Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(97)

For whatever good that did.

I pulled up to a one-story house with an attached garage. In the driveway there was a black Escalade with shiny custom rims, windows tinted far past the point of legal. The small front yard covered equally by children’s toys and beer cans. I got off the motorcycle. Knowing that I was breaking all my rules. Not caring. The singing noise in my ears still pushing me along. I didn’t bother with my gloves. Left my purse on the seat and the keys in the ignition. I wouldn’t be long.

I’d been thinking so much. Trying to fit together pieces that refused to fit.

Now I didn’t need to think. I didn’t need anything to fit.

I only needed Luis.

The garage door was open but it might as well have been closed. It was too bright outside to make out anything within. Like looking at a black curtain and wondering what lay on the stage beyond.

I walked right into the darkness.

I stood on a pitted cement floor. An old red Mustang with no tires rested on stacks of cinder blocks to my left. Bared, the axles looked obscene. Across, on the far right, the adjoining door to the house was closed. Besides the sun streaming in from the open bay door, the only light came from a single bare lightbulb that hung off a thick orange cord from the ceiling above me. Hard rap music pounded from a subwoofer. I smelled sweat and motor oil and marijuana. There was a weight bench in front of me. A shirtless man in sneakers and mesh basketball shorts was doing bench presses. He was powerfully built, grunting with effort as he heaved up a bar loaded with discs of iron.

The man was Luis.

Without breaking my stride, I walked up and jammed my foot down against the bar he was pressing up. With the loud music he hadn’t even heard me walk in. There was a rattling sound and a fleshy thud as about two hundred pounds of iron-loaded bar fell onto his chest. He let out a gasp and rolled sideways off the narrow bench onto the cement floor. Weights spilled down and the bar clanged loudly.

“Hi, Luis,” I said. I took another step forward and kicked him in the mouth with the reinforced toe of my right boot. His lip split like it had been peeled apart, but the teeth held. I felt vague disappointment.

“Who the fuck are you?” he managed, raising his head.

“We’ve met. You’ll remember.” I brought up the heavy heel of my boot and drove it down into his left ear. Another thud as his head bounced off cement. Blood from his ear trickled down his cheek and joined blood from his lip.

“Shit!” He clutched the side of his head. “What do you want?” His words were fuzzy. Harder to talk with a split lip.

“Everything.”

Even through his pain, his face was bewildered. “What?”

“I want you to feel everything. Because everything you did to that girl in the last five years I’m going to do to you in the next five minutes.”

He managed to get up on one knee. He looked up at me. “I’ll find both of you. You and that whore. I should have kicked her onto the street years ago. I’ll find you both.”

“Find me. Feels like everyone’s trying to find me. We’ll talk about you finding us. Right now, though, I found you.” The music was too loud. I jerked the subwoofer’s cord from the wall and the garage was quiet. Luis was poised to rise, eyes fixed on me, bulky pectoral muscles heaving as he breathed. He wiped blood from his face with the back of a hand.

“Go on,” I said. “Get up. I’ll let you.”

His body tensed but he remained frozen on one knee, suspecting a trick. There was no trick, though. I wanted him to stand up. So that we could continue. In my mind was a kind of grocery list of things that I intended to happen to Luis in the immediate future. He probably had his own list for me. We’d see who got to do what. “Get up,” I repeated.

We watched each other. Preparing. Then three things happened.

The interior adjoining door between house and garage opened.

Two men walked into the garage.

And Luis stood up.

“What the hell?” asked the guy on the left. He looked as surprised as I was. He had a broad frame with about twenty extra pounds spread around his gut. In his doughy face his eyes were small and malicious. He looked from me to Luis as if suspecting a joke. He was wearing a black muscle shirt and colorful board shorts and held a six-pack of Corona Extra bottles in his right hand.

I backed toward the bay door, my anger gone. Things had changed.

The guy on the right seemed to have read my mind. He was shorter than his friend, with a scruffy black beard and heavy boots. His hand shot out and hit a button on the wall as I backed up. The garage door began to close behind me. I backed up faster. I didn’t want to be in the garage anymore. Not with three of them. That’s what I got for going in angry.

I stopped backing up when Board Shorts let go of the beer and pulled a gun out of the back of his baggy shorts. A cheap black semiautomatic. He got the gun pointed at me about the same time as the beer smashed into the floor. “Don’t move!” he said. The hand holding the gun quivered with adrenaline. No way to tell about bullets or safeties. A gun was pointed at me from maybe fifteen feet away. That was all I knew. Not very far. Fifty feet and I’d run from a handgun every time. Twenty-five and I’d be tempted. Any closer drastically lowered the odds of escaping unscathed. Even a stoned, shaky shooter could hit something from fifteen feet away.

I stopped only a couple of feet shy of the door, wondering if I should try to roll under as it closed. That seemed a decent way to get out of the garage. Also a decent way to get shot. I stayed where I was. The bright daylight faded to a thin crack and then was gone. The only light in the garage coming from the overhead bulb. Shadows appeared in sharp relief. With the door closed I had fewer options. None of them seemed good.