by Julie Kenner
Right on cue, the other kids’ heads bobbed up and down. “That’s right! We just found him!” They spoke with so much enthusiasm that Joe knew they were terrified. Which meant that Damian really had gone off the deep end. That happened sometimes: a kid got delusions of grandeur and made all sorts of bizarre mistakes. The problem was keeping the innocents out of the crossfire while a gang leader self-destructed. Innocents like Micki, and Ste-vie, who had just lifted his head. He was down on one knee, but struggling with Micki’s support to make it to his feet. “I told you,” he growled to Damian. “I ain’t talked to nobody.”
“What kind of leader are you?” Joe pressed. “Were you bored and just decided to beat up one of your followers?” He let his gaze wander to the other boys. “Damn, I’d be scared just hanging around a psycho like you. No telling who you’ll turn on next.”
It was a calculated risk. Stirring the pot when outnumbered five to one wasn’t the safest move, but anything he could do to erode Damian’s power base was a good thing. And from the way a couple of the boys shuffled their feet, he had scored.
“Nice try, Joey,” Damian sneered, “but I got reliable information. Stevie’s been blabbing.”
Joe put all his sincerity into his voice. “Not to me, he hasn’t.”
Doubt flashed briefly in Damian’s eyes. It was a split second of hesitation, but that was all that was needed. Not for Joe, who was busy trying to think of the next thing to say; as much as he wanted to smash his fist right through the gang leader’s face, it was best to defuse the situation. He never guessed that Stevie would roar suddenly to life.
With a strangled bellow, the kid flew out of Micki’s arms and straight at the gang leader. Joe tried to intercept. The last thing he needed was more of Stevie’s blood on his conscience. But the kid was too fast. The best Joe could do was lunge for Damian’s gun as the gangster tried to quick-draw. He didn’t get a hand on the gun, but he managed to grip Damian’s forearm. A shot rang out, but it went wide; then all three of them—Damian, Stevie, and Joe—tumbled to the ground in a heap.
Stevie was on top, his fists flailing as he tried to bash in Damian’s face. Joe was struggling to gain control of the gun, which was waving every which way. Damian was screaming, “Get him off me! Get him—”
Joe had enough focus to see the other thugs draw their knives. Shit. Then he saw Micki leap forward as well. Double shit. He needed to get that gun! Almost . . .
Stevie must have seen the gun. Pretty amazing with all the blood flying, but he managed a backhanded blow that struck both Joe’s fingers and Damian’s forearm at the same time. The strike was fast and wild. Joe’s fingers went numb, Damian’s arm snapped back and the gun flew out of his hand.
Joe twisted as fast as he could. The gun clattered against a tree and dropped near one of the gangsters. No way could he get there first, but Joe still tried. He rolled toward it, reaching as far as he could. He missed by a mile as one of the boys—Bobby McCoy—picked up the weapon. Worse, the kid obviously knew how to handle it. He gripped it like an expert and was bringing it to bear on Stevie.
“No!” screamed Micki, her voice cutting through the air like a whip.
“Don’t do it, Bobby!” Joe called, his voice as loud and authoritative as possible. It wasn’t going to work; Bobby had too much adrenaline in him. His eyes were wide and his leader was still getting pummeled. The best Joe could do was throw himself forward and pray. He was already shoving himself upright, his bad knee screaming all the way, when a black blur rushed past.
That’s all he saw at first—a black blur—as Micki kicked the gun away. It took Joe a moment to realize he’d seen her feet, and her sensible black shoes, leap forward in a perfect kung fu kick. He blinked, but didn’t have time to gape. The other boys were entering the fray, and Stevie was tiring. His blows were less wild, his screams more like gasps. In a moment, Damian was going to flip the boy over and start killing him.
No, there was no time. Joe managed to shift his weight enough to stop one gangster, but the other two were already drawing their knives.
“Don’t be stupid!” he bellowed, and was gratified to see them hesitate.
