Sabrina
Copyright© 2026 by The Outsider
Chapter 7: Killing Time
21 March 2014 – Hilltop Road, Lancaster, Massachusetts
“You’re sure you’ll be okay, Princess?”
“Dad, I’m almost sixteen! I’ve stayed home by myself before! I’ll be fine!”
“All right, all right ... We’ve never left you on your own for this long, so that’s got me a little nervous. Set the alarm whenever you’re inside, and keep the tablet near you.”
“Dad...”
“We’re leaving! We’re leaving!”
Alex and Ryan would attend a stay-over pre-season baseball camp this weekend at a college near Newton. They left for the camp’s hotel after school this afternoon. Her parents would take advantage of a standing invitation from her Aunt Mish and Uncle Mickey, two more of her dad’s Army friends, to visit them in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, at the same time. While she liked Aunt Mish, Uncle Mickey, and their kids, Sabrina elected to stay home and get some studying done.
Sabrina had no hockey commitments this weekend. With a bye in the first round of their league’s playoffs, Coach Savard gave his team the weekend off to rest up before practice resumed Tuesday afternoon. She put her teaching schedule at Sensei Doug’s on hold until hockey season ended. The downtime was welcome in a season as long as the Eighteen-and-Under league.
She killed part of the afternoon talking to Moose on the phone. Her parents told her she could have him over if she wanted, which she did, but he was on his way to visit his grandparents in Vermont, so the phone call had to suffice.
By late evening on Friday, she’d already finished her homework and even read ahead in all of her subjects. She fixed herself a simple dinner and curled up on the couch in the living room to watch a movie. When the phone rang, she picked it up without even checking the Caller ID.
“Hello?”
“It’s the little bitch!” she heard a voice whisper to someone else. “Hello, you whore,” the voice sneered to her at a louder volume. “Home all by yourself this weekend? We saw your family leave.”
Sabrina sat silent, her mind whirring. The blinds were closed, the doors were locked, and the alarm was set, but she still looked around to check all of those things.
“What, no answer? My friends and I will enjoy breaking your cherry before your life as a real whore begins. Maybe we’ll come to visit you this weekend?”
The voice’s tone and the obvious message made her angry, and that anger built by the moment.
“There isn’t a single one among you and your little friends that would know how to do that, asshole,” she sneered back. “I’ll bet that none of you can get it up without one of the other’s hands on your little dicks!”
The only sound over the open line was the caller’s rapid breathing as he tried to calm himself.
“Bitch...” he snarled. “Bitch, you’re gonna have a terrible day when we come for you!”
“Bring it, asshole!” she shot back. “You’re all talk!”
The line went dead.
Sabrina hung up and then rechecked the locks on all the doors and windows. She tried to relax and settle back into the movie, but she couldn’t. Sabrina meandered around the house through the evening before trying to burn some energy in the gym – no luck. She spent a restless night tossing and turning in her bed. One of her family’s handguns spent the night on the nightstand next to her.
The next day, after a lousy morning workout and an unproductive afternoon, Sabrina pecked at the soup and sandwich dinner she had made. Sitting at the kitchen table in the early evening, she stared out into the living room. The sun had set, and the sky was almost in full darkness. Thick clouds hid the stars on this moonless night. The house tablet, the one linked to the security system, bleeped a warning tone as she chewed her grilled cheese.
<LINK TO MONITORING CENTER DOWN>
Sabrina blinked at the text on the screen. She frowned as she unlocked the tablet and tapped the alarm app. All the icons around the house schematic – the icons for the door and window sensors and the cameras around the property – glowed green, but the antenna icon representing the link to the alarm company flashed an insistent red.
<SECONDARY CELLULAR LINK NOT INSTALLED>
Staring in disbelief for a second or two, Sabrina’s fingers soon flew over the touchscreen to bring up the camera feed menu. None of the cameras she checked revealed anything until she clicked on the one perched atop the machinery shed in the backyard. The day/night camera there showed a group of three men clustered behind the house near where the hard-wired phone line exited the basement. She watched as they split up and headed in different directions. One of them carried a ladder.
