“I’m your fuckin’ nightmare.” He stomped a boot forward. “Now, run!”
“This ain’t none of your business, dickwad!” the other bully snarled, wiping the back of his hand over a bloody lip. Which meant one of the college kids must’ve gotten in a lucky punch.
Tripp raised his right arm and fluttered his fingers, taunting the two fools to come, try him. “It’s you who’s got no business being here. Run. Tell your friends. I’m coming for every last one of you.”
The weaker of the two stepped back and grabbed the other’s sleeve. “Come on, Monkey. Let’s go.”
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere, Chum.” The ballsy bastard stomped a menacing boot back at Tripp. “Why don’t you run, shithead? Go home to mommy. These streets are ours. Tell her I said so!”
Big mistake. Tripp hadn’t come here to argue, and no one badmouthed the woman who’d raised him—ever. He didn’t growl. Didn’t waste another breath on this loser. Just attacked. Head down. Head on. Right shoulder tucked. Left fist first. Threw a punch straight into Monkey’s ugly face. Then followed with a blistering barrage of left, right hooks to the guy’s soggy middle.
Monkey wheezed, but never raised a hand to block the shots.
Tripp ended the one-sided fight with an over-handed punch to the guy’s head, then an upper-cut to his big chin. His face was hamburger by then, and he was out cold. As stiff as a corpse, he planked face first. His forehead bounced on the hard-packed ground.
TKO. If he lived. Tripp was long past caring whether murderers like these five survived the brutal beatings he dished out. Just like Anwar Khan, the Crimson Sword of Allah, these guys thought they were untouchable. He fuckin’ thought otherwise.
With evil intent, he turned to the last bully standing, but by then, Chumley was gone, and the two college kids were shakily helping each other to their feet. “Hey, m-mister,” the taller one sputtered. He was holding his gut with both hands and blood from his nose ran down his chin and neck. “You saved our lives. Th-thanks.”
“Yeah,” the shorter kid wheezed. “My mom and dad’ll want to meet you.”
“You’ve got parents who care?” Tripp asked in disbelief. It wasn’t that long ago that people disowned kids who were ‘different.’ “Then why the fuck are you out here tonight? Why aren’t you somewhere safe? In a coffee shop or… or home?” He’d almost said, “in bed,” but figured these guys didn’t need any encouragement.
“Yeah, sure,” the short guy huffed. He was on his feet by then, unsteady and leaning into his friend. Hell, they were both leaning. “We’ve got parents. Good parents. But moms and dads get a little overprotective sometimes, you know what I mean?”
“And now you know why,” Tripp snarled. “You know where the free clinic is over on King Street? Go there. Get yourselves checked, then call an Uber or a cab and go straight home. Talk to your parents. Tell them what happened here tonight. Just leave me out of it.”
“You’re really a good guy,” the taller kid breathed. “You’re like one of the Avengers. You’re a hero.”
“Like hell I am.”
“You’re my hero,” Shorty murmured.
Tripp cut the hero-worship, star-struck, bullshit off. “No, I’m not. Get the hell out of here, and forget you ever saw me!”
“Yeah. Sure,” the shorter kid said again, his voice so damned gentle and patient, Tripp worried he’d met an actual canonized saint.
Stabbing a gloved finger in the general direction of the clinic, he bellowed, “Go!”
“We’re going. But if you ever need any—”
“I said get the hell out of here! Run!”
Finally. That vehement blast propelled the two back across the bridge, over the gate, and out of the Preserve. Tripp followed in the shadows, needing to be sure they made it to the clinic without more trouble. Which they did. Once they were inside, he intended to call it a night and head home. Morning came early. So, did his real job.
Chapter Two
Darn. The sun had set hours ago, and Ashley Cox was late leaving her office. Really late. She’d been promoted today. She was now an outreach coordinator for Alexandria, Virginia’s Health Department. As a newly appointed, trained public health educator, it was her job to locate and teach—if possible—individuals in need of a certain type of preventative medical care. Unfortunately, the real teaching these guys needed had more to do with keeping their pants zipped, than how to eat nutritionally or perform emergency CPR. And therein lay Ashley’s problem. She didn’t like most men. The belligerent sperm-donor in her life was the worst role model a daughter could get. Then, there was that other guy… No. Not going there.
