Raham was the name of Farrin’s ex-husband.
Then he saw things. A Godzilla-like creature with a blocky hand wrapped around Farrin’s arm. Farrin’s pupils dilated with terror.
The giant was trying to take Farrin.
Take Farrin. It was Jason’s last thought before he pared himself down to only working muscle and hard bone, sharp trajectories and violent momentum.
He flew at the giant, his fist already balled and in motion, and hit the man as viciously as he could, adding extra oomph to the blow with the power of his shoulders and the forward drive of his body. Knuckles met nose, and it felt like punching a wall, but the result was an award-winning, fuck-ya-up-Jack blow.
The giant’s head snapped back, so far back, neck bones crackled, and his nose pulped into a crimson gush. With a grunt, the man stepped back, releasing Farrin—she tripped over a set of andirons and fell down on her rump—then responded with his own fist.
An iron mace.
It blurred toward Jason’s face. He ducked, and the blow landed on his ear. For a second the room flared white, then his knees went, and he hit the floor like a sack of loose doorknobs, clattering backward. He started to roll into a reverse somersault, his kneecaps passing by his three-way vision, but the coffee table stopped him from a full gymnastics tumble. His toecaps bounced off the tabletop, sending his legs swinging back down in a flat arc. His heels clunked to the carpet. Air burst from his lungs and javelins shot through his skull. He saw wooden furniture legs, the creamy trim of Farrin’s couch, fancy pant cuffs belonging to the creepy fuck, Raham.
The giant’s foot whipped out.
Automatic male instinct to protect the balls rotated Jason’s hips. He took the kick to the inner thigh, a sharp, stinging stab followed by a hot, crawly pain spreading over his muscle like an expanding amoeba.
Abuse of the balls was a cheater shot in a fair fight. So the giant wasn’t planning to follow gentleman’s rules, was he? Gee.
The giant bent down, a welter of blood gleaming on his expressionless face, a whiff of breath that smelled like it’d been trapped for the winter, and seized Jason’s shirtfront. The man prepped the iron mace again, arm cocking back somewhere around the orbit of Pluto.
From the side of Jason’s vision, he saw metal flash.
Raham Creepy Fuck had just pulled out a gun. He yelled at the giant. In incomprehensible Farsi, but Jason was putting his money on the words meaning something like, get out of the way so I can shoot him!
From her knees, Farrin screamed, joining in on the Farsi shouting match. No, don’t shoot my one true love! was probably what she said, right? Yeah, that would be nice.
The enormous fist whistled toward Jason’s face. A guaranteed haymaker.
Reaching over his head, Jason grabbed the lip of the coffee table and wrenched down on it. The opposite side flew up and crashed into the giant’s giant skull.
The punch missed, the fist whispering past Jason’s chin instead of taking it off.
The power of the swing twisted up the giant’s torso, and he lost his balance, stumbling sideways along with the clunking coffee table. He easily got his feet under him, and Jason only had enough time to draw a single breath before the giant planted his rear boot and kicked out again.
Jason made a grab for the foot. Caught it. Cranked on it with all his strength, his jaw locked.
Bones creaked in protest.
The giant grimaced, bloody lips pulling back from bloody teeth. He hopped, then arched and warped his spine.
Jason kicked the man’s standing leg on the side of the knee. There was a wet snap, like the sound baby back ribs make when being jointed apart.
The giant shouted and fell, the impact of his thuggish body shaking the floor.
Jason un-turtled himself at once, rolling off his back and getting to his feet in a single motion. He kicked the giant in the groin—because, well—then followed down with his knee, brutally ramming the focal point of it into the man’s sternum. Bones gave way with a sickening crack.
The giant’s eyes rolled back, shiny and white like hard-boiled eggs, then his lids fluttered like bruised tissue paper and fell shut.
“Freeze!” Creepy Fuck yelled in English, like he’d stepped straight out of a ’70s American TV cop show.
Jason didn’t. He surged to his feet and leapt at Farrin’s ex.
