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Even so, she usually didn’t have any problems. This wasn’t a rough town. Sometimes the college kids got out of hand, but they normally weren’t violent.
When she rounded the truck to dump her tote on the passenger seat, she jumped and a squeak escaped her.
The bulky, shadowy figure stepped away from the truck and toward her. It was a man but she wasn’t sure who.
Until he started talking and the hair on the back of her neck stood.
“Know you got someone in your house waiting for me. Know your sister isn’t there. Where is she?”
With her heart thumping in her throat, she took a step back, poised to turn and run, but he snagged the wrist of the hand which gripped her phone and held her in place.
She jerked her arm hard enough to cause pain in her shoulder, but the fingers circling her wrist didn’t loosen, instead they tightened until they were crushing it. “Let me go, asshole.” She turned her body away from him and slipped her hand into her tote bag, hoping he wouldn’t notice.
“Where the fuck is she?” he roared in her face.
“I don’t know.” She tried to hide the shake in her voice, but failed. She took a deep breath and pulled her shoulders back as much as she could, trying to appear a lot stronger than she felt.
“Bullshit.”
“They won’t tell me.” Her fingers located her stun gun and she wrapped her hand tightly around it, switching off the safety. “Let. Me. Go.”
“Who the fuck are ‘they?’”
“Her hired bodyguards. You’ll never get near her.” She jerked her arm again and winced at the sharp pain. “Just give it up, Billy.”
“When she gives up the idea of testifying against me.”
“That’ll never happen,” Reese sneered. “You’re going down for what you did to her. I hope you go away for a very long time.”
She gasped as he crushed her wrist almost to the point of breaking bones.
“Fuck you, bitch.”
“It’ll be you getting fucked in jail, Billy. Hopefully without a drop of lube.”
He jerked her forward and as she tried to catch her balance, he backhanded her across the face. Her head whipped to the side with the power behind his strike and she couldn’t see anything for a good second.
Like the next hit. Her phone tumbled from her fingers to the pavement and she tried to jerk her arm free again, but it was impossible.
Warm liquid trickled from her mouth.
Blood. He’d made her bleed.
She dropped the tote from her free arm but held onto the stun gun. She pressed the trigger and jabbed it toward him but before she could make contact, he slammed his other fist down on her extended forearm. Severe pain shot up her arm and then there was nothing but numbness. He ripped the weapon out of her hand and whipped it.
Panic bubbled up her throat as she heard it skitter along the pavement in the distance.
She felt a second of relief when he finally released her wrist, but that relief was short lived when she caught movement toward her face and everything went black.
Someone was calling her name. She could barely hear it over the ringing in her ears. She forced her eyes open and stared up at the night sky. She was on her back on the hard pavement. She had a throbbing headache and her face pounded with each beat of her heart.
At least she was alive.
“Don’t move!” Bambi’s voice cut into her dazed thoughts. Reese turned her head to see the bartender squatting next to her. “I called the cops. They’re sending an ambulance, too.”
“I don’t need an ambulance.”
“The fuck you don’t.”
Reese groaned and sat up, her head spinning a little when she did so.
“Reese, don’t move. Let the EMTs check you out first.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not!” She sounded way too panicked for Reese’s liking.
“Where is he?”
“He ran when I screamed at him that I had called 911.”
“Where did he go?”
“He pushed me down and ran out of the alley. That’s all I know.”
“Where’s my phone?” Her one eye was swollen almost shut but she used her good one to search the area where she sat.
“He smashed it into pieces.”
“Fuck,” Reese whispered. She couldn’t even text Deacon to tell him Billy was in town. Not that he had any way to get around. Reese had his truck. “I have to go.”
“No... Cops are here.”
The flashing lights bounced off the office building and her, making her wince with pain. A cruiser pulled up and a few seconds later an ambulance.
Her stun gun couldn’t be found, her phone was destroyed, nothing on her was broken and she didn’t have a concussion. So, after the cops took her statement and the EMTs cleared her, they reluctantly let her drive home.
She owed Bambi a huge tip and free legal services for life. If it wasn’t for her taking out the trash and somehow hearing the struggle, Reese might have ended up more seriously injured, or even dead.