Sabrina closed the camera feeds and clicked the alarm’s panic button icon. She updated the silent panic message to the alarm company from the generic help message to read, ’Break-in in progress – OCCUPIED RESIDENCE’ and pressed <SEND>. Without an active link for the alarm, the app asked if she wanted to use the tablet’s cellular to send the alert instead. She clicked the <YES> button to activate the silent call for help.
She scampered to her father’s office, wishing she hadn’t put the handgun away this morning. The alarm panels by the front door and upstairs started emitting warning tones for a perimeter break. Before she turned into that room, she paused by the panel in the front hall and confirmed her worst fear – someone was already in the house. She stepped through the office door, headed for the closet behind her dad’s desk, and glanced over at the windows.
Sabrina stumbled when she noticed one of them had large holes cut in the glass panes. That sash was still closed, so that zone’s warning light hadn’t been active on the panel. She’d also forgotten to check all the video feeds, or she would have seen the ladder outside this window.
“Hello, you little whore...” a familiar and unwelcome voice said from behind her.
Sabrina whirled to find a small, evil-looking man about her height stepping out from behind the door. As she spun, the tablet slipped from her hand and slid across the floor. The man pushed the door closed while sneering at her.
“We finally get to meet. I’m gonna love getting to know you.” He stepped toward her, and she retreated, only to run into her father’s desk. “There’s nowhere to run...” he chortled. “I will enjoy hearing your cries while I make you a woman.”
Sabrina put her hands behind her back while reaching for the edge of the desk, preparing to push off it and defend herself. One hand bumped into a gift her father received from someone in the Army years ago. Her right hand closed around the gift’s hilt.
“You’re not going to wait for the others to help you with that?” she taunted. “Are you sure you know what to do, dickless?”
The man’s sneer twisted into an angry snarl. He closed the gap between them and lashed out with his right hand. Sabrina’s left forearm blocked his slap, then she wrapped her arm around his to pin it in her armpit. Her right arm appeared high above her head. The would-be rapist’s eye caught the glint from a long steel blade above him before it plunged downward.
Sabrina’s scream of rage as she struck masked the tearing sound of the knife as it pierced the base of his neck on the left side. The force of her blow drove him to his knees. Seven inches of double-edged steel tore through blood vessels and the man’s windpipe before its tip lodged in his right lung. He looked over in disbelief at the hilt sticking up from his shoulder as his vision faded.
“Enjoy Hell, bitch!” Sabrina spat before giving the man a contemptuous kick in the chest.
The dead man’s body toppled backward onto the floor, his head striking the floor with a hollow <CRACK!>.
Sabrina wiped her bloody hand on her sweatpants before unlocking the gun safe in the office closet. She pulled her dad’s pump shotgun from inside. She loaded the shotgun by putting one buckshot shell into the chamber before closing the action. She jacked five more shells into the tube magazine. The remaining four shells went into her sweatpants pocket before she closed and locked the safe.
She retrieved the tablet to check the camera feeds again. The basement camera revealed the splintered door to the backyard was wide open. The camera at the top of the basement stairs showed two men trying to pick the lock on the kitchen door. A man with a pistol crept down the upstairs hall and started coming down the stairs to the first floor. She put the tablet on the desk, disengaged the safety of the shotgun, and strode out of the office without a glance at the body on the floor.
The man on the stairs seemed surprised to find an angry teen aiming a shotgun at him instead of cowering in a corner somewhere. He hadn’t processed the nine pellets from the first shotgun shell hitting his chest before Sabrina fired a second. He felt no pain when he fell down the stairs because he was already dead.
Sabrina loaded two more shells into the shotgun to replace the two fired as she ran back to the kitchen. Loud banging on the basement door gave way to the splintering of the door’s frame as it burst open. Two men from downstairs stumbled through. The sight of a shotgun’s muzzle pointed at them made them pause.
“You won’t do anything, bitch!” one of them growled before raising a knife.
A blast from the shotgun slammed into the man with the knife, striking him in the chest over his heart. The man stumbled backward from the impact. Sabrina heard the body tumble down the stairs. The final intruder watched in disbelief as his partner disappeared back into the dark basement. Summoning his courage, he stepped toward the little bitch in front of him while raising his pistol.