Creepy Fuck’s mouth startled wide, the flashing metal gun bumbling this way and that. Jason chopped the man’s wrist, sending the weapon tumbling free. It fell right into Jason’s palm, like a slick, superspy move out of a James Bond flick. The cold steel was a massive weight. No wonder Creepy Fuck couldn’t manage it. The gun was a Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum. A cherry of a gun. A monster of a gun. A good, old-fashioned American handgun these dicksmacks had no doubt bought off the mean streets of Virginia soon after their plane touched down.
Jason brought the snout of it nosing up under Creepy Fuck’s chin.
Nobody moved.
In the sudden, heart-thumping stillness, Jason’s breathing sounded strange. Too heavy. Too strained. Almost collapsible. The whole left side of his face was numb, except for his ear. That felt like a leaky bota bag. Blood throbbed into swollen muscle fibers in his thigh. He weaved on his feet once, then caught himself. Squinting against the sweat burning his vision, he nailed Creepy Fuck’s gaze with his own.
The whites of the man’s eyes were showing. Partially because the gun barrel was pressing his chin up, forcing him to angle his eyes at an unnatural slant to see Jason. Partially because he was scared. Yeah, and who wouldn’t be, a .44 Mag tucked snugly under the chin?
Outside, a sprinkler turned on, an unsuspecting neighbor watering his lawn. Tosh-tosh-tosh-tosh…
So here they all were.
Arrived at the point in the movie where Jason was supposed to launch into a long speech about how he was going to spare Creepy Fuck’s life now, so you can live your days in regret, spending every minute ruminating about what a bad guy you’ve been, it being punishment enough to know that you were bested and you didn’t get the girl.
The police would be called. The bad guy would be made to pay his debt under the laws of justice. The hero would let honor prevail. He certainly wouldn’t pull the trigger, not with the whites of the bad guy’s eyes showing. Him being so scared and all…
But broken?
Or was Creepy Fuck acting cowed now, while the lights-out end of a .44 Magnum was threatening him, but once the gun was removed, he’d turn into an asshat again and try to take Farrin?
Take Farrin.
The thought drove a fist into Jason’s chest, and he glanced at her.
Still on her knees, she looked like a religious pilgrim from an Italian Renaissance painting, all smooth skin and sad eyes.
He stared at her for a long time—eons—in a silence that screamed.
Finally, the muscles in Farrin’s face shifted, releasing expression. She showed him all her fear: for him, for their future, of losing the lifetime she wanted to share with him.
Her love for him was so obvious, it brought a low growl out of Creepy Fuck. “You fucked her,” he hissed in English.
Jason turned back to Farrin’s ex.
The whites of his eyes were now yellow. “You touched her with your dirty, vile paws. You made her into a slut!”
Jason felt the false front of his civility peel back, the low simmer of his constant rage boiling up and leaking out. Slut? Suspicions confirmed: Farrin’s ex was an asshat. Jason twisted his lips into a feral snarl, and—
Behind him, footsteps hurried… Farrin bumped into his shoulder, then grabbed his gun hand with her hand, jostling his hold, and—
The gun went off.
BOOM! The monster Mag echoed like a damned cannon in the quaint living room, rattling the windows. The high-powered bullet drove up through Creepy Fuck’s chin and traveled into the brain pan, flowering open the bones on top of the man’s skull and volcanoing grey matter onto the ceiling. A few chunks stuck, others raine
d down on Jason and Farrin and the carpet. Ploppity-plop-plop.
The body wobbled, and Jason jerked back. Without the gun barrel to prop it up, the corpse toppled to the floor in an ungainly sprawl, gaze fixed and unblinking, a spreading dark stain under the remains of the head. Aladdin’s bloody ruby…
A strong puff of cordite watered Jason’s eyes, then a sea wave of dizziness rolled up the length of his body and crescendoed inside his head. He lowered the gun. One bullet less heavy, and the damned thing weighed more than ever. Streaks of light straggled across his vision, like a groovy ’60s drug trip. Captain Groovy’s Grill and Raw Bar. A good day. Days gone by. Days long gone. A day lost to memory. A groovy day. A—
“Jason,” Farrin whispered hoarsely.
He looked over. What was she doing here…? Oh, yeah.
A glop of red jelly wormed its way down Farrin’s cheek.
