by JJ Knight
“Then go home, Power Play.” Striker says Parker’s nickname like it’s a disease. “We wouldn’t want to threaten your big career. God knows you’ve only been doing that same circuit for two years.”
Parker shakes his head. “Lani, come with me. Get out of here.”
“I’m all in,” Lani says. “I shouldn’t have brought you. Go on. We’ll talk later.”
Parker walks past us, refusing to look my way. His footsteps crunch in the darkness.
One less person to worry about.
“Less talking, more action,” Annie says. “Lani, hold the bitch.”
Lani grabs my shoulders. I whip around to get her off me, but Lani’s got me just firmly enough that Annie lands a hearty kick to my belly. My air pushes out with a huff.
“Fight her proper if that’s what you’re aiming for,” Colt says. “I have no problem laying a girl flat if you’re acting like that.”
While he’s talking, I use Lani as leverage to jump kick and nail Annie in the chest. She falls back to the pavement.
“Nice diversion,” I tell him, but then Lani twists me around. I jab her with a sharp elbow to the ribs.
I can tell Colt wants to step in. I’m pleased he’s letting me have my moment.
But Striker moves toward Colt, and I have a feeling things are about to get a lot harder.
Sure enough, Striker spins into a roundhouse kick. Colt easily deflects it, since a one-eyed cat could have seen it coming. That’s all I witness before Annie charges me again. I bend over hard to get Lani off balance, and the three of us crash together to the concrete.
Damn, that’s a rough landing. I’m worn out and done fighting for the day. But here we are. I disentangle myself from the other girls. Colt has already knocked Striker back to the ground.
Striker gets up, laughing. “All right, all right.” He holds up his hands. “You’ve got me.” He motions to the girls. “Come on, Annie, Lani. Let’s go.”
The girls roll away from me and get up. I jump to my feet.
Colt and I stand at the ready, waiting for whatever stupid move they might try next. But the three of them walk together to the edge of the building and disappear around the corner.
When they are gone, Colt rushes over to me. “You all right?” He runs his hands along my arms and shoulders.
“Wasn’t expecting another round today, but I’m fine.” I tug on my jacket. “Thanks for letting me fight my own fight.”
He kisses the top of my head. “I knew you could handle them.”
“You think they’re done now?” I ask. “They’ve had enough?”
“I don’t know. This whole scene strikes me as weird. Did it you?” He looks down at me. His face is full of concern.
The asphalt crunches, and we look up.
Four men in dark clothes are coming around the corner.
It’s clearly not over.
Chapter Eighteen
I don’t know any of the men in the group. Their faces are in shadow. They stand in a line for a second, about five feet from us. One of them is holding a tire iron. A second is wearing brass knuckles.
They look streetwise. Paid to be there. I have no doubt Striker arranged it. They knew not to get their hands dirty. They can play this off as random.
I take a deep breath. I know Colt is doing the same as me, assessing the situation. Disarm anyone with a weapon. Try to take them down in a single strike.
The men aren’t too tricked out, muscular, or strong. They aren’t fighters. Just thugs.
The real threat to me is the last one, with his hands in his pockets. He’s smaller than the others. He spits on the ground. Something about him makes me shake inside.
The guy with brass knuckles charges forward to throw a punch. While Colt deflects the blow, the one with the tire iron sweeps Colt’s leg with the metal shaft. The crunch when it hits the bone is sickening, but Colt grabs the man’s arms and flings him to the ground like he’s a crash-test dummy. Brass Knuckles takes a step back.
Colt’s boot flattens the hand holding the tire iron. He takes the bar from the man’s fingers and flings it over the fence on the back side of the parking lot. It clatters onto the street on the other side.
Colt doesn’t show any sign of pain, so I go back to watching the others, waiting on the next move.
Brass Knuckles motions to one of the other men, and the two of them start throwing punches at Colt. This frees the one on the ground, so I jump him and smash as many elbows to his face as I can before he knocks me off him.
Colt has flattened the third man, but my guy jumps in, so it’s still two to one on Colt. This pisses me off, so I take a running leap right into the middle of the mess.
I’m full hurricane now, taking on any face or belly or groin that I’m sure isn’t Colt’s. We’re street fighting, and screw it, I’m aiming for anything that will sink them. One of them gets my knee crunching him right between his legs. Brass Knuckles tries to pull me out of the fray, but he isn’t big or heavy enough to be a match for me when I get like this. I knock him to the pavement. As he falls, he grabs the waistband to my jeans to take me with him. With a fast roll, he’s got me trapped beneath him. My cheek is crushed into the concrete, but I can still see the fight.
Colt’s fist smashes his guy with a crunch into a nose, and now blood is really flowing. I want back in it. I remember what Nate taught me about getting out of submission holds. I rock up with my hips, and when Brass Knuckles shifts to push me down, I fling my head backward to crash into his face.
“Shit,” he cries, and I’m able to throw him off.
These guys aren’t real fighters of any sort. They’re just street thugs. We can handle them.
Colt shoves his man into the wall of Buster’s, knocking him hard against a metal pipe.
“Fuck this shit,” the man says, feeling the back of his head.
I think it’s going to be over, that they’re going to decide it’s not worth it, when the little guy finally walks up. He’s been watching the whole thing. He kicks the guy on the ground until he stands up. Brass Knuckles comes up beside him, and finally the guy by the wall returns as well.
“We’ve got a job to do here,” he says. He snaps his fingers, and all three of the other guys are back on Colt.
I turn to face this fourth guy, standing between him and the struggle between Colt and the others.
He smiles at me. Gold teeth flash in his mouth. I refuse to feel fear.
I don’t believe for a minute that Striker or Lani paid them to kill us. I think they want to injure us, get us out of the circuit for a while. Nothing more. And I’m just not going to let that happen.
We’re taught that to land a real knockout, the one that crumples somebody, you have to cause a concussion. It’s the sudden shift of the brain inside the skull that does it. You have to land the hit very solid to one side of the chin. Wearing gloves makes it harder, as the cushion lessens the blow.
But I’m not wearing gloves.
Gold Tooth decides he can take me himself. I try to duck away from him, but he wraps an arm around my neck and spins me around. I can hear him laughing as I start to go down. I can’t punch from this position, as it won’t do anything. But he can nail me.
I move just enough that the first blow of his fist gets my sternum instead of my face. It’s still a crushing jab. The shooting pain tells me he probably cracked the bone.
But the pain just drives the hurricane all the more. Again, I don’t care about rules, and jab my elbow into his groin. He lets go, slightly bent, and now I’m in position.
Time slows down a bit as I shift my foot back and prepare for the uppercut that has to drop him. I sense one of the other men running for me. I can hear the scuffle of whatever’s happening to Colt. The man’s face comes up as I put all the power into my punch and open my hand. I know my fingers will soften the hit, but the heel will give me more force.
I land it just to the right of his chin in a connection that jars my arm all the way to my ear
s. His neck pops, and his head shifts hard to the left. Brass Knuckles reaches me and jerks me backward as the guy stumbles. I’m falling to the ground as he tips, his eyes rolling.
The hurricane is still full strength, so I roll away from Brass Knuckles one more time.
I’m on my feet in an instant as Gold Tooth lands on his ass. His hands lift to his head. I don’t trust that he’s going out. I rush forward and rain punches on his face. I want him to go down, down like my stepbrother, down like a street thug should.
Brass Knuckles reaches me again and pulls me off. One of Gold Tooth’s eyes won’t open all the way now.
I turn to look behind me at Colt. One of the men is in front of Colt, on the ground, holding his leg. It might be broken. I believe it. Colt’s roundhouse kicks have a lot of power.
Colt looks about as bad as he did after that fight with Throwdown when he got pounded. He’s bleeding everywhere, but overall, he seems okay. We’re going to get through this.
Then Colt looks over at me and Gold Tooth, and suddenly his rage is so wild that the other men actually back away. He’s roaring, and it’s like a freight train coming as he lunges forward. Brass Knuckles lets go of my arm, and I’m confused at why Colt is coming like that. But he’s not looking at me, he’s looking at Gold Tooth on the ground. I wonder if I’ve killed him or something terrible, so I start to turn my head.
A noise pierces the darkness, sharp and short. My shoulder rears back like I’ve been struck, but there’s no one there to hit me.
I look back at Gold Tooth. He’s sitting, but both his arms are raised. And now I see what has gotten me, why Colt broke away.
Gold Tooth has a gun.
I look down at my shoulder. Blood spurts upward. The world seems so slow, so fluid. The noise happens again, but I don’t feel it this time. Colt jerks back for a second, but it doesn’t stop him. He’s on Gold Tooth, and the gun clatters to the ground. Brass Knuckles lunges forward and snatches it up. He’s screaming at Gold Tooth. I can’t make it out. Curse words. Maybe what the hell.
I press my hand to my shoulder. My head feels light, and only when my knees scream with agony do I realize I’ve fallen forward on the pavement.
Colt bashes Gold Tooth’s face so hard that he goes out cold.
Brass Knuckles looks around at all of us, wild-eyed.
I try to crawl forward to Colt but forget about my shoulder, and when I use that arm, my face crashes into the ground. It takes everything I have to sit up again.
Brass Knuckles flings the gun onto Gold Tooth and yells, “Get out of here!” and it’s like we’re underwater, his voice is so low and warped.
Colt turns to me, and then I really feel the panic when I see blood flowing from his belly. The other sound, the other shot. It got him. He makes it to me and pulls me into him. Everyone is running out of the parking lot, even the one with the broken leg, hobbling and falling in his hurry. Gold Tooth still lies on the ground.
Colt reaches for his phone, then looks confused. There’s so much blood that he can’t find his pocket.
He sags over, and I can’t hold him. My arm won’t keep his weight. I press my hands on his belly, but the blood is flowing down my arm and mixing into his.
Colt looks around, then up at me, but the light might be going out, because it’s getting too dark for me to see.
I spot his phone on the ground a ways away, where he was fighting. I try to let go of him, to go get it. But he’s so heavy. I can’t move him off my arm. The lights are going in and out, and I can barely make out his face. The world has lost its color, washed out and gray.
Colt closes his eyes. Now I can’t see him anymore, but I can feel him. He’s rolling over. Or I am. Or we are.
The world tilts. I feel the pavement on my cheek.
Then nothing.
UNCAGED LOVE is a 5-book series about Jo and Colt.
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Love, JJ
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