Stalled at the building’s front entrance glass doors, she debated the benefits of staying the night inside, as opposed to walking outside to get to the metro station. She could sleep here. Why not? Her office was small and tidy, not as large as her boss, Terry Chandler’s, but it was clean. She could sleep on the floor. Her light jacket would make a decent blanket. She could freshen up in the women’s restroom before anyone arrived tomorrow morning. Who would know?
Sure, the couch in her boss’s office would make a more comfortable bed. But his office also had floor-to-ceiling windows, and windows weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Ha, ha. She rolled her eyes at that unintentional pun.
The Department shared their one-level brick building with the twenty-four-seven free clinic on its west end. As dark as it already was outside, anyone standing on the street could see inside when the lights were on. Like those in the lobby.
But if that person wanted to break in, all they had to do was step past the tidy beds of trimmed wintergreen boxwood shrubs, and those huge windows in Terry’s office wouldn’t stand a chance. Not like there were drugs or cash or other valuables inside the Health Department, because there weren’t. But because the world had grown a lot meaner lately. Some people just wanted to destroy public property. They wanted to make statements.
Lifting both arms over her head, Ashley gathered her long, black hair and secured it with one of several elastics she kept on her wrist. She should’ve tracked her time better. But she’d been so focused on her first, on-the-job assignment, that she’d stayed way past quitting time, and now everyone else was gone. Truthfully, she was a nervous wreck. This promotion meant she’d be contacting those who’d been tagged as possible carriers of STDs. Talk about having to face her worst demon. This assignment would do it. Notifying women would be hard enough. But men? She cringed at the thought. But it was either get over her male-induced phobia or turn down the promotion. Which wasn’t going to happen.
She drummed her fingers on the free-moving bar that would either propel her into the night with all its unknowns, or that she could lock to keep those same unknowns, well, unknown. It would only take one little turn of the hex key at the end of that bar to lock herself in for the night.
Opening the door, the brisk autumn night poured into the lobby with her. She peered out at the busy, lighted street. Darn. If she left now, and if she speed-walked, it’d still be a good fifteen-minutes to the King Street metro station. It sounded doable. A brisk evening walk might even be good for her. There were streetlights on the way, for heaven’s sake. This was America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. For once, she could be brave, too.
Couldn’t she? Yeah, sure.
Well, maybe. With resolute bravado she didn’t quite feel, Ashley flipped the lobby light switch off, opened the right half of the glass entry door, stuck the hex key into the locking mechanism, and locked the door that would now prevent her re-entry. With her light jacket on and her over-the-shoulder messenger bag firmly in place, she burst into the night. Determined, darn it. Well-lighted King Station lay directly to the East. One metro stop and a short walk to her apartment-complex past that, and she’d be home. She could do this.
If she hurried.
Facing the wind, she lifted one hand to tighten the collar of her jacket, while sticking her other hand dee
p into her bag. Once her fingers curled around her secret weapon, the cool, slender cylinder of mace she always carried, she breathed easier. She’d never had to use it before. Truthfully, she didn’t venture outside more than she had to, mostly just for work. Nothing else. She had her groceries delivered to her apartment. Anything else she needed, she picked up on her way to or from work. In the daylight. When there were more people. When it was safer. She didn’t go out at night, and she didn’t take unnecessary chances. Not anymore.
Glancing back at the free clinic adjacent to her now darkened office building, she wondered if it might not have been smarter to call a cab or Uber. She would, but only if she could be sure she’d get a female driver.
She’d no more than cast that notion aside when an arm snaked out of nowhere and circled her throat. “Make one move and I’ll gut you like a frog,” a man growled against the side of her head. Jerking the strap of her messenger bag over her head, he nearly took her ear off with it. Her secret weapon catapulted out of her hand, end-over-end through the air. The guy cocked his elbow, tightening his hold around her neck and dragged her onto the strip of grass between the sidewalk and parking lot.
