Fighter
Tijan
Chapter One
“Go, Dale!” my brother Dylan shouted in my ear. He raced from his side of the truck while I was still putting the engine in park. “Come on!” I heard him yell as he went past my door and veered to the back of the house.
I loved all nine of my brothers, but I was not one of them. For one thing, I’m a girl. My real name is Delia Holden. Our mom decided to give me the family name, but that’s the most feminine thing about me. Delia had been shortened to Dele early on, and somehow that switched to Dale when I was in junior high. Which suited me fine. At that time, I liked fitting in with my brothers. I was scrawny enough to wear baggy shirts, baseball hats, and jeans with sneakers. People thought I was a boy, and I was athletic enough to play sports with most of the guys. That ended around eighth grade. My boobs came in, and my hips went out. Even though I was still thin, there was no way to hide my female lioness anymore.
I hated this, and watching Dylan sprint away, I cursed at him. That was the other part of being female that sucked: my speed had evaporated. I could no longer race and tackle him to the ground. I’d enjoyed holding my own against my brothers, but that had stopped, and by freshman year they were too cool to even be associated with me. They’d come around eventually as we all grew up, but things were never quite the same. Now here I was, home for the holidays from my first year at college, and I’d been roped back into the bounty-hunting business.
Our mom died from cancer when I was little, and our dad died when I was in high school. My mother had been sweet, quiet, and the perfect doting mom—a pile of crocheted doilies made for each kid testified to that fact. She really was perfect. Home-cooked meals, and she had picture books for each of us. I have memories of her waving goodbye from the window as the bus picked us up for school. However, our dad was the opposite. He was technically murdered in the back alley of a bar, but the real cause of his death was a lifetime of boozing, bar fights, and gambling gone wrong.
The social workers tried to take us into the system, but Dean was already nineteen then. He refused and instead got a job at a local bounty-hunting firm. Fast forward ten years and he owned the business. Every one of our brothers now worked as agents. The only black sheep in the family was me. I went to college, and it was moments like this that I was glad. No six a.m. busts. No accidentally Maceing myself. No worrying if my Taser had the lock on it.
I cursed under my breath, scrambling to tuck the keys into my pants and zip up the pocket as I tried to hold my gun so it wasn’t pointed at anyone. Honestly. I’d been gone for five months. Five months of normalcy. Five months of staying up late to eat pizza and drink beer. Five months of going on dates. Five months of doing what other college students did, and I would bet money my friends weren’t home chasing after a bail jumper. Oh, no. They weren’t worried about whether they’d remembered to grab their handcuffs or not.
“Dale!”
Another brother waited at the other end of the house. He waved me over. As I ran to him, already feeling short of breath, he gestured to the south corner. “Radio when you get there.”
Radio?
Shit. I forgot my damn radio. I glanced at him. Would he have an extra? Did I dare ask and risk being chewed out? Judging by the firm set of his jaw, I decided no. My cousins and brothers were nuts when it came to this stuff. If you forgot a piece of equipment, you got scrub duty at the end of the night.
I ran around to the backyard and saw Dylan in the opposite corner of the yard. He was looking all around with a hand to his radio. I heard him say, “South right side clear.”
My cousin added, “Left front clear.”
The rest checked in, and I heard Dean, my oldest brother, yelling from the front. “Where is he? We know he’s here!”
“Dale!” Dylan waved his arms. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Check in! What’s wrong with you?”
What was wrong with me? Oh, the fact that they woke me at up six in the morning might’ve had something to do with it. Or that I hadn’t worked out since I got on the airplane heading from California to Chicago back in August. Or the fact that I didn’t want to do this, and they’d just assumed I would jump at the chance. I wanted to scream back at him and give him the middle finger, but instead I did my job: scan the windows, look for anyone looking back, look for any movement in the curtains. Look for pretty much anything. When I saw nothing, I yelled back at him, “I’m clear.”
He lifted his radio and waved it at me. “Check in.”
Across his radio, I heard, “Dale, check in. Check in, Dale.”
I had no f*cking radio.
“Dale!”
That was it. I gave him the middle finger this time.
He groaned in frustration, but checked in for me. “South left side clear.” He paused, then added, “Dale’s an *.”
I lifted my finger higher above my head.
He laughed, but then our drama was forgotten. We heard Dean’s voice from the front side of the house: “I don’t care what rights you think you have. We have a warrant, motherf*cker. Let us in. Now!”
I grinned, shaking my head. Memories of my childhood rolled back over me, and I adjusted my stance, leaning most of my weight on my left leg as I got comfortable. My job was to watch and report anything. My brother Dean’s job was to roust the bail jumper, and as he continued to yell at whoever had been unlucky enough to answer the door, he was doing it to perfection.