Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(98)

Luis spat blood, rubbing his ear. Board Shorts and Boots moved closer so that we formed a rough scalene triangle. Myself, Luis, and his two friends, farther away. “You’re from that bookstore,” said Luis. He laughed, as though realizing how ridiculous it sounded. “She sent you?” he added. “To do this to me?”

He took a step toward me. He was angry enough I thought that he might rush me on the spot. That would lead to chaos. Chaos wasn’t necessarily bad, but I hadn’t made up my mind. I didn’t want chaos at this exact second. I wanted to think.

“I sent myself.” I leaned down and grabbed the steel weight bar. Standard dimensions, about forty-five pounds, maybe seven feet long, each end pebbled for grip.

Enraged as he was, Luis didn’t relish the thought of catching that bar in the face. He edged back out of range, stopping six or seven feet directly in front of me. I stole a look at the other two. They had fanned out but were still side by side, about ten feet behind Luis at a forty-five-degree diagonal. Behind them the adjoining door to the house. The only viable exit. I thought of the scalene triangle again, and then for some reason of ninth-grade geometry. The angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Solid, logical foundations for the world to operate upon.

I addressed Luis’s friends directly. “This isn’t between us. Walk away and we have no problem.”

Board Shorts laughed and cocked the gun. “We’re not the ones with the problem.” I saw him struggle as he pulled the slide back. Rust, maybe. I could see more rust on the barrel. The gun was a Cobra. Not a company synonymous with quality. Cobra made cheap guns that were purchased by people who didn’t want to spend money on better guns. They were all over the streets. Take a cheap semiautomatic pistol and throw in an owner who didn’t know or care about cleaning it. Maybe a few owners. Guns like this one were passed around a lot. Used guns were like used cars. They could be immaculate, or junk, or anywhere in between. With this gun, possibly a long chain of indifference to care and quality. Meaning a definite chance it could misfire. I filed that thought away.

“Why’d you hit her?” I asked Luis. I wasn’t talking for answers. I wanted a little more time to think.

“She’s crazy. I never touched her.”

The lies were always so easily told, but I was barely listening. I was thinking, adding things up. Possibilities. Three men. The only accessible door blocked by two of the men. A gun. The bare lightbulb dangling almost directly above me. The third man in front of me. No way out unless I ran through the two men between me and the door. In which case Board Shorts would likely empty his gun straight toward me.

“Toss the bar,” Boots advised. “Maybe we’ll be nice.” He sounded cheerful, unconcerned. The way most people would be in his situation. His chin came to a sharp V and he had sideburns that jutted down his face like a frame around a painting. He had picked up an aluminum baseball bat from a corner of the garage and held it casually, like he was popping pitches at Sunday softball.

I made up my mind.

I bent down but didn’t drop the weight bar.

Instead I unbuckled my boots. I pulled them off and placed them next to me. Noticing with some small part of my mind that the left tip was smudged with Luis’s blood. From when I’d kicked him. That seemed a long time ago. I stood there in my socks.

The three of them were looking at me curiously. Like I had cracked up.

Luis grinned through his bloody mouth, rubbing his left ear as though it itched. “You can take the rest off, too,” he said. “Or maybe I’ll help with that.”

I took one more look around the garage. Thinking again of that geometry class, almost twenty years behind me. A name came to me. Ms. Irvine. My teacher. She’d be glad I was still thinking about the course, all these years later. She’d always claimed that geometry was the most applicable branch of mathematics.

“What’s it gonna be?” asked Board Shorts. His voice was impatient. “Lie down or lights out?” With his colorful shorts and pistol he looked like an aging, murderous frat boy. Spilled beer foam and broken bottle glass littered the floor around where he stood. That only added to the image of partygoer gone wrong.

I flexed my toes against the cement. Took a long, even breath. “Let’s go with lights out.”

I took a half step forward and swung the bar up in a sweeping vertical arc.

The three of them watched, surprised. Not bothering to step back. Knowing they were comfortably out of range. Not having time to wonder why instead of swinging the bar toward them I was swinging it upward. Toward the ceiling. As the bar connected with the lightbulb above me, the last thing I saw was the same surprise threaded across three different faces.

I felt glass shower down, heard startled exclamations, as we were plunged into total darkness.



* * *



There were plenty of species that had no problem with night. Thrived in it, even. Lions, wolves, raccoons. Certain monkeys and birds, domestic cats. But not humans. As a species, we’d never grown comfortable in darkness. We were biologically wired to move in day and not night. Not seeing meant you could run into a tree. Or walk off a cliff. People grew cautious. Froze up until their brains could get some information flowing and figure out what to do. So I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t hear any immediate motion of any kind.