Near Dark (Scot Harvath #19)(7)

Harvath watched, still hesitant to get involved. But just like at Little Palm Island, he knew he was going to have to. It was the way he was wired. He couldn’t let crap like that go.

Taking the section of newspaper he was reading, he set it on the table, rolled his empty rocks glass in it, twisted the ends together, and took it in his fist. These guys had obviously come looking for trouble. Now, they had found it.

He slipped from his booth, a bit unsteady from all the alcohol he had consumed, but not so bad—he hoped—as to put him at a disadvantage.

Holding his makeshift weapon behind him, he headed toward the bar. He doubted either of these two were going to listen to reason and he had no intention of fighting fair. He was inebriated, it was two against one, and both men were much larger than he was. The element of surprise needed to be heavily in his favor if he hoped to come out on the winning end of this one.

It took about a microsecond to realize that any chance he’d had of surprising them was lost. They both not only saw him approaching, but also figured out he was holding something behind his back.

“Hold up, motherfucker,” the buddy said. “What do you think you’re doing? And what’s that you’re hiding?”

As was his fashion, Harvath ignored questions he had no intention of answering. You didn’t answer questions when you were taking charge of a situation, you gave orders. “Let go of her,” he demanded.

The man holding the bartender sneered at him. “Fuck you,” he replied. “Mind your own fucking business.”

Harvath nodded at the bottle she was holding and said, “That is my business.”

The men looked at each other for a moment, almost unsure of how to respond, and then burst into laughter. He wasn’t trying to save the bartender, he was trying to rescue the booze.

“Sit your ass down,” the buddy ordered. “And whatever you’ve got behind your back, this is the last time I’m going to tell you to drop it.”

“Let her go,” Harvath repeated. “Then we can all get back to drinking and nobody gets hurt.”

“You mean you don’t get hurt.”

Harvath smiled. “It’s up to you. Let her go, I’ll get my drink, and like I said, nobody’ll get hurt.”

“And if we don’t? What are you going to do about it? There’s two of us, dumbass.”

“I see that,” said Harvath. “Listen, why don’t—”

“Why don’t we what?” the man interrupted. “Let you buy us a drink? Is that what you were going to say, pussy?”

The rage that Harvath had been harboring; the rage that he had been trying to cap, with glass after glass of bourbon, began to bubble up again and was about to boil over.

If he was honest with himself, he had been spoiling for a real, knock-down, drag-out fight since Little Palm Island. He wanted to vent all of his anger in one great purge and it looked like he was about to get his chance.

Smiling, he replied, “I wouldn’t piss on you losers if you were on fire, so there’s no way I’m going to offer to buy you drinks. I will, though, offer for us to take this outside. Let her go and we’ll see if two against one makes a difference. Or not.”

With that, Harvath set the glass he had wrapped in newspaper on the bar and smiled at the men.

They looked at him and smiled back. The larger man took one more sip of his beer as the other let go of the bartender.

Stepping a safe distance away, she announced, “I’m calling the cops.”

“Better call an ambulance first,” the buddy said as he gestured toward the door.

“Good idea,” Harvath agreed, as he headed toward the exit. “In fact, call two.”





CHAPTER 3


Harvath knew better than to fight inside the bar. There were too many things that could go wrong. There were also too many witnesses—any number of whom could have whipped out a phone, filmed what was taking place, and posted it to the internet, or worse—shared it with the police, who would share it with a jury. No matter how justified Harvath might have been, his fighting style was brutal. For average people unaccustomed to violence, it was difficult to watch and would win him little, if any, sympathy in a courtroom. It wouldn’t matter who had started the fight, all a transfixed jury would be focused on was how he had ended it. Taking it outside was the smart move.

Outside there weren’t any cameras. Outside he could do whatever he wanted. Outside he could let his rage off its chain.

Whoever these assholes were, he was going to make them pay for everything bad that had happened to him.

It didn’t matter that they had nothing to do with any of it. They were begging for an ass-kicking and ass-kickings happened to be one of his specialties. Suggesting the bartender call for two ambulances wasn’t hyperbole, it was a courtesy. He was going to beat the shit out of both of them. The sooner they got this over with, the better.

The night was thick with humidity as they squared up behind the building. Harvath did a quick scan for any cameras he may have missed, as well as for any stray items that might get picked up and used as weapons. Nothing. It was time to get to work.

Already taunting him with a string of insults, the smaller of the two men had made a critical error. Puffing out his chest, he had also foolishly raised his chin. Harvath stepped right in and delivered a devastating throat punch.