A Deadly Cliche

“Rutherford and me were little bugs for you to step on. You didn’t think about anything but your clothes and your boyfriends. Now you’re all grown up and you’re still the same.” She gestured in a wide circle with her knife. “Perfect house. Perfect little family. Sheep.”

“And a perfect job where you get to judge other people in print. Do you think you’ve earned the right to influence people?” Rutherford growled. “We’ve read what you’ve written about us, little lamb. Let me ask you, what do you really know about us?”

Laurel’s face crumpled. “I know you’re not wicked! People were mean to you and you both suffered. I played a part in that, but I have two precious boys—”

“Shut up!” Ellen shouted angrily, spittle flying from her mouth. “My brother and I never got a chance to have families of our own. Not only did our folks force us to live at home until we were nearly thirty, but people screwed with us for too many years before that for us to come out normal. We’ve waited a long time to punish everyone who hurt us. You need to understand”—she brought the tip of her black blade within centimeters of Laurel’s eye—“we have nothing to lose.”

“You were one of them, Laurel,” Rutherford hissed and then, in a frightening singsong, he whispered, “Cat got your tongue, cat got your tongue, cat go your tongue,” until Laurel put her hands over her ears, her fingers shaking like branches in a hurricane wind.

Olivia had sat through this charged scene as though made of stone. Her focus was divided by the appearance of the Donald siblings and the absurd thought that if she were a character in a movie or a book, she’d immediately come up with a plan to save her friend. There would have been some useful weapon at hand and the police would have been battering down the front door, moments away from rescuing the women in the midst of a desperate struggle against the villains.

When Ellen raised her knife to Laurel’s face, Olivia was able to break the spell of immobility and react. Slowly turning her head, she looked for a weapon that could stop both Ellen and Rutherford, but the only items nearby were Laurel’s laptop and two plastic sippy cups belonging to Dallas and Dermot.

Yet, Olivia had two advantages. The Donalds weren’t paying attention to her, giving her the element of surprise if only for the next few seconds. And she had Haviland, out of sight beneath the kitchen table. It would only take a single word to subtract from the intruders’ advantage and Olivia knew the moment had come to call it out.

“HAVILAND!” Her shout was infused with authority. “ATTACK!”

She jumped up and jerked her chair to the side, giving Haviland the space he needed to bolt out from under the table. In a flash of black fur and bared teeth, he was on Rutherford before the man could even think of slipping his length of sharp wire over the poodle’s head.

When Rutherford howled in pain, Olivia lunged forward, grabbing hold of Ellen’s wrist. The knife tilted away from Laurel’s face and Olivia yelled, “RUN! NOW! CALL RAWLINGS!”

Laurel complied. In a flash of blond hair, she raced through the kitchen to the garage.

Olivia had no time to feel relief that her friend had escaped. Ellen, who was younger and stronger, suddenly wrenched her forearm to the side and broke free of Olivia’s grasp. Her eyes were wild, glittering with madness and decades of unspent rage.

She slashed at Olivia’s chest with her knife and Olivia leapt backward, but not quickly enough. A searing pain screamed along the flesh of her upper arm and Ellen smiled, delighted to have drawn blood from this stranger who’d dared to interfere.

Haviland yelped, and even though hearing his cry was like receiving another wound, Olivia didn’t dare take her eyes from her opponent. She struck out with her right leg, her foot slamming powerfully into Ellen’s stomach. She heard a grunt and Ellen bent over, the air knocked from her lungs. Olivia used the reprieve to dash into the kitchen, her arm burning in agony.

At a safe distance for mere seconds, she tried to yank open a drawer in search of the biggest knife she could find, but child-protection locks had been affixed on every drawer.

“Damn it!” Olivia had never felt such intense helplessness.

But she did not have time to waste on self-pity. Ellen was coming for her again, knife held out in front of her, lips twisted in a predator’s smile. “You’re going to pay for hurting my brother!” she snarled. “When I’m done with you, I’m going to carve up your dog like a Thanksgiving turkey!”

“What is with you and all the cliches?” Olivia asked derisively, deliberately backing into a corner. Behind her was Laurel’s new coffee machine, complete with a twelve-cup, stainless steel thermal carafe. She’d brewed a full pot of coffee only an hour ago. There were at least eight cups of hot coffee left.

As Ellen advanced, Olivia unscrewed the pot’s lid. The motion hurt her arm terribly and she could feel the blood soaking into her shirt and streaming down her skin until it had covered her wrist and fingers, but she couldn’t give in to the pain. Across the room, Haviland was also fighting for his life. Rutherford’s body had been strengthened by years of physical labor and he could easily break the poodle’s bones or punch him hard enough to render Haviland unconscious.

Olivia knew she couldn’t waste another minute tangling with Ellen. She needed to end this now.

“So now you’re mocking us too?” Ellen hissed. “We didn’t get to go to college like some people. We taught ourselves what our folks wouldn’t and worked shit jobs until we had enough to pay for an apartment and bills and the operation our ignorant parents should have given us when we were kids! But we showed them.” She uttered a strangled chuckle.

As much as Olivia wanted to hear every nuance behind the siblings’ motives, it was more important to incapacitate Ellen Donald. She waited for the other woman to lunge with her knife hand. At that moment, Olivia jerked to the right and flung the contents of the coffeepot into Ellen’s face.

The knife clattered to the floor as Ellen raised both hands to her face, screaming. Mercilessly, Olivia swung the stainless steel vessel with all her strength, landing a debilitating blow to the side of Ellen’s head. The woman sank to the ground like a stone dropped into deep water.

Olivia stepped over her opponent’s sprawled legs.

A voice shouted, “FREEZE!”

It was Rawlings. He stood in Laurel’s foyer, his gun drawn and fixed on Rutherford. Two officers, both of whom had their weapons trained on Ellen’s brother, flanked the chief.

Olivia’s gaze turned to Rutherford. Her blood turned to ice.

Rutherford had a switchblade in his hand and was pointing it at Haviland’s throat. The poodle was growling a low, dangerous growl and was tensing to pounce. If he did, Rutherford’s blade would pass straight through his jugular.

“Haviland! Off!” Olivia commanded but terror made her words come out as a croak.

Rawlings stepped forward. “I will shoot you in the leg, Rutherford Donald. If you do not drop your weapon this instant so help me, I will shoot you!”

“Come, Haviland!” Olivia heard the desperation in her voice but didn’t care. “Come to me!”

The poodle obeyed. Skirting around Rutherford, he reached Olivia’s side and nudged her with his nose.

Olivia couldn’t stop the tears of relief that fell onto Haviland’s fur as she ran her panicked fingers over his body. There was no blood so he had not been cut and he didn’t flinch in pain as she examined him. His chest was slightly tender and Olivia suspected he’d taken one of Rutherford’s blows to that region, but all in all, he was well.

In turn, Haviland licked her, nuzzled her, and sniffed her wound, whining a little in concern. Olivia waited until Rutherford tossed his knife onto the rug and was promptly cuffed by one of the officers before she returned to the kitchen. She wound Laurel’s checkered dishcloth around her arm and winced as a fresh burst of pain shot up the damaged limb.

Rawlings was beside her in an instant.

He was angry. “You’re hurt.”

His eyes blazed with threads of green and gold and Olivia realized that they only had that appearance when the chief was struggling to keep his emotion in check. He found another dishcloth in a drawer and placed it over the first, applying pressure to Olivia’s wound. “We’ve got to stop the bleeding.”

Don’t look, Olivia told herself, but then she did. Blood seeped through both towels, spreading across the material in a wave of red. She felt a surge of nausea and then a rush of cloying heat. She