It worked.
He heard the man’s bone crack, and saw his hand fall away from Rachel’s ankle. A howl of pain made Fred’s ears ring. Or maybe the ringing came from the drumbeat of blows hammering his head. He rolled onto his back to stop the man’s attacks. A vicious fist struck the bone above his ear. His vision hazed, went crimson. He blocked out the pain, the way he’d learned in the ring. Focus, focus. Stop the head jabs. He needed to stay conscious, at least until he knew Rachel was okay.
Rachel. In her sparkly purple dress, she was dancing around the edge of the action, sidestepping the flailing arms of her former attacker with little hops, even trying to stomp on his hands. To his blurred gaze, she looked like a dancing firefly.
“Fred,” she was shouting. “Fred! Help! Someone help!”
Yeah, help would be nice. Where was fucking Mulligan when he needed him? But he couldn’t wait for someone to stumble out of Firefly, all buzzed and happy. Gritting his teeth, he dug into his pocket. He grabbed her car keys and slid them across the sidewalk. He overshot, sending them under a Ford pickup, but she immediately crouched to snatch them up.
“Get in your car!” he shouted to her. “Call Marsden.” She’d be safe in her car; the thing was more secure than an army tank. And Marsden would know what to do. He’d call the police or Kessler.
“I don’t want to leave you,” Rachel cried from over by the pickup.
The guy with the broken arm, still writhing on the concrete sidewalk, lunged for her. She gave a little shriek and jumped back.
“Go, Rachel, just go!” Fred scissored his legs behind his assailant’s knees, then used the entire force of his body to roll over, then over again, until the two of them landed on top of the man with the broken arm, who let out a yell. Fred had been hurt and had caused pain in countless sparring matches, but this was different. With a ruthlessness that shocked him, he realized he’d inflict all the pain it took to stop them.
Rachel finally turned and ran back toward her car. Fred felt the men scrambling beneath him. Fuck, they were trying to go after her. He couldn’t let either of them get free. He needed to buy her some time. He found someone’s arm and wrenched it backward, then twisted his legs to immobilize the other guy. This was more like a game of Twister than a bout. The position was horribly awkward, the way it torqued his back, but he needed to hold it only a few seconds, until Rachel was in her car, her headlights on, maybe backing out of the parking lot …
Headlights flashed on. Someone shouted from the direction of Firefly’s front door. The two men struggled to free themselves, sending lances of pain down Fred’s spine as he clamped his arms and legs tighter to keep them in place. An engine started up; he recognized it as Rachel’s. Thank God, she was out of there. With enough of a head start, she’d be safe.
Then a tremendous blow caught him on the temple and shards of silver pierced his vision. A black abyss rose up to swallow him. The last thing he heard before he tumbled into the dark was “Forget her, she’s gone. Get this fucking asshole in the van.”
Chapter 22
Fred was choking. Something was blocking all the air. And he couldn’t see. He was dead. This must be death, this black, suffocating, stuck … His hands wouldn’t move, or his legs … God, was he in a coffin? Was he underground? What the … ?
“Stay still, jerkoff.”
Obnoxious as it was, the guy’s high, wheezy voice calmed him. He must not be dead. Neither heavenly angels nor Satan’s minions would use words like “jerkoff,” would they?
With a rush his conscious awareness returned and he realized he wasn’t six feet under in a coffin somewhere. He was sitting in a chair. His arms and legs were tied to it, and the reason he couldn’t see was that he was blindfolded. Some kind of cloth was wrapped around his eyes and mouth. He tested it with his tongue. Rough cotton gauze. That’s what was cutting off the oxygen supply. If he calmed his panic and took shallow breaths, he could get enough air.
For a moment he focused on stilling his panic. When his breathing felt close to normal, and his heart was no longer racing, he added more information to what he’d already gathered. He rotated his wrists to test the hold of the bindings. The give of the material told him his arms were tied with the same kind of gauze that blindfolded him. That didn’t seem smart. Gauze wasn’t enough to hold anyone for long.
Important point of information, he decided. This didn’t seem to be a very organized or prepared kidnapper.
Kidnapper.
He’d been kidnapped. He wanted to laugh, but the gag didn’t make that possible. Why the hell would anyone kidnap him? Maybe they thought he was Rachel’s brother, or even her boyfriend. Someone the Kessler family would rush to ransom. This was all some crazy misunderstanding, and if he could just get this cloth off his face he could straighten it out. He pushed at it with his tongue and waggled his chin back and forth.
Cold metal touched his cheek. He froze. He had no doubt it was a knife.
“It shouldn’t need to be mentioned, but only one person is in control of this situation,” said the same high, almost boyish voice. Fred had the feeling he was disguising it. “And it isn’t you, genius. I’ll take your gag off when I want it to come off.”