She knew they were one of the most dangerous amateur weapons out there. Once the teeth embedded into your flesh, they could chew up anything your body threw at it. Skin, muscle, bone, tissue. An electric chainsaw would grind them up without issue.
Ella rolled to the middle of the room. She needed space on either side if she wanted to avoid certain death. Zack came at her, moving slowly, rotating his chainsaw.
“You could have avoided this,” he shouted. “All you had to do was kill us both.”
Ella frantically glanced around for anything she could use as a weapon. There was a freezer, a bag of cement and a lopsided table of small surgical tools.
“Come on,” she called to Zack. “Don’t be a loser. Fight like a man for once.”
Zack rushed her. Chainsaw pointed directly at her stomach. Ella moved to the side, jumped on Zack’s back, and clutched him around his neck. She choked him with everything ounce of might she had, but Zack swung his weapon and connected with Ella’s arm.
“Argh,” she screamed, loosening her grip and toppling to the cold floor. One thing she learned in martial arts was to never show you were injured, but Ella had no choice. The chainsaw teeth tore through her clothes and tinged her skin. The pain took her breath away. She felt paralyzed, unable to even bend her toes.
Then Zack was over her, chainsaw held high.
Back-up couldn’t be far away.
But they needed to be there within the next few seconds to save her life.
Ella gave a silent apology to everyone. Mia, Ben, Paige, Cassie, Teri, Kate, Irene. She’d never intended any of this to happen. What would become of her new partner? Double Homicide, FBI Agents Slain By Chainsaw Madman, tomorrow’s news would say.
Zack laughed. The same face four other women had seen moments before their lives ended.
His chainsaw came down towards Ella’s shoulder, the heat off the blades burning her skin in the seconds before it touched her.
She closed her eyes and waited, hoping that she might see her dad again on the other side.
Then a scream came. Even louder than the whirring chainsaw.
Zack’s voice.
Ella opened her eyes to find that, by some miracle from the heavens, her back-up had arrived.
No, not from the heavens. From the depths of hell. Her guardian angel had a face full of blood and a halo of razor wire. She garroted Zack from behind, clasping the device around his neck and pulling the handles tight on either side, compressing the razor-sharp teeth together into a tiny circumference and severing anything in their path.
Paige was death’s messenger, here to deliver the bad news.
Zack convulsed violently, dropping the chainsaw beside Ella’s head. She rolled out of the way, scrambled to her feet and grabbed her partner by the shoulders. Paige had the look of a thousand furies in her eyes, hell bent on putting this man six feet underground. Zack clutched at the tension around his neck as Paige lifted him off his feet. He scrambled for relief, but relief was nowhere to be found.
“Paige!” Ella screamed in her ear. “Stop!”
The chainsaw stopped whirring. Zack’s inhuman gurgling came to an end. Paige’s screams of rage ceased to be. The garage fell silent, the only sound that of Zack’s body collapsing in a heap.
Paige toppled down to a sitting position, blankly staring at the wreckage of her making. Her hands wringing with blood, a necklace of cuts around her throat, eyes the color of hell’s waters.
Zack Harris was not the bringer of death tonight. Paige Ellis was.
That was Ella’s first impression, but she was wrong. Zack Harris rolled onto his back, still breathing, still living. Injured beyond the ability to stand up, but alive.
No words could do the situation justice. Ella collapsed beside her partner, both sitting in silence, both sets of eyes glued to their killer. Ella reached into her pocket, pulled out her cuffs and passed them to her partner in silence.
Paige did the honors. She rolled Zack over and bound his wrists together. He wasn’t going anywhere.
A minute later, sirens blared in the distance.
Within thirty seconds, officers would be on the scene. They’d find Irene’s severed leg. They’d find a restrained Zack Harris. They’d find two traumatized agents.
No one would be the same again.
Ella heard the crowd of officers at the door. Footsteps came through.
Paige broke out of her fugue state. She turned to her partner, the woman whose life she’d saved. Ella would be grateful for the rest of her life.
“I told you I’d do it again,” Paige said.