Page 9 of Fire for Effect

“Son of a bitch,” I bit out, as a big ass fists slammed into my face.

“Fuck you!” My quarry’s drawled, before he slammed his forehead into my nose.

Christ on a cracker… this guy had some fight in him.

In his defense, I had come into his house and told him he was under arrest. He’d taken a baseball bat to my head. I dodged the strike, the bat broke against the wall before we grappled onto the linoleum floor. In the roly-poly wrestling, he ended up on top, his tobacco-chew scented breathing wafting over me, turning my stomach.

I slammed my boot into the soft spot of his inner thigh, nicking his family jewels. He squeaked, his hands going slack. I slid out from under him with a few well-placed kicks to his thigh, chest and shoulder, and struggled back on my feet.

“If you didn’t want to get caught, you should have at least left the county,” I said through my heaving breaths.

Criminals are mostly stupid. The number of people who ditched their bail because they didn’t think they’d get caught is way further North of zero than you’d think. Kyle Lowell was definitely that guy. His “secret” hideout from the law was his Baby Mama’s bed in the middle of the Catskills, in a town with no name.

“Don’t hurt him!” A glass vase shattered on the back of my head, broken shards falling down my shoulders, the small pin pricks of sharp edges grazing my skin – annoying, but ultimately harmless. White lights danced across my eyes as I blinked the pain away – I mean, at this point, what’s another concussion? I’d had half a dozen already.

I was totally going to try and keep civilian casualties to a minimum, but she just pissed all over that, didn’t she?

I turned around and with one hard punch, hit her square in the temple, knocking her out cold.

She fell, crumpling like she’d been deflated.

Her screaming, shirtless kid came over, the chewing tobacco in his lip spitting onto the floor. “Don’t you touch my Mama!”

He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten. Jesus, it was early to be developing that habit. He obviously got it from his daddy.

“I won’t, kid,” I said, turning my attention back to Daddy Dearest. “Not if she stays out of my way.”

I didn’t want to hit a child, but if the brat tried to get up and take me on, I’d knock his ass out, too.

Lowell and I circled each other, fists up. He was shirtless, patchy clumps of hair growing across his chest. His bare feet were black at the soles, his fingernails covered in dirt.

The house they lived in was as well maintained as his physique.

I’m not one to get judgy. I live in a travel trailer, after all. The truck I used to haul it around wasn’t even mine. It was a loaner from Kai Griffith until he came back state-side to reclaim his beloved Denali. But this house was just sloppy, even by my less-than-exacting standards.

“You know, if you turned in those cans and bottles, you could get money for them, right?” I said, as I accidentally knocked a bunch of beer cans over, and they rolled across the floor.

“Fuck you, bitch,” Lowell said, lunging for me, his fists windmilling towards my head.

I ducked, and his swing knocked him off balance. I landed an uppercut into his sternum.

“With a vocabulary like that, you must have grown up at a real Algonquin Roundtable,” I said, rolling my eyes.

Lowell’s face flashed confusion. His brows knit, his mouth gaped open. “What?”

Yeah, that one went right over his head.

I said things like that for myself – not because I thought the person I was speaking to would get it.

He circled and circled, and I played the little tap dance with him. He rushed, diving into a small kitchen cabinet, and fumbled for something. He smirked, a triumphant smile displaying his yellowing teeth.

“Gotcha, bitch,” he said, brandishing a pistol in his hand, the barrel pointed right at my chest.

I feigned surprise – but not well. Because I’m just not that good of an actress. “Oh, no, whatever shall I do? Mercy me!”

“Fuck you!” he said, and his elbow bent as he pulled the trigger. His hand pushed forward as if he needed to toss the bullet from the gun as he fired. Did… did he think that punching the gun forward when he fired would make it travel faster? Like… seriously?

Click.

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