Page 106 of Balls to the Walls

Though he wouldn’t admit it, I could tell he was interested in my story. I couldn’t blame him. It was a good story, and I was the best storyteller. In just a few more seconds, he would ask me to share. I just had to wait it out.

I counted to ten in my head, then to twenty, and he still didn’t ask. “Alright, since it’s so obvious you’re not going to leave me alone until I tell you the story, I’ll get to it.”

“I wasn’t going to ask,” he said, staring up into the abyss.

“Well, that’s subjective. So, it all began on a?—”

“Dark and stormy night. Yeah, you start a lot of your stories that way.”

“I do not,” I said, slightly offended by his tone. “I’m pretty sure only one story started that way.”

“Whatever,” he grumbled.

“Anyway, it was a…dark and twisty…evening.” There, that was better. “I was with Ivan?—”

“Your former KGB operative?” he snorted.

“You know, he’s real, and I really don’t appreciate your disrespect toward him.”

“If he’s even real, and that’s a very big if.”

“Why would I lie about that? He’s a great guy. Well, he was a great guy before he died.”

Thumper’s head snapped to face me. “Why can’t you just admit that you were pulling a disappearing act and you let it go on for too long? Enough is enough!”

“Because that would be lying and I don’t lie.”

Geez, what was it going to take for these guys to believe me? I was putting it all out there, giving them all the details they needed to know what I was doing. Okay, some of it was exaggerated just a smidge, but it was all real.

“I’m telling you all of it was real.”

“Except you have no way for us to verify any of this information. We all know you tried to pull a vanishing act. That’s why you walked around the bar that night telling us you were going to die. It would seem off to us, and that would help ensure that your little ploy worked.”

Damn, he was good. “Okay, you have part of that right. I did tell everyone I was going to die, but it was only to make my disappearance believable. There was no other ploy. I really was on assignment for Rafe.”

“Yeah, we know that much, but you didn’t intend on returning. It was the perfect opportunity for you to slip away and let us all think you were really dead.”

Man, I could see this was going to be harder than I thought. I never imagined I would come home and no one would believe me.

“Look, if I could prove that Ivan was real, would you believe me then?”

“Maybe, but I don’t know how you’re going to prove anything about a KGB operative. Maybe if he was CIA. At least that’s within our government. Good luck getting anything out of the Russians.”

He had a point there. This was going to be harder than I thought. “Okay, you’re right. There’s absolutely no way that I can prove anything about my time with Ivan. I have some great stories he told me, but I doubt you would believe me if I told you. Which is a shame because someone should remember the man beside me. He was a legend.”

“All of them are,” he said, rolling his eyes.

Again, there wasn’t much I could say?—

That was it. I couldn’t tell him. I needed to show him.

“Okay, but if he weren’t real, would I be able to show you this?”

“Show me?—”

I moved fast, just like Ivan showed me, drawing my knife as I tackled Thumper to the ground, then wrapped him in the Slayer hold. With his neck exposed, I slid the knife right across his neck, not actually breaking the skin. He was incapacitated with my body laying flat over his and my arms blocking both arms as I gripped his hair, pulling back his head to expose his neck. Yes, he could roll, but not without slicing his own neck. The beauty of the hold was how simplistic it was, but you had to move fast or get rolled by your opponent.

“Is this supposed to prove something?” Thumper gritted out.

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