The Alibi Man

Chapter 64

The bolt cutter was heavy. The sharp steel pinchers hovered over Bennett Walker’s genitals. The cold steel of the gun barrel rested against my temple.

“Is there a problem, Ms. Estes?” Kulak whispered.

“No,” I said. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this moment.”

Bennett cried, mumbling my name, saying “please” over and over.

“I’m just… a little dizzy,” I said, swaying against Kulak.

“Do it,” he said.

I pretended to try to open the bolt cutter without success.

“I feel really weak,” I said.

“Do it!” he shouted. “Do it!!”

Abruptly, I dropped to my knees and elbowed Kulak in the groin.

As he doubled over, I drove the handles of the bolt cutter upward with as much strength as the adrenaline rush gave me. One handle hit him in the face, shattering a cheekbone. The other caught him under the jaw. His head jerked back, and his gun hand swung upward.

The gun went off, the bullet hitting something metal across the room with a loud Ping!

He swung the weapon downward toward me.

I hit him in the side of the leg with the bolt cutter, and he dropped to his knees, firing again.

I tried to scramble backward, away from him, as he tried once more to take aim at me.

Jabbing at him with the bolt cutter, I managed to hit his wrist.

The gun fired again.

I ducked to the right.

Kulak was screaming now, in a blind rage, his eyes rolling in his head.

“Kulak! Freeze!”

“Sheriff’s office!”

“Freeze!”

“Drop it!”

I heard the shouts and the shots that followed instantly.

Blood and tissue pelted me.

Alexi Kulak’s body jerked and twisted above me.

He looked surprised. Shocked.

And then the light in his eyes went out, and his rage went flat, and his body dropped, falling across Bennett Walker’s legs.

I dragged myself to the side on one arm, trembling violently, my heart pounding wildly. My ears were ringing. I lay flat on the cold concrete. Not six feet away Bennett Walker stared at me. His eyes were wide open, unblinking.

One of the shots from Kulak’s gun had struck him in the forehead.

He was dead.