by Paul Duffau
Got To Be A Hero
Book One of the Accidental Hero Series
Paul Duffau
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Thank You
Other Novels by Paul Duffau
More About Paul Duffau
Chapter 1
Kenzie circled to her left and stayed two inches within his reach, to tempt the man into a mistake. Her sweat soaked the T-shirt she wore under her dobok, but she didn’t care. A quick flip of her head cleared the droplets that threatened to slip into her eyes. She focused on the knot in the green belt of the lanky man opposite her, her peripheral vision sufficient to monitor his hands and feet. He feinted, she glided away.
The only sounds that reached through Kenzie’s concentration came from her feet gliding over the cushioned floor and her opponent’s breathing.
Her sparring partner was a newcomer to the martial arts studio. He moved smoothly, despite being old—more than twice her age. Around the edge of the sparring ring, the advanced students of the dojang knelt and watched in silent assessment. She faked a front kick with her left foot, designed to pull his block to the left and open his body. Instead, he slipped closer, switching to a left-handed fighting stance, and his lead fist, encased in a heavyweight sparring glove, flashed toward her.
Without thinking, Kenzie reacted with her left arm, technique perfect with the hand rotating as her whole forearm swept across her body. She stepped back with her right foot to accelerate the block with a snap of her slender hips. The impact through her glove jarred her and, at the edge of her vision, she noted surprise briefly light the man’s eyes. A roundhouse kick followed the punch, but the man delivered it too slowly; she retreated to safety.
Mr. Green Belt dropped his hands a fraction of an inch, then his shoulders raised. She recognized the signs of the impending attack, his shifting of weight to the rear leg. In the same instant, Kenzie seized the opportunity to slip past his guard, get inside his defense where his length would work against him.
Kenzie sensed Green Belt shifting his weight for a kick and attacked first. She knifed in and launched a roundhouse kick of her own, leg arcing high over his fists, toes pulled back.
At the last instant, she realized that the man, not anticipating that she would aim for his head, had moved into the kick instead of evading.
Too late, she tried to stop her kick, but it had a momentum of its own.
She felt the ball of her foot crunch into her sparring partner’s head with a sick thud, behind the ear, below the protective headgear. Mr. Green Belt snorted as his head snapped sideways, and his eyes glazed.
“Break!” The command from Jules, the sabomnim who owned the studio, came over the shocked murmur of the other students.
Mortified at breaking the cardinal rule of the dojang, Kenzie began to drop her gloves, but the man, still dazed, launched a hard straight left jab. She jerked her head back, and his fist passed close enough that she felt the snapping of the man’s crisp white jacket, heard the crack that accompanied the snap.
Wide-eyed, she tried to retreat, but the man launched another attack, the slowness from the sparring drill gone. Her gaze darted up to his face. A nervous chill touched the base of her spine, and she backed out of the sparring ring. Students scattered to get out of the way, several of the older boys rising to their feet, uncertain on how to intervene.
“Break!”
The blows came fast, and he used both hands and both feet, in combinations. It was like fighting a well-trained but berserk octopus, blows arriving from every direction. The touch contact from the drill disappeared. These attacks were meant to harm.
She swept her right arm down to block a low round kick. The block arrived in time to stop the strike, her forearm slamming into his shin bone. Pain radiated up her arm, and the force knocked her sideways.
He’s so frackin’ strong, she thought as she ducked away from a whistling back fist attack that would have shattered her jaw if it landed. She pivoted low to spin away, to find some space, to escape.
“BREAK!”
Jules’s strong hands grasped the man from behind. The fourth-dan black belt in the traditional Korean style of Tang Soo Do, a powerful woman who stood an inch shorter than Kenzie’s opponent, did not try to control the man’s body when he whirled to face this new threat. Instead, Kenzie saw Jules clasp the fleshy part of his shoulders to make contact through the fog in his head.
“Break, Robert.” Jules’s voice dropped in volume but carried the iron authority of the master. She stared into Robert’s face. After an initial surge against her hands, he leaned back, giving his head a hard shake as though attempting to settle the various interior pieces of a mixed-up jigsaw into the proper spaces.
“Sit.”
Robert melted down to his knee. Jules knelt beside him.
“All the way down, Robert. Sit.”
He did as instructed, letting out a faint groan. He squeezed his eyelids shut, then opened them and locked on Kenzie.
“You ’kay?” His words slurred, and he still did not possess a natural perceptiveness, but at least somebody was home now.
Nervous tremors racked Kenzie’s arms and legs, but she nodded. He nodded back with an expression of relief.
“McKenzie.”
Kenzie faced Jules, her body still reacting to the adrenaline surging through her veins.