Which was when the tornado hit. Micki flew in between him and the nearest boy, drawing her arm down on the gangster’s forearm hard enough to break it. Joe was sure he heard a snap. He heard a muffled, “Oh! Sorry!” from her; then she moved on. And it all happened before the kid even managed a scream.
“Micki—,” Joe began, but she wasn’t listening. Running past him, she leapt into a perfect karate lunge, leg extended as she flew over Damian and Stevie and caught the next kid square in the chest.
“No! No!” she cried. “This isn’t right!”
The kid fell backward with an oomph, but Micki wasn’t done yet. Still in the air, one foot planted in the boy’s chest, she backflipped and clocked the last kid in the face.
“Oh my!” she cried. “That’s not what I meant! Are you all right?”
The first kid was falling. His butt hit the ground, then his head, landing hard enough that Joe could feel the impact a full seven feet away. The other kid simply spun and went down.
Joe managed to gasp while Micki landed like a cat on all fours. Her eyes were huge. “Oh my God! Oh my God!” she gasped, sounding exactly like a woman in hysterics. But then she sprang forward. She struck Stevie gently on his side. How she managed to control her motions so well was beyond incredible, but the boy didn’t even grunt. He toppled off Damian to land with a groan on his back, right in front of Joe.
When Micki dropped again, she was eye-level with a furious Damian. His nose was bleeding and his eyes were swelling shut, but his fist looked huge as it slammed forward right toward her face. She caught it neatly in her palm. The impact sounded like a splat of a rotten tomato, and then she spun her wrist, twisting Damian’s hand. He went down with a scream.
Micki pulled back and looked Joe in the eye. All around, the gangbangers were screaming in pain. Well, not the one who had been knocked unconscious.
“How . . . ? What . . . ?” Joe sputtered, unable to form a coherent thought.
Micki blinked, and he saw the tears that had formed in her eyes. Her lip trembled. “I don’t believe in violence!” she whispered. He took a step forward, but she abruptly tensed. Faster than he thought possible, she slipped forward, picked up the gun and neatly dropped it into his hands. But she didn’t stop moving. She kept running, right by him, and within seconds she had disappeared down the street.
CHAPTER THREE
Micki sat in a tree. Actually, she was perched on a branch like a bird. On a branch that she normally would have called a twig, but the thought that it was the only thing between herself and a three-story plunge to her death made her revise the term. And she was not breathless.
That was what was really occupying her thoughts right now. She wasn’t panicking at the possible plunge to her death. She wasn’t obsessing on the recent knife fight, or that she had run for miles only to climb an oak and then start running through the treetops. She hadn’t even climbed as a kid; now she was running through them?
She resolutely slammed the door closed on those thoughts. She would not think about anything involving knives or broken bones or blood or trees. Nothing. Because if she did, she would hyperventilate, then probably pass out, which would then mean a three-story drop to her death.
Ergo, she was not thinking about what she’d just done. She was thinking about the fact that she was not winded. Sure, she could prance through an aerobics class with the best of them. She could even do an hour and a half step-class marathon without passing out from lack of oxygen. But she had been running—running!—and climbing through trees for hours.
She’d left the café at four. It was now dark. She’d run the whole time and she wasn’t winded. She wasn’t even breathing hard. And her legs did not feel like Jell-O.
Time to panic.
A noise rumbled beneath her: a car driving into her apartment complex parking lot, its he
adlights bright on the blacktop. She peered down at it. It was hard to see, but she was pretty sure it was her car. Even in the dark, her bright-yellow Beetle was hard to miss. She liked to think of it as her own little sun bug that she could always find in a parking lot.
She began to climb down to see better. She frowned for a moment to look at what she was doing—her foot on another tiny twig, her body sliding sinuously through branches she wasn’t even sure were there. But at that exact moment, her hair snagged, her hand slipped dangerously, and something dug painfully into her hip.
Bad thoughts! Bad brain! She’d already realized that whenever she focused on the incredible things she was doing, she immediately lost all skill. Not a big problem when she was running; that had happened a couple hours before. She had realized she was running faster than she’d ever run before in her life, and she immediately stumbled on a curb. But as she gasped about the curb, she’d neatly swung up into the tree. From that moment on, she’d decided not to think about what she was doing.
