December Dread (Murder by Month Mystery) by Jess Lourey

Author:Jess Lourey [Lourey, Jess]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2024-11-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 25

It was a thirty-minute drive to the self-defense class, where we lost our wigs and changed into sweats before reviewing wrist releases and punching. After twenty minutes of that, we learned how to disarm an attacker wielding a knife, a gun, or a garrote. The last one seemed a long shot for Stearns County, unless the weapon was crafted of twine or jumper cables. The knife and particularly the gun defense felt more useful.

Master Andrea had everyone break up into groups of two and practice scenarios with the weapons, pair by pair. The first group went, with one woman slipping a knife around the neck of another. After the victim successfully disarmed her attacker, the second group went, this one with the attacker pointing a knife at her partner’s chest.

After them came Mrs. Berns and me.

I stood in front of the class, pretending to walk along a dark street. Mrs. Berns popped out from behind a punching bag and waved an orange plastic pistol in my face.

“Give me your money!” she hollered.

I thrust my hands in the air, like I’d been instructed. I’d just watched two pairs of women enact almost this same exact skit. I knew the next step was to talk to my assailant, humanize myself, draw her attention away from her next move.

But I couldn’t do it.

I was suddenly paralyzed, dunked in an ice bath, my mouth stuffed with cotton. It was just Mrs. Berns holding the fake weapon, and we were in a well-lit class, and I knew it was pretend. We’d been practicing self-defense here for three days now, and I’d been joking and enjoying it the whole time.

Suddenly, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about the gun that’d been pulled on me in November. My assailant and I had been in the cab of a truck. He’d held a pistol, and he’d intended to kill me with it.

He’d failed, but not for lack of trying.

Funny thing was, other than some nightmares and overreacting to loud noises, I’d managed to keep the memory of that terrible moment at bay, always on the periphery, telling myself it was no big deal, and I’d succeeded right up until Mrs. Berns had pulled a fake handgun on me. Now, the memory flooded me like wet cement and nailed me in place.

“Mira?” It was the instructor. She stood beside me, and her voice was neither gentle nor harsh. “Talk to Mrs. Berns.”

I blinked. I heard the words, but they didn’t make sense. They were so far away and slow.

Mrs. Berns reached forward and grabbed my T-shirt. “You gonna make it easy for me, Spice Girl?”

It was a move we’d practiced one hundred times on the first day we’d come to class: someone grabs you, you grab them, and something about the physical contact pulled me back. I ignored the gun for the moment, placing my hand over Mrs. Berns’s. My thumb slid under her palm, and my fingers grasped hers. I pulled her hand across my body, twisting as I went.

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