Ashley’s back hit a wall of solid muscle. A blast of rank, hot breath feathered over her neck. He had a knife under her chin, its blade as cold as ice. A desperate cry climbed up her throat. Tears. Damned worthless tears that hadn’t helped last time, blurred her way forward. Off balance, she stumbled. He was going to kill her. It was happening again!
“Why are you doing this?”
“Shut up!” the creep ordered, punching the side of her head so hard with his knife handle, that her teeth chattered, and she saw stars. He let go, and she fell to her knees in the grass, her ponytail swirling over her face.
Thinking this was the end, Ashley rolled to her side, fighting the humiliation that was sure to come. But if she was going down, she needed to see her attacker. Swiping her hair out of her eyes and mouth, she looked up at him. He was taller, definitely heavier, and he’d spoken with a southern accent. But he was younger than she’d thought. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen. He was just a young man in ragged jeans with a light-gray hoody pulled over his head. Scraggly whiskers shadowed his chin. Frosty plumes exhaled over straight white teeth. This was someone’s child. He had parents, a mom and dad who loved him enough to pay for his braces. Ashley knew it to her soul. He couldn’t be a murderer. Until he dropped to his knees beside her and landed a vicious hit to her solar plexus.
Her heart fluttered to a dead stop. She struggled to breathe. The ‘poor child’ punched her again. Worried what he’d do next, she turned her face toward King Street, and looked at all those cars humming eastward and westward. Surely someone could see that she needed help, that she was under attack. It wouldn’t take much for someone—anyone—to stop and ask this young man what he was doing. To make sure he knew he’d been seen, caught assaulting a woman. That ought to frighten him away. Streetlights, darn it. King Street was lined with plenty of streetlights! She wasn’t invisible, people!
With a mean hand, he flipped her onto her stomach and straddled her butt. How humiliating! To be attacked, possibly on her way to being raped, where everyone could see but wouldn’t interfere.
“Help!” she screamed, her brain overloaded with images of that other day and that other man. That other knife.
Twisting her ponytail into his fist, this jerk pulled her head so far back that she couldn’t swallow or scream. “Shut your pie-hole, slut!” he hissed into the side of her face.
“I’m not a… a…” A that.
“You’re all sluts. Every gawddamned one of you!” He was so close that his saliva speckled her cheek when he yelled. With a hard yank, he pulled her hair nearly out of her scalp. “Where’s the keys, bitch? You got ’em, I know you do. I seen you lock the place up. You the boss or something?”
“Keys?” she managed to gasp.
“Yeah, keys!” Bang, bang, bang! He kept slamming her face into the spongy, icy-cold grass. “Where are they?”
Oh, my God, He’s going to kill me! Ashley closed her eyes, ready to die. There was nothing she could say to make this guy understand that he’d never get inside that building. Once the front door locked, the only way in was to break the glass, and that would set off the alarm. The police station was only a block or two away. They’d be here in seconds.
“You heard me! The keys to the drugs. Oxy! That’s all I want!” His voice ramped higher with every desperate word and every slam her face took into the grass. Her poor nose was bleeding! “I’ll tell you what’s gonna happen next. You and me are gonna march back in there, and you’re gonna unlock your safe or your cabinet or wherever you keep the shit, and you’re gonna give me everything I need! All of it! Understand?”
“Ah huh, sure,” was all she could manage to wheeze. By then she was deafened by the abuse, and too frightened at what he’d do next if she said anything else. Or when he found out she had no keys, that there were no drugs where she worked. Only at the clinic. Her entire body ached, and her poor scalp burned like fire. She was sure he’d already cut her neck, though she couldn’t feel any sting. If she were bleeding there, she didn’t know it. As thin as he was, he was still heavy and agitated and… and mean.
She lay there, out of breath and out of time, ready to die, when the ground vibrated under her chin. A fierce roar split the night. A growling string of vile curses followed. Oh, no. There were two! Another creep had just joined the first. She buried her face in the grass and cried.
But suddenly, the hefty weight straddling her was gone. Just poof! Gone! One second, he’d been mashing his putrid body into hers, rubbing his… his thing… against her butt. The next, he’d flown backward, as if some giant puppeteer had jerked his strings and sent him flying. His knife skittered across the sidewalk and landed in the gutter.