She looked like she had the day in the post-op ward when Jason shot her laundryman, her blue dress like blue scrubs, covered in blood…
Sirens wailed.
“Jason,” she repeated, tears rolling down her face.
No one’s ever come to my rescue before…
He took her by the arm and led her over to a chair by the fireplace. He made her sit down. “Stay there.”
The sirens grew louder.
“I mean it, Farrin. Stay there.” He returned to the dead body and stood over it, the gun in his hand.
Chapter Forty
The next few, endless hours were a string of unpleasant déjà vu events for Jason: handcuffs, fingerprints, mug shots, and a misspent night ending with being tossed into a holding cell that smelled like stale cigarette smoke, a ripe jock, and that armpitty, sour alcohol odor exclusively excreted from a wino’s pores.
Nineteen years ago, on the night he went to jail for stealing a car, he’d been detained at juvey in a cell with a handful of surly male teens. He got in two fistfights that night, one with a black gangster wannabe, the other with a white, sloppily dressed, dumb-as-dogshit punk who’d strutted around the cell wanting to make something of it with every guy there—hence the dumb-as-dogshit evaluation. Jason creamed the punk, but the fight with the wannabe ended in a draw. After each of them withstood about a dozen painful hits, with no progress being made in either direction, they backed off, tacitly agreeing to withdraw, but with lots of sneers and narrowed eyes to keep up badass appearances.
It’d been a helluva night.
Adult jail was shaping up to be just as bad. He was keeping company with three other comrades in crime. Two of them looked as unfriendly as the surly teens had, although in an even less subtle way.
The only harmless one was a homeless drunk passed out in a corner of the cell, his long salt-and-pepper hair tangled and matted with a mass of graying beard, his jacket ratty and missing the pockets. About every five minutes he came choking back to regular breathing.
Second jailbird was an African-American with the build of a boxer. He could easily have passed for a champion welterweight, but considering the man’s current location, his means of putting bread on the table was probably something shadier. He sat on a bench by himself, muscular arms crossed, dark eyes glittering out from half-closed lids—a whole lot of Don’t Fuck with Me body language.
The third dude was a tall man with the girth of a bear, a shiny head, and a small black goatee. He paced the cell like a caged beast, wearing only work boots and jeans, leaving exposed a tattoo across his upper chest that said, suck my tits, bitch! When Jason first arrived, the dude had aimed this slogan at him, but otherwise, didn’t make a move.
Yeah, despite his roomies being a nasty bunch, this night Jason didn’t get into any fights.
Maybe because he was still giving off a Raging Jason vibe. Maybe because he was covered in Raham Creepy Fuck’s blood and brains. Either/or, probably.
He spent this helluva night mostly dozing, sitting up on his own bench, one eye always partially open—because God knew he didn’t want to wake up to find himself sucking on a hairy tit—his mind also churning over what the hell he was going to do now that he’d created such massive trouble for himself. His main focus probably should have been on the future of his naval career, or lack thereof, and/or the likelihood of his butt landing in prison for many years to come. But his mind kept returning to Farrin.
Had she been pulling Jason’s hand away from Creepy Fuck or helping him shoot?
And if she hadn’t interfered, would Jason have shot her ex anyway?
What had Farrin seen in him during the moments Jason held the gun to her ex? Did she see a man who’d known the hard side of loss and refused to know it again? Take Farrin…
Had she seen a man of secrets and darkness and distance and closed doors? A boy without his best friends? A ship without a rudder? A man who’d been boiling in constant rage for the past nineteen years, from age sixteen—the age of his last implosion—to his current thirty-five years, just stewing and simmering until his next implosion.
This one.
If she hadn’t interfered, would you have shot Creepy Fuck anyway?
A million-dollar question, that one.
Morning came, and Jason was released, all charges dropped.
Confused but grateful, he went directly to the men’s restroom, desperate to take a leak. Last night he’d foregone whipping out his Johnson in front of his cellmates. As vulnerable went, pants-around-the-ankles sat at the top. While in the bathroom, he also scrubbed his hair and face clean, and turned his gross shirt inside-out.
Next, he headed over to check out with the desk officer, walking unsteadily on legs suffering from the aftereffects of his fight with the giant, little sleep, and a slew of emotions he hadn’t been able to escape from into his never-completely-recovered numb-out brain room.
