I made a sound I didn’t recognize. The agony tried to drag me under, and I fought it with everything I had. Can’t go down. Not yet. Not yet.
Wayne punched again, driving hard into my kidney.
Pain detonated through my insides. I gasped, my vision graying at the edges, legs trying to give out beneath me.
Fuck. I’m in real trouble.
Gritting my teeth hard enough to crack them, I rammed my thumb into his eyeball. Digging in. Pushing hard.
He shrieked and jerked away, stumbled over Bruce’s legs, and went down to his hands and knees.
I grabbed the saucepan off the stove and swung it into the back of his head with everything I had left.
The sound it made was not good—for him, anyway.
Wayne went face-first onto the floor and sprawled across his brother. Still.
I stood over him with the broken rum bottle neck aimed at his face, heaving air in and out. Gut on fire. Legs going crazy, wobbling and shit. The kitchen smelled like rum and blood and still smelled like Vegemite.
Bruce was dead.
Wayne was breathing. Unconscious, bleeding from the back of his head, but breathing.
I shook so hard I could barely think straight. Those dumb bastards were twice my size, and they’d come armed, and it still hadn’t been enough. It turned out sixty-three years of hard living counted for something.
The pain in my hand caught up with me.
I looked down. The end of my little finger was gone from the first knuckle, and blood was sheeting down my hand and dripping onto the floor. I stared at my finger for a moment. It was like it belonged to someone else.
Then my brain caught up. DNA. My fucking blood was everywhere. I’d watched enough NCIS to know what that meant. My blood was on the floor, the cupboards, probably the damn walls. Might as well be a signed fucking confession.
I grabbed a dish towel off the oven handle and wrapped it around my hand, pulling it tight with my teeth. It soaked through almost immediately. I grabbed another and tied it over the first.
That’d have to do.
I grabbed the length of rope I’d found in the hallway closet weeks ago.
Hog-tying a man Wayne’s size was damn hard, especially one-handed, with pain tearing through my other hand. But I’d hog-tied steers heavier than him, wrists behind his back, ankles pulled up and lashed to his wrists. I added a loop around his neck, too. Tight, with no slack.
I peeled the top dishcloth off my hand and shoved it into Wayne’s mouth. My DNA was already all over this kitchen. There wasn’t any point in trying to control it now.
I stood up, breathing hard, and looked down at him. That’d hold the big bastard.
I grabbed a fresh rum bottle and downed a long swig, trying to settle my nerves and dull the agony crippling my body. After confirming Wayne was still out cold, I checked the front of the house. The street was empty. No car I didn’t recognize. I checked the yard again, front and back. Nothing. