by Parker, Ali
All four of them looked up at me. The chairs they were sitting in were all lawn chairs in varying states of disrepair. Duct tape was present on almost all of them, holding them together by some sort of miracle.
The man closest to me on the far right shifted in his chair, which creaked beneath his weight. He had a blue ball cap on, and when he smiled, I saw that his teeth were starting to rot. “What can we do for you, man?”
“I’m not a buyer,” I said.
He took his cap off and ran his fingers through his wet hair. No. Not wet. Oily. “Then get the fuck out of here.”
“I’m looking for Kyle.”
The four of them all exchanged looks I couldn’t read. Then they all got to their feet.
They were big boys. All of them cleared six feet easily. But so did I. The one I’d already spoken with looked past me at my bike parked a couple shops away. I wasn’t stupid enough to bring it within close proximity of these clowns. “That your bike?”
“Yes.”
He put his ball cap back on and nodded. “Nice wheels.”
“Stop wasting my time,” I said none too nicely. “Which one of you is Kyle?”
“I am,” the guy on the left said. Naturally. He was the biggest of the bunch with a big build and massive hands that were curled into fists at his sides. He wasn’t dumb enough not to realize what this was. “Who sent you?”
“Nobody sent me,” I said.
“What the fuck do you want then?”
“I came to tell you that you’re done with Nancy Vickers.”
Kyle snorted and looked around at his dimwitted buddies. They chuckled too. He ran his hand over his buzzed head as his shoulders shook with mirth. “You crack me up, man. She got you running her errands for her? What did she do to talk you into coming down here?”
“She didn’t do anything.”
His eyes narrowed. “What about that bitch friend of hers? The blonde one.”
I refrained from leaping across the fire and decking him across the jaw. I swallowed and kept my expression still. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you do as I say, and you cut Nancy loose. Is that going to be a problem?”
“Hell yeah, it’s going to be a fucking problem, you punk,” Kyle spat, stepping around the fire and closing the distance between us. He was a mere three feet away from me now. He pointed a finger at my chest. “I don’t know who you think you are, but nobody shows up at my fucking house and tells me what to do. There’re rules against that sort of shit. Rudy, get me my damn baseball bat.” He held out his hand as the one called Rudy, the oldest of the bunch, walked into the shop and plucked a baseball bat from where it hung on the back wall. He walked back over and placed it in Kyle’s hand.
I never moved.
Kyle gripped the handle of his weapon. “Who the fuck are you, man?”
“Not important.”
Rudy cracked the can of another beer. “Kick his ass, Kyle.”
Kyle’s lips peeled off his teeth in a wicked grin. He swung the bat lazily in an arch to slap it into his palm. “Yeah. Buckle up, boys. You’re gonna get a show tonight.”
I took a step back to create a bit more space between us. I wasn’t worried about him having a bat—quite the opposite, really. The fact that he wanted to bring a weapon into this suggested he might not be a very good fighter.
But even if that was the case, I knew I’d have to deal with his three buddies if I kicked his ass. Then I’d really have my hands full.
But if I kicked his ass, there’d be a baseball bat lying on the pavement just waiting for someone to pick it up and use it.
In theory.
“What is Nancy Vickers to you?” I asked. “Why not just leave her alone?” There was no possible way this scumbag cared about her. Not in a million years.
He chuckled. “She’s a good lay.”
His buddies hooted and hollered from their seats around the fire. They sipped their beers and puffed on their joint and cigarettes as Kyle took a menacing step forward.
The fire cast half of him into shadow. He was still grinning at me like a madman. Clearly, the man had bloodlust. If they got me down, I might not ever get back up. I noted his scarred knuckles and patchy eyebrow. He’d been in many fights before. This was nothing new for him. Then why the need for the baseball bat?
Maybe because he was drunk as a skunk and stood a better chance of landing a hit on me with some extra reach.
I rolled my shoulders.
Kyle snickered and pointed his bat at me. “Getting all warmed up, pretty boy? That’s cute.”
The others had another good laugh at that.
“It’s just been a while,” I said. I wasn’t lying. The last time I’d been in any real sort of brawl was six months ago when I saved Derek from being strangled to death by some of Warren’s thugs. Shortly after that, I’d had my fight with Isaac Reed and his brother in the alley. But that hadn’t been much more than getting shot in the arm and pulling the trigger myself.
This was something else entirely.
I couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. These guys were serious. They wanted to fuck me up good. And if I didn’t walk away from this, Quinn and Nancy would be in even more trouble than they already were. Kyle knew they were the reason I was here, and there was no way in hell I was going to let him walk away to wreak more havoc on my woman.
I shook my head. She wasn’t mine. Not anymore.
I flexed my fingers and tucked my thumbs into my fists. Kyle didn’t notice. Good. He didn’t need to know how many times I’d done this. Being underestimated was an advantage in a situation like this.
Kyle let out a furious bellow and charged forward with the bat wound back over his right shoulder.
So, he was righthanded.
As he swung, I dodged to my left, far out of the path of the arcing bat. I came back in at his side as the bat angled down, drawing with it his momentum. I hammered my fists twice into his ribs and then dealt him a swift kick to the side of the knee. He yelped and went down to the pavement before any of his buddies even had time to get to their feet.