Tripping over a curb was one thing; tumbling three stories to the hard pavement was something else entirely. Therefore, she closed her mind to anything but seeing her happy little sun bug, and proceeded painlessly down the tree. Not to the ground. She wasn’t prepared to meet the world yet. So she descended about a story and twisted to look at her car.
Who was driving it? Well, she knew the answer. After all, she’d left her purse, her car, and her cell in the café parking lot. There was only one person who would drive her car back to her. One person who had seen what she had done. One person who was damn sure going to ask questions she couldn’t answer. Hell, right now she was too afraid to even consider them.
There he was. Even knowing it was Joe DeLuce, she still wasn’t prepared for the sight of him unfolding his large body from her little bug. He moved slowly, but with a tension that she could feel all the way up here. He grabbed her little Gucci purse from the passenger seat, dangling it like something smelly between two fingers, and turned to look at her apartment building.
When he turned toward the back door, Micki got a look at his face. Rugged, handsome as always—yes. But this time he was angry. Like a bulldog that had just scented the man or woman who had stolen his dinner. His jaw was thrust forward, his eyes were narrowed as he looked at the upper stories, and he rolled his shoulders just like some of the teen boys did when they were anticipating a fight. It was a threatening gesture, it was primal, and it reminded her more than anything that he was not her friend.
In short, it scared her spitless, which was why it was so very bad that she slipped on the branch right then.
Instead of screaming, she simply surrendered to the inevitable. Obviously, her newfound whatever couldn’t last forever. Clearly fate had decided to return her to normal at the worst possible moment, and she was going to fall to her death at Joe DeLuce’s feet.
Except, she did nothing of the kind. The moment she relaxed into her coming demise, her body took over. She fell, but only far enough to grab the branch with her hands. Then she swung her legs up and around, releasing at just the right moment. Her body arced through the air and she landed in a perfect crouch on a neighboring tree.
Micki looked down. She was now level with the second floor of her apartment building and perched right over the back door. Joe was taking his time crossing the parking lot, looking at his surroundings the way a cop would: gauging distances, checking out shadows—even glancing up in the trees. Micki swallowed.
The desperate urge to talk to someone surged through her. It was ridiculous. She did not want to talk to anyone right then. Not until she understood what was going on. But she had been sitting in trees for the last hour at least, and had gotten no closer to an answer. Obviously, she wasn’t figuring anything out by herself. She had to work this out with someone who had perspective, logic, and a clear head.
But Joe? No! She wanted a sense of normalcy, of her world returning to something that made sense. Talking to Joe would be the opposite of that. The absolute opposite.
She dropped down to a lower branch. It wasn’t a graceful movement; the tree was wet and her shoes were not designed for climbing—the last few hours notwithstanding. She struggled a bit and got slapped in the face by leaves covered in something black and slimy.
“Yuck!” Had she said that aloud? Moron! Sure enough, when she dared glance down, Joe was looking right up at her.
“Hello, Miss Becker,” he drawled. His expression had turned congenial, almost warm, but Micki couldn’t forget the predatory look of a moment before. “I brought your car back.”
She nodded, unable to speak.
“Perhaps you could come down from there? We can have a little chat.” She shook her head. It was a childish movement similar to one she’d made in grade school when she’d been caught sneaking M&Ms from her best friend’s lunch.
“Micki, we really need to talk.”
His voice was gentle, and she so wanted to trust it. But he was going to ask her questions she couldn’t answer. She didn’t know what was happening to her. She didn’t know how she could have done those things she couldn’t allow herself to think about. She didn’t know, and all she wanted was to climb into bed and have someone else solve all her problems for her.
Tears threatened, and she closed her eyes. She did not want to feel sorry for herself, and yet everything—the fear, the confusion, the wonder—was so overwhelming.
“Stevie’s fine,” he said. “Bloody, but not as bad as you might think. Not even a broken bone, which is kinda miraculous when you think about it.”