Jules didn’t shout. Her voice held an icy neutrality. “Go to my office.” She pointed. “Wait.”
Kenzie shook her head. “Yes, ma’am,” she said, trying without success to keep anger out of her voice.
She got a stern nod from Jules as the woman turned to administer aid to Robert.
She turned, then stomped across the mats to the gap in the low wall that split the studio from the practice floor. The other students averted their heads. Kenzie strode through the loose circle, chin up and lips pursed, her features rigid as a mannequin’s. From the corner of her eye, Kenzie could see the image of an angry teenager—herself—stalking beside her, sharply delineated in the full-length mirrors that lined the front wall. She could also feel the pressure of all the students surreptitiously tracking her progress like a weight at her back.
Only when she stepped into the office, behind the protection of a wall, did she let her guard down. Flopping into a straight-backed chair, she closed her eyes, envisionin
g the hard strike again. In hindsight, she knew that in stepping into attack mode, she’d committed one hundred percent. In the replay version, she prayed for a way to stop it, but it was done. There was no way to change the course of the past.
She drew a deep breath, and her head dropped. She put both hands up to her face and pressed her fingertips hard on her eyeballs until red bled into her vision. The acrid stink of her own fearful sweat wrinkled her nose.
The final instant before impact refused to fade, even as the red behind her eyelids turned into white-hot sparks.
Crunch.
Kenzie waited in a stony silence while the class did form drills instead of sparring. Her muscular twitches slowly dissolved into a simmering resentment and the body odor faded to a faint reminder as her sweat dried. On her arms, dull red weals rose. She rubbed them gingerly.
A shadow passed the doorway, and she glanced over her shoulder to see Robert, changed into street clothes, leaving with his gear bag hanging heavy in his hand.
He regarded her with a combination of sympathy and embarrassment. “Sorry.”
“Me too,” she said. Her voice cracked. She heard the door open, the sound of the street traffic invading the quiet of the studio before it faded back to calm when the door swung shut.
Me, too.
With a start, she realized from the outburst of chatter that Jules had ended the lesson. The voices mixed together, subdued compared to the ordinary energetic cheerfulness that infected the karate kids as they got ready to leave.
Some left, still dressed in their martial arts uniforms, talking with friends until they got beside the doorway to the office, then falling silent until they left the building. Most refused to acknowledge her.
Jules's voice carried over the hubbub, reminding them to practice, saying good-byes, as she always did.
Kenzie didn’t budge.
Deep silence dropped into the studio. Rustling sounds reached her ears as she tried to track Jules, but she kept her eyes fixated on the pictures that the instructor had on the walls. Amongst the usual pictures of tournaments hung a black-and-white photo of Jules sitting cross-legged in a meditative pose. The woman in the photograph was a much younger version of her instructor. That Jules was pretty, despite the severe lines of the uniform, maybe in her twenties. Instead of a feeling of peacefulness, Kenzie sensed subtle anger emanating from the image. Deep inside her, a matching anger echoed.
And something else, something unfamiliar . . .
The “something else” sent shivers down her spine, so Kenzie averted her gaze from the picture.
That’s better, she thought, but her breathing stayed fast and shallow.
She had her eyes closed when the faintest rustle of cotton informed her that she wasn’t alone. Her head jerked up as she located the source of the sound.
Jules settled into the rolling chair behind the desk, resting her elbows on the black armrests, hands folded in front of her. The chair barely creaked.
Kenzie focused on the hands. They were thicker than average but not unusually so. She had watched those same hands shatter concrete paving blocks. While her thoughts swirled about in her head, she noted that Jules wore clear polish on her nails. A buildup of calluses at the knuckles provided the only clue to the force her instructor could unleash.
Kenzie could feel the weight of the older woman’s gaze on her, filled with reproach. Kenzie peeked up. Jules's features were composed in neutral planes. Darting glances performed an inspection of the angry red marks on Kenzie’s skin. Satisfied there wasn’t major harm, the woman nodded and brought her attention to Kenzie’s face.
Kenzie lifted her head and blinked at meeting Jules’s gaze, at the implicit disappointment. She lost control of her features, her brows knitting and lips twisting into a grimace that she tried to stifle.
Jules spoke first.
“You could have been very badly hurt.” She said the words quietly, and waited.
Kenzie gave a hard shake of her head, ponytail swinging. She searched the surface of the desk, flicking back and forth as she squirmed. “Robert is okay?”
Jules leaned forward in the chair, the loose cuffs of her sleeves falling open as she shifted her elbows to the top of the desk. “Look at me.”
Kenzie switched her gaze from the neat piles on the desk to Jules.
