Page 29 of Protected By the Grumpy Single Dad
For the first time, Beard’s mask slips. He hesitates. Not much. Enough to know he’s not a true believer—he’s a bully who likes the walk-up, not the consequence.
“Hands where I can see them!” I shout. “Now!”
Jasmine moves then, the tiniest movement. She slides a hand toward the floor, likely pressing a panic pedal I didn’t know she had. Good. Smart. Her eyes find mine and hold. I nod once, small. We’re in a rope bridge together over something high and ugly. We’re not falling if I can help it.
Sirens swell. The bell over the door trembles again like it knows something the rest of us don’t. Heat gathers at my collar, sweat trickling down the path the Kevlar leaves for it. My pulse pounds so hard I can taste copper.
Three minutes can be forever. Or it can be a blade.
I set my feet. I don’t blink.
“On your knees,” I say, voice low and even, the way you talk to a skittish horse or a man who thinks he’s immortal. “Guns on the tile. Fingers on your head.”
For a heartbeat, the world considers my offer.
Then it decides.
Chapter ten
Jasmine
This is not happening. This is so not happening.
Two men. Two guns. One sheriff with a steady voice and a set jaw like granite.
“Officer Vaughn …” My voice breaks on his name, breath catching like a thread snagged on a nail.
“Hang on,” he says without looking at me, tone clipped, eyes locked on the men. “I’ve got them.”
He called for backup. He’s alone with them anyway. My hands clamp over my mouth to stop myself from saying anything else that could jinx whatever fragile luck is keeping his blood inside his body.
“You heard my partner,” the hairless one says, his voice low and wrong. “Do yourself a favor. Step back out that door.”
“And like I said,” Asher replies, even, “that’s not happening.”
The hairy one lifts his pistol a fraction.
“Please,” I whisper. “Just—please.”
Asher shifts another two inches to his right, angling behind the pillar by the booths. He doesn’t drop his gun. He doesn’t try to play hero with his fists. He becomes very, very still, like he’s the hinge and the room will turn on how he moves next.
“Guns on the floor,” he says, calm like a math problem with only one right answer. “On your knees. Fingers laced behind your head.”
They don’t move.
A siren blooms outside—faint, then louder, growing teeth. The men flick a glance toward the door. It’s all the space Asher needs. He pivots, clean as a line snap, sights the bearded one … safer backstop, and barks, “Now!”
The bearded’s gun clatters to tile.
“Yours,” Asher snaps at the other man.
A heartbeat. Another. The hairless one’s mouth thins, and his gaze ticks toward me like a threat. I flinch, then hate that I do.
“Do it,” Asher says. There’s something in his voice that doesn’t shout, just decides.
The second weapon hits the floor. Asher moves in and kicks both pistols under the counter with a sharp, efficient sweep. He steps in, hard and close, all angles and economy. He doesn’t give them anything to grab but a command.
“Hands where I can see them.”
