Page 21 of Dizzy

All I can hear through the roar in my ears is Dizzy shouting, “Back the fuck off.”

4

DIZZY

She loses her mind.

Mikey and another prospect lope over with Jed and Bullet, and she freaks out. I got my arm around her waist before she can run, but she fights, flailing, nails me in the ribs with a bony elbow.

Thank goodness the boys ain’t around. They’re probably in the kitchen by now.

I hold her firm against my chest, arms pinned to her sides, and I try to hush her. She don’t like that. She windmills her legs. Jed lunges for her, and before I can warn him off, she nails him in the solar plexus. He snarls, raising a fist.

On instinct, I spin with her, give him my back. A weird growl comes from my chest. I cough to clear my throat.

“Back up, dude, and she won’t kick you.” I jiggle her a little. “Calm down now.”

“Let me go,” she screams.

I can feel her chest expand as she gets ready to howl. I slap a hand across her mouth, careful to leave her nose free.

“No one’s gonna hurt you. They just wanna ask you some questions.”

Even to my ears, I sound full of shit.

No one’s gonna touch her, though. No one but me.

She keeps fighting, but she’s fading quick. She’s probably starving. She needs protein. As soon as Heavy gets his answers, she’s gettin’ fed.

I wrangle her toward the stairs to the basement. We’ve got a gym set up down there. Nothing fancy. Twitch’s old free weights and barbells. A treadmill, all-in-one machine, punching bag. When the addition is finished, we’re gonna expand and add a sparring ring, sauna, the works.

For now, it serves its purpose. With the door closed, it’s soundproof. Spotty cell phone signal. One way in, one way out.

As soon as I haul her down the stairs, she starts struggling again in earnest, screaming into my palm. She’s gonna hurt herself.

“I’ll get some rope,” Jed says.

“The fuck you will.”

She’s out of her mind, though. Jerkin’ her head back, aimin’ to smash my nose, the whites of her eyes flashin’. I drag her into an alcove, away from the bench where Heavy and Grinder are waiting.

“Gimme a minute,” I bark at them as she slams a boot into my shin.

For lack of options, I press her against the wall, my chest to her back. I got a hard on—I’ve had one since I saw her in the middle of the trail, wearin’ my shirt—and I know it ain’t the time and place, but damned if I can help it. She feels it and makes a strangled yelp.

“Calm down. They’re just gonna ask you some questions.”

She’s got no room to move, but her body’s wired taut, and she’s tryin’ her damnedest to budge me.

She’s as bad as the boys get for Sharon when they stay up all night, eat nothin’ but crap, and then melt down when it’s time for school. Sharon’s called me a few times, askin’ me to haul Parker’s ass into the building. It don’t ever come to that. The kid can be reasoned with. Probably ‘cause he knows I’ll carry him into class over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

I never would have pulled that shit as a kid. My old man wouldn’t have it. He’d have tanned my hide. But Sharon doesn’t approve of “corporal punishment.” She says people don’t do that no more.

This ain’t a kid acting up, though. And if Fay-Lee don’t chill the fuck out, I don’t how this is gonna go.

Steel Bones has never hurt women, but shit is changing. This ain’t the club I patched into when I turned eighteen, my dad at my side. The stakes are multi-million dollars now. Life or death.

The jobs we do now—there’s much less risk in the front end. We ain’t racking up charges for petty shit like back in the day. Now, if we get popped, it’s serious time. Not only for us. The cast of characters we could implicate is growin’ every year. If these men don’t trust that we handle our business, we all become a liability.

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