Page 78 of Lethal Weakness

“Let’s go. I don’t have all night.”

I struggle to my feet, but he only watches me with disgust.

“Fuck you,” I spit.

His backhand comes across my face so sharp that I hardly feel the stinging pain over my head ringing.

Avery’s whimpers of fear clear my fog just enough to keep me from falling over again. I squeeze her head against my waist, and breathe through the pain.

I’ve taken hits before, but I can’t fight him.

Not like this.

I can see the faint glow of the pool in the distance, and beyond the gardens that surround the pool are the pastures that separate this estate and my backyard.

We have to run.

The only thing I have on me is my phone and my keys. Neither of which are formidable weapons… But every woman knows at least one singular self-defense move.

He walks on, letting me and Avery trail behind him, no longer seeing me as a threat.

I might not be threatening, but I’m a mother, and I’ll be damned if someone takes me from my baby.

Two keys. That’s all I have, but with my hand concealed in my pocket, I slip them through my fingers anyway. I just need to get him to turn around.

So I take my only lifeline and chuck it between his legs as he stomps ahead of us. My cell phone screen cracks under his stupid boot, making him halt suddenly.

“What the f–”

“Fuck you,” I growl just as he turns to look at me, and throw the hardest punch I’ve ever thrown in my life.

Striking pain explodes through my hand, but the key between my pointer and middle finger gets buried right in the corner of his eye socket.

He howls in pain, swinging an arm out to grab me, but I dodge it, scooping Avery up across my chest like a seatbelt, and go.

I run until I can’t hear his shouts for backup, and I keep going when it feels like my lungs are going to explode, and I’m still only through the garden.

“Sorry, baby,” I warn breathlessly before I loft Avery over the waist-height fence at the edge of the green lawn. She lands in the tall grass with a light thump but doesn’t cry once I fling my body over to join her.

“We have to keep running. Okay?”

She sniffles as she wipes her face, but nods. “Otay.”

The grass is tall, and her little legs struggle to keep up with gravity, but my brave girl does her best to run. If this were a movie, I’d tell her we were pretending to be fairies in the moonlight, frolicking through a field…

But this is no movie. This is a nightmare.

The pasture is one giant slope that goes down forever before it eventually bottoms out in a marshy tree line, but just before we reach the vegetation, Avery slips and falls to her butt, crying out in fear as she slides several feet.

“It’s okay, I gotcha. I gotcha.” My thighs are on fire, and I don’t think I’ve taken a real breath since we started running, but I gather her in my arms again and keep going.

The thick overgrowth and mud in this swampy part of the pasture is suffocating as I trudge forward, being swarmed by bugs, and God knows what else.

My shoes threaten to be lost to the muck I’m stepping in until finally, the hill starts to rise again, and the thick brush starts to thin as I heave our bodies upward.

My knees hit dry ground as I stare upward at the trek ahead of us, but I don’t have a free hand to wipe the sweat out of my eyes.

We’re so close. I just need to get to the top of the hill, and we’ll be home.