The shotgun Sabrina wielded was old – World War II issue. A special feature of the shotgun was that it would ‘slamfire.’ Keeping the trigger pulled as the pump-action re-cocked and reloaded the weapon would cause it to fire again once the breech closed.
Sabrina’s aim was high because of that. As a result, her final blast hit the last intruder in the neck, tore open his carotid artery, and sent him spinning into the far wall. He dropped to the floor, writhing and clutching at his neck as his life drained out of him.
Sabrina lowered the shotgun and stood motionless in the kitchen, catching her breath while her ears rang. As she calmed down, she felt the adrenaline rush catch up to her, nausea flooded her, and she bolted for the sink. Her dinner splashed into it. She unloaded the shotgun, put it on the counter, and emptied her pockets of ammo. Rinsing her mouth and the sink, she pulled her phone from her pocket with a shaky hand.
“Please be home, please be home, please be home,” she chanted as the phone on the other end of her call rang.
“Hey, Sabrina!” came the welcome voice.
“TOMMY!” she gasped. “Are you home? Is your dad there?”
“Huh? Yeah, we’re both home. Why? What’s up?”
“Later, TJ. Right now I really need to talk to your dad...”
“What’s wrong?”
“TOMMY!” she barked. “YOUR FATHER! NOW!”
There was no reply from her friend before she heard Mr. Jones come on the line.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Jones, it’s Sabrina Knox.”
“Sabrina? Is there something wrong? Tommy just handed me the phone without a word. He looked pretty upset, too.”
“I’ll apologize to him later, but right now I need a lawyer.”
The pause was measurable.
“A lawyer?”
“Yes. Can you call Mr. Abernathy and come over right away? I don’t have his number on my phone. Some men broke into the house, and the police will be here soon.”
”Broke in? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but they’re not.” A loud series of knocks sounded from the front door. “Sounds like the cops are already here. I’ve gotta go.”
Sabrina hung up. She unlocked and opened the front door while keeping her hands up.
“Lancas...” the officer on the porch started to announce before he saw the bloody body balled-up at the bottom of the inside stairs and before he noticed the darkening smear on Sabrina’s sweatpants. He drew his weapon, and the officer at the bottom of the outside stairs did the same. “Step out!” he ordered, which Sabrina did. “Turn around and put your hands on your head!”
Sabrina’s arms were pulled behind her back, and she felt handcuffs close around her wrists.
“You are not under arrest,” she heard, “you are being detained for our safety.”
The officer led her down the stairs to the front lawn while watching for threats from inside the house. He had her sit on the walk with her ankles crossed.
“Sir, a lawyer from the firm that represents my family will arrive soon. He drives a black Volvo.”
“Who are you?”
“Knox, Sabrina M. I live here.”
“What happened here?”
“I pushed the panic button for our alarm system.”
“I meant, ‘Who is the person on the floor, and why is he covered in blood?’”
“Sir, I will answer no more questions until I have legal counsel present.”
Sabrina heard the officer sigh and call someone on his radio.
“Seventeen to Lancaster or S-Three? We need more units started our way ASAP.”
“S-Three to Seventeen, what’s going on there?”
“Sarge, we need more manpower to search and secure this residence. I have one subject down inside that I can see and one live subject detained outside. The subject outside’s already asking for a lawyer.”
“S-Three to Lancaster, call Clinton PD and the Staties to see if either one of them or both can shake people loose to assist us. Both would be preferable. I’m still tied up at this personal injury accident over by the Harvard line.”
“Roger, S-Three. Stand by.”
A car pulled down the access road to the Knox residence. Sabrina heard a door shut and a voice call out.
“Hello, the house! I’m the young lady’s lawyer!”
The officers ordered the new arrival forward with his hands up. John Jones soon appeared in the light of the officers’ flashlights.
“Now, what’s going on here, young lady?”
“Miss Knox won’t be answering questions until my senior partner arrives, Officer.”
“Her counsel is present! She can answer questions now!”
