A Checklist for Murder Read Online Free PDF Page A

one. She expected him to scream and yell and threaten her. She even knew that there was a good chance he would strike her, maybe knock her to the floor as he had in the past.
    So she wasn’t really all that surprised when, without a word, he leapt the distance between them and grabbed her with both hands around her throat. As he clamped her windpipe closed, her hands went instinctively to his wrists and held on tight. He didn’t say a word as he pounced on her and she couldn’t do anything more than gasp for what little air still managed to bleed in through her constricted throat.
    Tasha’s adrenaline spurted through her. It made their movements seem to snap into slow motion, as if the duo had lapsed into a deadly graveyard waltz. He drove her with his weight, forcing her to back up as he spun her around in the opposite direction and slowly walked her out of the kitchen.Robert was six feet tall and weighed over 180. She struggled, but it was useless. At five feet eight inches and 130 pounds, even though Tasha’s slim frame was built on long legs and firm muscles toned from her love of outdoors and physical activities, even though Tasha had grown up a tomboy and was never seriously accused of being a wimp by anybody, she had neither the physical nor psychological strength to mount any real defense against a sudden and brutal attack from her father.
    He directed all the power of his rage into clamping her throat closed while he drove her steadily into the next room. Now, for the very first time since he had given her swimming lessons so many years ago, for the first time since Tasha was a doting toddler obedient to Daddy’s every word, for the first time since those days, years before, when Robert was still the flattered father who loved his beautiful young daughter, the two moved once again in perfect sync.
    They became a father-daughter dance team as they staggered onward together. Tasha’s feet were barely on the ground as she struggled, twisted, writhed, in his grip. Dancing on air.
    Moments later they ended their last waltz as she fell backward and Robert landed atop her on the floor of the family room. But even with Tasha flat on the floor and helpless in his grip, his hands kept biting into the soft flesh of her neck.
    Up to that moment Tasha hadn’t felt that afraid, not really. She became calm. If normal and natural fear was blasting through her insides at the realization that she was under deadly attack, years of conditioning had calloused the part of her where she ought to have felt it. Her instinct for self-preservation took over and prior family experience rushed in to go to work. She had weathered a lot of his violent storms in the past and had usually come through them without having to go to the hospital.
    She knew the trick: Don’t resist. Take whatever blows hehas to deliver and let his rage burn off before you get seriously hurt. Ever since she had foolishly stepped between Robert and Claire during that big family fight back when she was thirteen, ending up with a shattered arm and three weeks of traction for her foolishness, Tasha had learned well the lesson of dealing with her father’s rage.
    Let him lead; he feeds on open defiance. Keep him as quiet as you can and wait for your chance to escape.
    But now the impact of the floor against her back and the weight of his body on top of hers brought Tasha’s true emotions home. She instantly filled with a high-octane mixture of fear and outrage that struggled to explode out of her. She felt the cries building inside, hammering to get out. But the only point of self-control left to her was the need to avoid giving him the slightest satisfaction at terrorizing her. She strangled her own sobs down in her throat even harder than Robert was strangling her with the pressure of his thumbs. Keeping her eyes hard, she held the cries deep inside until, without warning—
    Robert stopped the attack. It ended as suddenly as it had begun. He remained on top of