Gasping, Ashley climbed to her knees and braced one foot to the grass, ready to run for her life at this double threat. Until she caught sight of the magnificent predator now kneeling over her original attacker, exacting brutal vengeance. He wasn’t anything like the other guy. Not at all. He was huge, a monster in black from the cap covering his head to his size twenty boots. A growling, cursing monster that made her attacker look like a sniveling little boy. He’d pinned the guy to the sidewalk and was pummeling the kid with wicked, hard blows, from fists as big as sledgehammers. Blood and spit flew, but not his. Still his arm pistoned up and down, delivering bone-crunching, nose-breaking retribution for a woman he didn’t even know. Who does that?!
Ashley sucked in a long, deep breath that turned to frosted vapor when she blew out her fright. She was too weak to run. She could only stare. Half of her wanted to scream, “Hit him again!” But her other half cried out for mercy, “Stop! You’re killing him!”
This man was no savior, no Jesus Christ. No turn-the-other-cheek kind of hero. There was madness in the quick, efficient way he exacted punishment. He was bigger. Meaner. Heavier. He knew how to hurt her aggressor, now turned into a whimpering victim she couldn’t help feeling sorry for.
“Don’t!” Punch. Punch. Punch. “Ever!” Bam. Bam. Bam. “Touch this woman again!” the newly arrived, but much angrier man bellowed. “The next time I see you…” Punch. Bam. Punch. “…I will…” Punch. Punch. Punch. “…fuckin’ kill you!” He landed one last fist into the stupid, younger man’s bloodied, mashed-beyond-description, face. Those pretty, expensive teeth weren’t so straight nor so white now.
But promises like that were hard to unhear. Harder yet to unsee. Or believe. This man, this savior, this fierce stranger, meant to kill her aggressor? For her? Someone he didn’t know and would never see again? What was he going to do, camp on her doorstep and follow her around for the rest of her life to keep that promise?
“S-s-stop,” she begged, before he voided his promise to kill this kid by murdering him on her behalf.
The man in black lifted to his feet and turned to glare at her
. He snapped, pointing a long, condemning finger at her. “You shouldn’t be out this late at night! Not alone!”
His words stung. His voice was more heated hiss than speech, full of invective so hot, it sounded like hate, not care or concern. Like a prize bull facing a matador, billows of white, frosty vapor snorted from his nostrils. He stood there flexing his fingers. She was sure blood dripped off the tips of his black gloves and sizzled when it hit the ground.
“I-I-I know, b-b-ut…” Ashley lost her voice in the wild, thrumming beat of her heart. She scurried backward, like a witless crab toward the busy street, with all its worthless illumination and cowardly passersby. Who was the aggressor now? Was she next? Would this guy hurt her, too?
His gloved palm came up and, “Stop!” he commanded, like he had the right to order her around. Like she should listen just because he said so.
“W-w-why should I? Because you’re bigger and meaner than me?” she cried, more scared now than she’d been before. “No! I just want to g-g-go home. Don’t hurt me, too!”
And he was on her. Like an inky shadow, he captured her and blocked her view of the streetlights, the entire street, and most of the sky. Ashley squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t dare breathe. Couldn’t think, her heart was pounding so hard. The power of the gods radiated off this man in black, in hair-raising, frightening mega-gigawatts. He was one with the night, a true jungle predator out for a kill, one who could rip her apart, lap at her entrails, and kick dirt over her carcass when he’d finished making a meal of her.
What a horrible, awful night. Tucking her chin to her chest, Ashley instinctively made herself smaller. She curled into a ball, her arms over her head, and her knees tucked up tightly into her belly, shielding her more tender body parts. Like prey, she was caught with no way to escape. All she could do was try to survive. She flinched at what might happen next. She was a stupid, stupid gazelle and he was a predator.
All the men in her life had been loud-mouthed, belligerent users of women, mean and cruel when it served their purposes. This guy was no different. He’d just proven that in spades. Had he saved her for something worse than death? Was this a power struggle or a rescue? Her poor heart couldn’t tell.
Tripp Page 3