“I meant ‘appropriate counsel,’ Officer,” Sabrina reminded the man. “No offense, Mr. Jones.”
“Oh, none taken, Sabrina,” John replied with a smile to the seated teen. The lead officer looked at John with his hands on his hips. “I run the contracts division at Abernathy and Associates, so I’m not a criminal lawyer. I’m only here to ensure you don’t violate Miss Knox’s Fifth Amendment rights before Josh Abernathy arrives.”
The officer threw up his hands and went to inspect the rest of the property outside the house. The other officer stayed with John and Sabrina. Blue lights lit up the trees lining Hilltop Road as another cruiser sped up the street. That cruiser whipped into the entrance to the gravel access road and stopped behind John’s Volvo.
“Sergeant,” the other Lancaster officer said with a nod. “My partner’s checking the outside of the residence. Can you watch the girl while I go back to him? We haven’t searched her yet. This gentleman is one of her lawyers.”
The State Police sergeant nodded that she would, and the Lancaster officer jogged off. The sergeant’s flashlight clicked on.
“Hello, Miss Knox,” a familiar voice said. “It’s Sergeant Dadashova from the State Police.”
“Hello, Sergeant,” Sabrina said, returning the greeting.
“You don’t have any weapons on you, do you, Sabrina?” Sally asked while helping the teen back to her feet, then frisked her.
“No, Sergeant. Just my cell phone.”
“And you are, Sir?” Sally asked, glancing over at John Jones.
“John Jones from Abernathy and Associates. I live next door, and my youngest goes to school with Miss Knox. I’m standing in for Josh Abernathy until he can get here from Bolton.”
“Can you act for Miss Knox in the meantime?”
“I can, but I handle contract law for the firm, not criminal. I’d rather we wait until Josh gets here.”
“Well, Josh better not be speeding through town to get here. There are too many cops headed this way.”
Josh Abernathy wasn’t happy.
An urgent call from John Jones pulled him away from a relaxing Saturday night and had him sitting in an interview room at Lancaster’s police station. The youngest child of his biggest single client was under investigation following a deadly home invasion. That client had texted him nonstop since Josh called to inform him of the incident and his daughter’s status. Josh finally had to text back, telling Jeff to shut the hell up and let him do his job.
“All right, walk me through it again, Sabrina.”
Sabrina laid out the sequence of events the best that she could remember them, while Josh made notes.
“Where did the knife come from again?”
“It was a gift from someone in the Army Dad saved years ago. Dad explained that it’s a fighting knife from World War II that appears on the Special Forces regimental insignia and a few others in Army heraldry. The man Dad saved was a Green Beret.”
“And the knife was sitting on the desk in his office?”
“It’s been on display there since he got it. The knife rests on a custom wooden stand near the front edge, and I felt it behind me when I reached for the desk.”
“And you stuck it in the man’s neck?”
“It was him or me, Mr. Abernathy. I told you what he wanted to do.”
Josh blinked at Sabrina’s matter-of-fact explanation.
“How long is it?”
“The blade’s a little over seven inches long and super sharp. The whole knife is over a foot long.”
“How much of the blade did you put into the guy?”
Sabrina stared at him with a cold look.
“All of it.”
Josh shivered at the answer and the look she gave him. He saw her massage the edge of her right hand and wince, then he noticed the blood still on it.
“Why haven’t you cleaned the blood off your hand?”
“They told me I couldn’t.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Josh pounded on the door and demanded that the police allow Sabrina to wash her hands. The Lancaster officer protested until Josh started uttering phrases like ‘suing your department for exposing my client to potential blood-borne pathogens.’ They scraped a sample off her hand before allowing her to clean up. The officer also tried to interview Sabrina when she finished, but Josh said he still needed more time with his client.
“It’s not gonna be his case, anyway,” he mentioned to Sabrina once back in the interview room.
“Why not?”
“Sally told me that State Police CPAC is taking jurisdiction because the home invasion is likely related to the traffickers.”
”’Sally?’” Sabrina asked with a knowing smile. “You meant ‘Sergeant Dadashova,’ right?”
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