“You stunned him a bit, but there’s no sign of a concussion.”
Her astute gaze sharpened. Kenzie saw the assessment of the bruises forming on her arms.
“You could have been badly hurt,” Jules repeated.
Like she couldn’t restrain them anymore, the words spilled from Kenzie.
“I could have hurt him.” Her chest tightened into a painful heartache, and her eyes grew bright and liquid. “He moved, and I tried to pull back,” she said, her voice pleading, “but I couldn’t stop and then I hit him and his eyes—”
“You could have killed him,” Jules said, interrupting the torrent from Kenzie. Her tone was blunt, her voice soft but filled with irresistible conviction.
Kenzie’s eyes widened as she stared at Jules. Shame and fear fought for supremacy; fear won. Her hands began to shake again. She was riveted on her instructor. “I’m sorry.”
Jules's countenance showed a hardness, but also concern.
“Your technique is solid, Kenzie.” Jules paused, considering her words. “What you lack is control. You get lost in your emotions.” Jules’s pointer finger moved a fraction of an inch. “Control isn’t only being able to stop a kick an eighth of an inch from somebody’s nose. You’ve done a good job of training your body, you’ve worked hard. Physically, you are gifted with good reflexes and coordination, and, for a small woman, you are powerful.”
Kenzie sat, confused at the compliment, and uncomfortable but pleased at being called a woman. Most adults assumed that a small-statured fifteen-year-old was still a child, and treated Kenzie that way. It pissed her off.
Jules studied her, a sharp going-over that pinned Kenzie down in her chair, mute and unmoving.
“That’s actually too bad.”
Kenzie’s eyelids fluttered at the sudden sting of the words.
Too bad?
She clenched her jaw tight as Jules got blurry. She turned her head and blinked rapidly until her vision cleared.
A frown crossed Jules’s face, smoothed over in an instant. Her instructor’s voice became hesitant, as though she was unsure how much to reveal.
“You have a tremendous . . . ,” Jules started, before tapering off. She took a deep breath, tilting her head to peer at Kenzie. Her voice took on a confiding tone. “You’ve trusted me to teach you how to defend yourself. There’s more to the martial arts than the movements and self-defense.” She tapped her forehead with a finger. “Will you trust me now when I say I can teach you how to tap into your strengths here?”
Kenzie nodded once, mostly to say that she’d heard the words even if she didn’t quite understand what Jules was suggesting.
“You’re not mad?”
“I’m furious,” Jules replied, “mostly with myself. I should have had better control of the exercise. I saw you baiting him. I didn’t realize how aggressive Robert was to press an advantage. Two quick people out of control is dangerous.”
Kenzie listened with embarrassment. She hadn’t realized she had been so obvious about enticing the attack so she could take advantage of her speed. It also stung that Jules was taking responsibility for her actions. She didn’t trust her voice not to crack, but spoke up anyway.
“I was the one that screwed up.”
Jules sighed. “It was a team effort, Kenzie.” She took a deep breath and made a decision.
“A man that is hurt and wounded is far more dangerous than an overconfident man. When you hit Robert, you triggered his fighting reflexes.” She stopped to make sure that Kenzie understood. “He wasn’t sparring. He was in survival mode, fighting mode. We can’t have that happen again, ever.”
They sat in silence for a minute, lett
ing the words sink in. The door to the studio opened with an inrush of traffic noise as the first student in the next class entered.
“Hi there, Eric,” Jules said, acknowledging the young boy coming in.
Kenzie swallowed. Without thinking, she reached up to rub a particularly painful bruise on her upper arm.
Jules saw it. “Call your dad,” she said, standing up. “I don’t want you running home today, okay?”
Kenzie stood but didn’t agree. She turned to leave the office, but Jules glided forward and intercepted her, blocking the doorway.
She put a hand on Kenzie’s shoulder, then pulled her into a brief hug.
“I’m sorry,” Kenzie mumbled into the folds of Jules’s jacket. The smell of the cotton was comforting. It had been years since she’d hugged Jules, outgrowing it somewhere between being a little kid and a confused teenager.
“I know.”
They separated, and Jules left the office. Kenzie followed her out, but instead of going back onto the training floor, she headed for the open shelves where the students threw their bags. She had two bags on the lowest shelf, one for her school books, one for her clothes. She dug through the second bag. Buried under her running shoes, Kenzie finally found her phone.
She checked the display. A dozen or more texts, and a couple of Instagrams. She hesitated, feeling anxious. Her body, already on chemical overload, wanted a hit of endorphins, the kind that came fifteen minutes into an easy lope, not so slow to be jogging but nowhere near racing.