Then I kicked him right in the teeth, took the bat from his hands, and turned around to face them with his unconscious body behind me.
“Next?” I asked.
Rudy practically leapt over the fire and came at me with a rabid snarl. He went for my face, which was foolish because I was able to stop him by driving the bat into his right hip.
He wouldn’t be walking for a day or two. Maybe more.
Then the other two were up and rushing forward. The bat became more cumbersome than useful, but I didn’t want to toss it aside for either of them to get their hands on. If they did, all it would take was for one of them to get me down while the other one wailed on me. There was too much risk involved to make a stupid mistake like that.
So, I held on to it and tried to use it to my advantage as Rudy somehow managed to get back up on his feet. Maybe the bastard was so damn drunk he couldn’t feel the damage I’d more than likely done to his hip. I’d heard the bat connect with bone. It sure as shit was not going to feel good when he sobered up.
“Get that fucker,” Rudy hissed.
The other two guys were big, but not nearly the same size as Kyle. They were also clearly better fighters. They gave me a wide berth, and one moved behind my back as the other stayed in front of me, forcing me to look back and forth to keep my eyes on both of them. I turned sideways to save myself from craning my neck.
“You piece of shit,” one of them spat at me. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“I think I’m the guy who’s gonna kick your ass,” I growled. I’d shifted into fight mode the second the baseball bat came into play. Adrenaline was starting to pump through my veins as the two guys started circling me.
Rudy dropped to one knee to check on Kyle. He looked up at me. “You knocked his damn teeth out.”
“He was ugly anyway.”
Rudy staggered back up to his feet. “We’re gonna
kill you, you smug fucker. You hear me?” He was yelling at me. Nancy’s warning had been true. There was nobody in this neighborhood who would call the cops to report any funny business. It was safer to keep their blinds closed and ignore what was happening behind their house, rather than get involved.
“From where I’m standing, there’s a lot of talking going on,” I said. “And I’m getting bored. He should have done what I said and stayed away from Nancy.”
“Kill him,” Rudy said.
The two guys came at me at once, and the fight was on. Kyle had only been an appetizer. These two knew what they were doing. One of them went for my upper body while the other went for my legs. I couldn’t fend them both off at once, so I took a swipe with the bat at the guy in front of me, and it connected with his shoulder. He grunted and stumbled sideways as the guy who came at me from behind wrapped his arms around my waist and knocked me to the pavement.
I rolled onto my back before he had a chance to pin me down. He stayed on top of me and wrapped both hands around my throat as I saw the other guy coming for me out of the corner of my vision—which was darkening around the edges due to how hard he was squeezing my neck. No oxygen was getting to my brain.
I’d pass out if I didn’t get out of this.
Stars burst in my vision.
Pain erupted in my right side.
I drove my knee up into the guy’s stomach who was on top of me, trying to choke me out. The impact rocked him forward, and he was close enough for me to reach up and press my thumbs into his eyeballs. He screamed, released me, and stumbled back clutching his face.
I sucked in a ragged breath, and dizziness broke over me. I needed five seconds to recover, but I wasn’t going to get it because the other guy was right in front of me, and he had the baseball bat in his hand.
He grinned down at me. “You made a big mistake, asshole.”
Chapter 12
Quinn
Nancy took the hair elastic off her wrist and used it to tie up her short black hair in a messy bun at the back of her head. Her hair was too short to get it all in the elastic, so a good chunk of it lay against the back of her neck as she crammed more cushion stuffing in the black garbage bag that was on the floor beside her in my living room.
She glanced up at me as I walked from one side of the kitchen to the other and then back again. After rocking back on her heels and sighing, she said, “I’m sure he’s fine.”
“He should be back by now.”
Nancy squinted her eyes at the clock on my stove. “He’s only been gone an hour.”
“Yeah. I know. How far away is this place?”
Nancy shrugged. “I don’t know. A fifteen-minute drive?”
“So, he would have been there in ten,” I stated.
Nancy nodded. “Okay. Yes, but an hour still isn’t—”
“That means he’s been with them for forty minutes at the least, Nancy. You know Rhys. A fight should not last that long. It should be a five-minute ordeal. Tops. Something doesn’t feel right.”
Nancy rolled up to her feet and nudged the garbage bag aside.
In the hour that Rhys has been gone, we had committed ourselves to trying to clean up some of the mess. I’d managed to sweep all my broken dishes into one corner of the kitchen and then swept them into a garbage bin. I had also opened my fridge to find that every liquid had been opened and poured all over the inside of the fridge. I packed everything up, washed what could be saved, and was forced to throw away what could not.
I had also managed to work up the nerve to go into my bedroom. It hadn’t even been touched, which made me think that Kyle hadn’t had much time when he came in here. Or he knew he couldn’t stay long because one of my neighbors would catch him in the act. He’d only ransacked the living room and kitchen.
I was relieved that I hadn’t lost everything in my bedroom. I had precious memory boxes up in my closet, along with some of Max’s sweaters and some of my parents’ clothes, too. Nobody knew I’d kept that stuff, but I hadn’t been able to let it all go. I needed to keep something that still felt like them.
