Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(3)
She reported the rape to the campus cops, but his asshole buddies rallied with bullshit stories of how she’d gotten drunk and came on to him, and the investigator couldn’t do much. She didn’t even know if he believed her.
So, with no other option available but to allow the whole thing to eat her alive, June decided to consider the incident a powerful lesson in poor judgment and a strong incentive to take full responsibility for herself. She stopped going to big parties, started self-defense classes, and never drank anything she hadn’t poured herself.
She never thought of herself as a violent person, or someone easily angered. The self-defense training was just that, a means to protect herself. But she had been known to harbor a grudge, and now she took long, deep breaths, oxygenating her blood and stoking her anger to a pure white heat while she waited for a red light.
When the driver stayed in the lane for Old Middlefield, she knew she was running out of time. Once they hit the freeway, she was fucked. There would be no red lights. She saw the sign for Las Muchachas, tightened her abs, locked her left hand on the back of the driver’s headrest, and pivoted on her seat to kick the man she now thought of as the date rapist directly in the face.
She was wearing her favorite heavy hiking boots, and her legs were very strong from running and biking, so the kick had substantial force. He rocked back and tried to block her, but she kept kicking him as hard as she could in the face and neck and forearms.
When he finally went on the offensive, reaching out for her with thick hands, she leaned in with a wrist lock, grabbed his vulnerable little finger and bent it back, not an easy thing to do with her wrists cuffed but very effective. The date rapist’s meaty blood-streaked face twisted up and he shouted in pain, the driver was yelling and trying to pull over, and she really should have thought this through first but she was in it now and not giving up because the alternative was entirely unacceptable.
“Give me the fucking stun gun,” she growled. His finger was at the edge of breaking. His face was torn up from her all-terrain soles, but he was clearly furious and she didn’t want to get close to him. He was much bigger and stronger than she was, and the enclosed space was not to her advantage. She didn’t know how long he’d give a shit about his finger. If he zapped her again or pulled her into a clinch or even hit her once in the face with a closed fist, she’d be finished. She shouted it again, loud and hard, “Give me the fucking stun gun!”
“Okay, okay,” he said, and fumbled in his pocket. But she could read his intentions in his piggy little eyes and as the stun gun came out, she broke his finger. She could feel the crunch as the bone broke, a small weak bone despite the meatiness of his hand. He howled, but he’d already reached the same calculus she did, so despite the broken finger he pushed the stun gun toward her, trigger down and contacts crackling bright.
She hadn’t let go of his finger. Now she pulled hard on it, twisting, grinding the bone. The date rapist yelped and dropped the stun gun. She had to let go of his finger to scoop up the stun gun, but that was an exchange she made gladly, because the SUV was veering to the curb and soon she’d have the driver to deal with.
The date rapist clutched his injured hand to his chest but dropped his leg. She lifted herself on one knee and drove a kick hard to his unprotected groin. She felt the softness there and knew she’d made contact when he cried out wetly and curled himself up into a ball on his seat.
She pivoted on the knee and jammed the stun gun into the back of the driver’s neck and held the trigger down for a long time. The smell of burning meat filled the air.
The SUV was already slowing fast. The resultant electrical spasm made the driver stab the brake hard. The wheels locked and the tires grabbed at the asphalt.
June was on her knees on the back seat and the change in inertia pitched her over the center console and into the dashboard, which did not feel good on her shoulder and arm. The cuffs were a problem but she kept her grip on the stun gun, managed to get her feet under her, and zapped the driver again, holding the contacts against his shirt until he went limp. When the truck finished lurching, she threw the gearshift into park, then reached over the back seat and zapped the curled-up date rapist hard through the shiny seat of his shitty suit. He jerked and cried out but he was jammed against the door and she held the arcing stun gun until he stopped struggling and the fabric started to blacken at the contact point. His bowels released and the smell made her gag.
She popped the door and fell out of the car onto the empty sidewalk like waking from a nightmare, but forced herself to open the back door and reach into the date rapist’s pockets. It wasn’t easy with her hands bound, but that was the whole point after all. When she found the ugly little knife with a wicked-looking serrated blade, she immediately cut the plastic cuffs, then dropped the knife into her own pocket. He carried a gun in a shoulder holster, which she didn’t touch, and a wallet and ID folder in his suit coat pocket, which she took.
The driver was moaning so she climbed back in the front and zapped him again in the chest. She left his gun, too, but his wallet was in his back pocket, and much harder to get to. She had to unbuckle his seat belt and open his door and spill him halfway into the street to take it.
She wanted their wallets and IDs because she was an investigative journalist and she had experience with the power of knowledge. And she didn’t want these assholes to have the power of their fake IDs when the cops showed up. Leaving the guns would only make the situation more difficult for them to explain.