Page 7 of Avenging Angel

Expressions chased themselves across his face. Shady. Incredulous. And regrettably, he ended on angry.

He opened the door and demanded, “Who are you and what are you doing on my back patio?”

“Hi!” I exclaimed. “I’m so sorry.” I pointed to the badge on my chest. “I work for Puppy Patrol?” I told him in a question, like he could confirm I did. I didn’t wait for his confirmation, I babbled on. “And I was walking one of your neighbor’s dogs. He slipped the leash and ran off. I’m trying to find him. He’s a little Chihuahua. I’m freaked! He’d be a snack for coyotes.”

“We don’t have coyotes in the city,” he informed me.

“Yes, we do,” I contradicted. And we did. I had a Puppy Patrol client (actually, it was a Kitty Krew client, same company, brown uniform, whole different ball of wax) who’d learned that the hard way. “They come down from the mountains and in from the desert, easy pickin’s for people who let their cats go outside and stuff.”

RIP Gaia.

“How did you get in my backyard?”

“Your gate was unlatched,” I lied. “And I could swear I saw little Bruiser dash in here from the alley.”

He leaned out to look toward his gate.

I leaned back, my hand moving toward my pocket and my stun gun.

When he looked back at me, I knew he saw through my story.

And it was on.

I didn’t have time for the stun gun. Not now.

He lunged.

I tried to evade.

He caught me anyway and pulled me right inside.

Totally knew he could take me.

Damn it!

We grappled.

I went for the gonads with my knee and hit his inner thigh.

This caused him not to let me go, but instead grab my hair and pull,hard.

Jerk!

I went for the instep, slamming down on it with my foot, and that was better. He yelped, his hold loosened, I ripped myself away from him (pulling my own hair, because his grip hadn’t loosened that much,ouch!), and I yanked out the stun gun.

He recovered too quickly, nabbed me, and even if I knew he could take me, I was still surprised at his strength when he wrenched me around at the same time throwing me down to the floor with such force, I hit the tile and skidded several feet. My head then struck a corner of his kitchen cabinet.

Worse than the hair pulling. Seriously.

While I blinked the stars out of my eyes, he came after me, reached down to grab me again, and I remembered I had my stun gun in my hand.

I turned it on, heard it crackling, his attention went to it, and ill-advisedly in our current positioning, I touched it to him.

He went inert, then dropped, all two hundred some-odd pounds of him landing square on top of me.

“Oof,” I grunted.

Fuck!I thought.

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