I needed to keep something to sit with and hold that made me remember my family.
I pressed my hands to my forehead and blew out a shaky breath. “I think we should go after him.”
“No,” Nancy said nervously. “He told you to stay away from there. We have to trust him.”
“I do trust him,” I snapped. “It’s not about trust. It’s about whether or not he’s lying face down in a ditch somewhere because of us.”
Nancy wrung her hands together. “Let’s give him twenty more minutes. If he’s not back by then, we’ll go to Rockwood.”
Twenty minutes felt like a long, long time. “Ten.”
“Fifteen,” Nancy countered.
I threw my hands up. “Fine! Fifteen.”
Nancy went back to stuffing the garbage bag with couch stuffing, and I dragged the garbage bags I’d already filled into the entranceway to be taken down to the garbage in the morning. I wiped sweat from my forehead before joining her in the living room and collecting all the broken picture frames, candle jars, vases, and destroyed books from my shelves. After tossing them into yet another garbage bag, I sat down cross-legged on the floor and rested my elbows on my knees and my forehead in my hands.
Nancy didn’t say anything for a while. What was there for her to say? She’d already apologized a thousand times, and that didn’t make me feel any better. If I was being honest, it just annoyed me. Saying sorry didn’t fix anything.
And it wasn’t really her fault. It was Kyle’s fault. Nancy had just fallen victim to him and let him manipulate and control her, and when it spiralled, Rhys and I got caught up in the fray. I knew the guilt she was carrying and wanted to make it go away for her, but right now, with Rhys being who the hell knew where and my apartment in shambles, I just didn’t have it in me to try to make her feel better.
If only Rhys would walk through the front door, then everything would be better. I’d be able to breathe, and the nausea swirling in my gut would pass.
I stared at the door and willed him to walk through it.
He didn’t.
I put my head back down in my hands and stared at my own feet. I needed to repaint my toes. The black polish had started chipping.
I heard Nancy stand up. “Maybe you’re right, Quinn. Maybe we should go look for him. If something happened…” She trailed off, unwilling to finish the sentence.
“If something happened, what?”
“Then it’s on me.” She shook her head. “I can’t handle that. Not on top of everything else. If he needs us, we’d better show up for him.”
Now she was starting to talk sense. I stood up and stepped over the many garbage bags that had filled up my living room. “Get your shoes on.”
Nancy and I both put on our boots. I grabbed my leather jacket, my car keys, and my purse off the kitchen island and went to the front door as Nancy scrambled around trying to find her purse, which was likely buried somewhere under all the debris.
“You don’t need it,” I said impatiently.
“Do you have your phone with you in case we need to call someone?”
“Yes,” I said, tapping the toe of my boot on the floor. “Let’s go.”
“All right, all right,” Nancy said.
And then something thumped into my front door. I let out a startled yelp and leapt backward into Nancy, who grabbed my upper arm and pulled me a good three feet backward when someone started knocking. “What if it’s Kyle?” she whispered in my ear.
“That’s what a peephole is for,” I muttered.
The knock came again. “Quinn?”
I dropped all my shit on the floor and rushed forward to unlock the door. I yanked it open, and my breath caught in my throat as Rhys looked up at me.
He was leaning against the doorframe hunched over. His face was bloody and so was his right hand, which he had cradled in front of him. His shirt was torn and so were his je
ans, and there were red marks around his neck.
From somebody’s hands.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
“Can I come in?” he asked. I couldn’t tell if he was smiling or not. Maybe it was a grimace. It didn’t matter.
I stepped aside and offered him my hand. He didn’t take it. Instead, he stumbled in and made it to the kitchen island before he had to grab onto it for support.
Nancy hurried around him and peered up into his face. “Where is all the blood coming from?”
“What?” he asked.
Was he that disoriented? Had they knocked him around that badly that he didn’t know how much blood was smeared over his face?
Nancy blinked at him. “The blood. Where is it coming from? Did they cut you?”
He frowned and looked down at himself. Then he shook his head. “No.”
Nancy looked nervously at me. Her eyes were wide with panic.
I marched around him and grabbed his face to make him look me in the eyes. “Rhys. You’re covered in blood. We need to know if it’s yours so we can help you.”
He shook his head again. “It’s not mine. Well, most of it isn’t. I think one of them might have split my lip or something.”
I peered closer through the bloody mess. Yes. He did have a split lip. And a gash in his eyebrow. “How did you get so much blood on you? Is it Kyle’s? What the fuck happened out there?”
Nancy went to the sink and slapped her hand on the counter when she realized I had no cups.
“In the bathroom,” I told her. “There’s one by the sink. Just take my toothbrush and shit out of it. Aspirin is under the sink.”
“Okay,” she said, and then she took off down the hall.
“Rhys,” I whispered.
He closed his hands over mine. “Stop worrying. I’m sure it looks worse than it feels.”
“Oh really? Because it looks really fucking bad. Like you got hit by a truck or something. Why is there so much blood?”
He narrowed his eyes in thought. “One of them had a knife.”
“And?”
“And I got it from him and used it.”