“The others?” she asked, her voice a whispered croak.
“Ah, well, the others weren’t so lucky. Damian’s got a black eye and assorted bruises. No tears from me, though Lucy was wailing about it.”
Micki opened her eyes enough to peek down. Joe was watching her closely, and she rapidly shut them again. Moronic, really. Like he couldn’t see her if she closed her eyes? But the truth was, she didn’t have a prayer of dealing with life if she looked directly at him. He was just too much to handle right then. And yet, perversely, this normal conversation was exactly what she needed to ground herself in reality. Even if that ground was a tree branch.
“What about the others?” she pressed, forcing herself to hear the truth. One sound had pursued her more than others, one memory followed as she ran through the trees: the sound and feel of Vince’s arm snapping. It had been unmistakable and sickening.
Joe shrugged, his voice as casual as if they were discussing brands of coffee. “Toby’s got a welt but no concussion. Same for the other two.”
“Vince?”
“Broken arm. Snapped clean.” He took a breath, then switched to a more professional tone. “He’s fine, Micki, but we’ve booked them all for assault. My friend Larry is the detective on the case, so we’ve got a little time, but you need to make a statement.”
She nodded. It was hard to refuse him when he spoke with such authority. She dropped to a lower branch. It swayed alarmingly beneath her, and she heard him gasp, dropping her purse into the mud to lurch beneath her.
“Be careful!” he called.
She stilled, knowing better than to question her absolute balance on the branch. The minute she let doubts into her brain, other things crowded in. Then she’d be back in panic attack mode, and she’d never come down again. Or she’d slip off the branch and go splat on the asphalt.
“Micki, you’re giving me a heart attack here. I’m not a young man, you know. Just come down.”
She looked at the ground. It wasn’t that far a leap, and yet it still looked too scary. “Joe, I can’t. I can’t think right now. I can’t—”
“Take off your shoes.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Your shoes.” He pointed at her brand-new Mary Janes. “I don’t know how you’ve been climbing trees in them, but you’ve got no traction. Take them off and toss them to me.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“Then
you can grab hold of the trunk and put your toes on that branch there.” He pointed to a large vee perfect for bare feet. “There’s another toehold here. And I’ll help you the rest of the way down.”
It made sense. In this whole wacky day, this one thing made sense. And truly, it was kind of nice to let him tell her what to do. So she dropped onto her bottom on the branch and toed off her shoes.
Then she toppled right out of the tree.
She had enough time to squeak in alarm, he li copter her arms in a vain attempt to stabilize herself, and then she fell backward so that her knees caught on the branch and saved her from splattering her brains on the ground.
Joe dove forward and barely managed to catch her head and shoulders before she brained herself against the tree trunk.
“Actually,” he drawled, “I said you should use the toehold over there.”
“Er . . . yeah. This was faster.” With luck, he would think the heat in her face was because she was hanging upside down. “Um . . . do you think you could help me?”
She didn’t need to ask. He was already gently supporting her as she maneuvered her legs. Her skirt ripped with an ominous sound, and the remaining tatters slid all the way up her hips. Oh hell. And she’d chosen to wear a thong today.
As quickly as possible, she dragged her legs off the branch, scraping her calves painfully, to tumble right into his arms. She didn’t dare look at his face. Even if he hadn’t seen the thong, his hands had certainly slid over her bottom as he helped her to her feet. He didn’t say a thing, and in a few moments, when she was finally standing on her own stocking feet, she glanced at him and froze.
She had expected a knowing smirk, a half-sleazy flirtation that would make her embarrassed and a little excited. What she saw instead was a coolly assessing gaze. He now knew what she wore and was filing it away in his brain, yet another characteristic to be weighed and judged.
And yet, there was more. A new sexual awareness lay beneath that dark assessment, a call of man to woman that stiffened her spine and made her stronger. She smiled and felt like an animal baring her teeth when cornered. He looked at her like a predator, and she straightened to her full height and arched an eyebrow back at him. Bring it on, big boy, was the response her body made. Just like Mae West, she was wondrously bold and bossy.