At the possessions desk, he signed for a large brown envelope containing his wallet, car keys, cell phone, and belt. Right away he used his phone to summon a ride with an Uber car—although he didn’t have any idea where he was going. He needed to see Farrin, but wasn’t sure if he was in any state to deal with whatever expression would be on her face now that the initial shock of last night was over. Okay, first he needed coffee. Because the hell if he could plan his next move without caffeine.
Making a beeline for the door before someone changed their mind about his release, he came squinting out into the morning sunlight. The police station was—
He skidded to a hard, body-jolting halt.
Déjà vu entered the realm of the surreal.
His father, Dr. Spencer Vanderby, prominent neurosurgeon, was sitting in a rental town car parked in the first slot of the visitor’s lot.
Jason’s heart forgot about working for several beats. Holy shit…what the hell…? The parking lot liquefied out of focus, then reformed as heat ran up the back of his neck and into his brain. I got convicted of a felony, and would’ve done jail time if my father hadn’t stepped in…
“Son of a bitch,” Jason ground out. Seething with suspicion, he stalked over to the town car.
The driver’s side electronic window hummed down, the face inside the vehicle taking on clearer shape as the glare was removed. Jason hadn’t seen his father in nineteen years, and although time had drawn more wrinkles on Spencer’s face and bleached more pigment from his hair, his eyes were still honed with razor-sharp intelligence. The overt cruelty was gone from the old man’s gaze, but the despicable, unbending will was definitely still there.
Jason braced his weight on the window frame with both hands. “You.” The single word was an explosive accusation. “Are you the reason I’m free?”
Spencer set well-manicured fingers on the steering wheel. White shirt cuffs showed meticulously at his jacket sleeve. Exactly one-half inch. Spencer used to pin them in place, probably still did, sick bastard.
“Dammit,” Jason snarled. “Answer me. Did you slice out a tumor from the DA’s brain or something?”
“His uncle’s, actually.”
“You fuck.” No
relief, no gratitude, not even an ounce of thanks doled out to his father for getting his ass out of hot water. Just fury over Spencer’s involvement. Because somehow this interference meant the old man had won a round in the battle for power and supremacy that not even nineteen years of estrangement could temper—not for Jason, at least.
“Such anger.” Spencer clucked his tongue as if he were dealing with a recalcitrant toddler. “I only expedited what would have happened regardless, Jason. I wouldn’t have been able to do anything if the DA wasn’t already convinced you acted in self-defense.” A bland look. “You did, didn’t you?”
Jason felt Farrin grab his gun hand, the trigger being pulled…
If she hadn’t interfered, would you have shot Creepy Fuck anyway?
A yes answer would be another win for Spencer. Because it would mean Jason hadn’t moved even one step farther away from being the boy on the couch in Beacon Hill, glaring at his father in hostility, wasting his life on revenge.
Jason clenched the car’s doorframe so tightly, the bones of his knuckles showed through his skin. “How did you even know what happened to me?”
Spencer paused while a man shuffled past the front of the car. The dude was unshaven and red-eyed, shirttails flapping, the image of a bachelor party attendee whose night ended in jail. “I’ve been keeping tabs on you over the years.”
Jason’s blood pressure rose. The idea that his father had been a part of his life, even secretively, even peripherally, made him want to grind the man’s face into the pavement. People had to earn connection—something Jason had learned from his time with Farrin. Bypassing the work was fucking cheating.
Bending his elbows, leaning in closer, he showed his father the edge of his teeth. “Well, stop it. I want you out of my life. Completely. Do you hear me?”
Spencer’s gaze moved without emotion over Jason’s face. He gestured at the police station building. “This is all I have to offer you, son.”
Jason went rigid with a snap, shock punching the air from his lungs. Was this his father’s limited way of saying he cared? The idea was laughable. Not once in Jason’s whole life had Spencer ever done anything nice, much less something to show he fucking cared; he’d never hugged Jason, patted him on the head, given him an attaboy, or a single word of affection or encouragement. It had always been lessons and teachings and control and a ruthless lack of mercy.
Wings of Gold Series Page 81