As he approached, she noticed something she’d been too frantic to pick up on earlier. Underneath his drooping hair, on the right side of his forehead, was a small flesh-colored bandage.

It occurred to her that it was in the exact same spot that Bolton Crutchfield had circled on his own forehead earlier this evening as he stood by the tree outside the Jerebko house. She doubted it was a coincidence. Was Crutchfield trying to tell her something? If, as Thurman suspected, his loyalty now lay with her, the answer almost surely was yes.

Crutchfield was the one who patched Thurman up after his multiple injuries escaping from Jessie’s apartment. One of those injuries was a nightstick to the forehead. Jessie had landed the vicious blow to the head with it, in the exact spot where that bandage now rested. Was the wound worse than it looked? It seemed that Crutchfield thought so.

Before Jessie knew what to do with the information, Thurman was on her, swinging the knife down at the right side of her body. She twisted away from him and felt the blade slice down her back behind her right shoulder, mowing through her flesh.

She heard a scream, certain it was her own. It took a second for her to process that it was actually the girl in the chair, who had finally managed to spit out the rag. It surprised Thurman too and he turned to look at her in shock. He went over to her, retrieved and replaced the rag in her mouth, then turned his attention back to Jessie.

The brief reprieve had given Jessie the time she needed to come up with an idea. It was simple and stupid and unlikely to work. But it was all she had.

She waited until her father lumbered toward her again, making sure not to move until he was too close to back away. Then, with all the strength she could muster, she tugged down on the bungee cords with her tied-up wrists and used the rebounding momentum to lift her legs high in the air. She extended them out in one quick, violent kicking motion.

The heel of her right shoe made perfect contact with the bandage on Thurman’s forehead. She heard what she thought was a cracking sound as he stumbled backward, howling in pain. He bent over, trying to stem the sudden flow of blood spewing out around the bandage with one hand, while still holding the knife with the other.

When he looked back up at her, blood was streaming down the entire right side of his face, pouring into his eye. He wiped it away sloppily as he came at her, still moaning loudly. His already unsteady, shuffling gait was even clumsier as he bore down on her, his eyes blinking in a mix of pain and seeming confusion.

Behind him, the girl suddenly rocked back in the chair she was tied to and then violently flung herself forward, chair and all. Her body slammed into Xander’s back as he moved away from her, knocking him off balance. He stumbled and dropped to the ground, landing on his knees in front of Jessie