemed fully awake when she told us where to find the knife—but now she could barely stand. Rob and I had her propped between us, and