Page 7 of The Voicemail

He turns when he hears me and bolts the other way, but I’m faster. I tackle him to the ground before he reaches the next apartment and land a punch before he can speak.

He staggers into the opposite wall and comes back swinging. He’s bigger than I realized, broad through the shoulders, with the thick neck and heavy hands of a man who’s used to throwing punches. His fist catches my jaw. It hurts, but only enough to annoy me.

I grab his coat, drive my knee into his stomach, and slam him into the wall again. Inside Elena’s apartment, something crashes.

The man reaches for his waistband. I catch his wrist and twist until something breaks. He screams, and the sound echoes down the hall.

The gun drops from his hand. I kick it behind me and hit him again, this time hard enough that blood sprays from his mouth onto the floor. I grab him by the front of his shirt and drive him back against the wall.

“You like scaring women?” I say through clenched teeth.

He laughs, but it comes out thin. I hit him again. His head snaps to the side.

“You’re lucky all I did was break your wrist.”

His smile flickers. Now he understands me. His eyes move toward the apartment, and that small mistake costs him. I drive my forearm into his throat and pin him so hard against the wall that his feet almost leave the floor. His hands claw at my sleeve as he struggles to breathe.

“Do you understand me?”

His face goes red. As he tries to nod, I let go and watch him crumple to the floor, gasping for air. Behind me, someone gasps.

That split second is all he needs. He drives his shoulder into my ribs and slips sideways, clumsy but desperate. I catch the back of his coat, but the fabric tears in my hand. He bolts for the stairwell.

I go after him, but another door opens and an older man steps into the hall with a phone in his hand. I pull up before I knock him down.

The man is already taking the stairs hard. I should chase him.

Then I hear the lock turn behind me from 4B. I turn to see Elena Hart standing in the narrow gap of her doorway with a kitchen knife gripped in both hands. Her face is pale, her hair loose around her shoulders, and there are tears on her cheeks.

Her eyes move over me. The blood on my hands. The split at my jaw. The gun on the floor behind me. The splintered frame around her door. She looks past me toward the stairwell where the man disappeared, then back at me, terrified.

3

ELENA

For a second, neither of us moves.

The hallway is quiet now. A minute ago, there was shouting, wood cracking, a man choking, and someone hitting the floor hard enough to shake the wall. Now there’s only rain tapping against the windows somewhere behind me and my own breathing, loud and uneven in my ears.

The stranger looks at the knife, then at me. He doesn’t step back. That should scare me more than it does.

“Are you hurt?” he asks.

His voice is the same one from the phone. Low. Calm. Almost bored, although his eyes are extremely alert.

I grip the knife tighter. “Who are you?”

“Alex Russo.”

The name rings a faint bell, though Russo isn’t that uncommon. I’m sure there’s a Russo on our wall of donors, but that means nothing. Right now he’s just a man standing outside my apartment after beating another man bloody in my hallway.

“Why are you here?” I ask, my voice tight.

“Because you called me.”

“By accident,” I remind him.

“You sounded like you needed help.”