Page 74 of The Night Belongs To Fireman

Don’t think about it. Not tonight.

The Firefly parking lot was jammed; the place must be hopping. They found a spot toward the middle of the lot. She followed Fred as he wound his way between vehicles, toward an old brick building. It had a big garage-type door that must have been where the fire engines used to exit. The glass in the windows had a wavering, watery look; it must be the original, or close to it. Even from halfway across the lot, she saw the old panes rattle from the thump of dance music. Red and orange lights played over the jerking, flowing bodies within.

She stayed close behind Fred as he checked out the parked cars. “I see Mulligan’s car,” he murmured. “Asshole has an old Mustang my brothers would kill for.”

“I liked him,” she announced.

“Only because you don’t know him,” he said darkly. “He has that broken nose for a reason.”

“Did you break it?”

“No. It was already broken. He won’t say how it happened but everyone’s got a theory. He’s also got a big ugly scar on his leg and one of his thumbs is crooked. Man likes trouble. Lizzie saw him at a softball game and went all mushy. She says he has that bad boy thing the girls like.”

She squeezed past a Corvette with a “Firefighters Can Take the Heat” sticker. That reckless mood seized her again. “You’ve been ignoring me ever since we saw him and the others.”

He frowned over his shoulder, a streetlight picking up hints of gold in his eyes. “No, I haven’t. I’ve been thinking.”

“About what?”

“You,” he admitted wryly, ushering her ahead of him. “I tried to change the subject, but it didn’t work.” A melting sensation spread through her, like brandy filtering through her veins. What if Sabina was right, after all?

They’d almost reached the end of the lot, just one more car between them and a triangular stretch of concrete bordered by the street, the lot, and Firefly. She angled her body sideways to inch around the bumper, when suddenly, from somewhere, headlights switched on. Momentarily blinded, she threw up a hand to shield her eyes. Something rammed against her from the side.

Hit by a car, she thought, laughing at the absurdity. In a parking lot. After all her father’s crazy security. And then she realized that it wasn’t a car. Someone was holding her, roughly. And he smelled strange.

“Hey,” she said, pushing at the arm around her middle. It felt like a boa constrictor.

“Shut the fuck up.” A harsh voice assaulted her ears.

Black panic, thick as smoke, closed in on her.

“Fred!” she screamed desperately, before the man clapped a cloth over her mouth.

Fred had seen the first man and was already airborne when he heard Rachel scream. Two more men emerged from behind the blinding headlights. They went after him while the other grabbed Rachel. Fred jammed his elbow into the throat of the man to his left. A hideous crunch and furious howl told him he’d connected with the fucker’s windpipe.

Good.

The other man wrapped an arm around his neck and squeezed. Fred didn’t waste a second. He half fell, half dove sideways, making the man lose his balance. In the split second that his attacker didn’t have control, Fred grabbed on to his arm and wrenched him sideways. Surprised, the man let go of Fred’s neck and tumbled onto the hood of a white Toyota. Fred grabbed a fistful of his hair and slammed his head against the car, once, twice, then one more time to make sure he was unconscious. Dark blood seeped onto the white metal, but Fred didn’t linger.

Fred spared one glance for the crushed-windpipe guy, saw that he was clawing at his throat and wasn’t a threat at the moment. Then Fred launched himself over the top of the cars that stood between him and the bastard dragging Rachel toward a black Escalade idling on the street, only a few yards away. He landed on a white Ford and slid across the hood, keeping his gaze on Rachel.

Rachel was kicking and clawing at the man who was dragging her away. Those Krav Maga lessons must be coming back to her, although fighting in a real-world situation was completely different. Her attacker wore a stocking cap and polarized sunglasses and moved like a young man, which meant it wasn’t the same man who’d grabbed her seventeen years ago.

Unless that man had hired these thugs to do his dirty work.

It didn’t matter who was behind this. The only thing that counted was stopping that man from taking Rachel. The kidnapper was only a few steps away from the Escalade. Fred had maybe half a minute to stop him, if that. He dove through the air, did a somersault across the sidewalk, feeling the concrete scrape his forehead, and whipsawed the guy’s feet from under him. He toppled like a tree, pulling Rachel down with him.

“Run, Rachel,” yelled Fred. He didn’t have time to say anything else, because someone landed on top of him. Someone bulky, someone whose hacking breaths rasped above him. Crushed Windpipe. Fred had to give him credit for persistence. He jabbed his elbow backward, making contact with something soft. He didn’t really care what, he was focused only on Rachel.

With a deft move, she used the momentum of the man’s crashing body to twist out of his grip—mostly. Sprawled across the ground, he still hung onto her with one meaty hand wrapped around her ankle. She yanked hard, but the man kept his hold on her. She was panting, frantic little gasps of fear that went straight to Fred’s heart. The man on top of him was raining blows on his head, but he tuned out the distraction and, dragging the man, crawled across the few feet of sidewalk until he reached Rachel’s attacker. He used a hard karate chop on the man’s forearm. He’d used the blow hundreds, probably thousands of times, to break blocks of wood in half. It was all about finding the right angle, the right amount of force, the right speed.

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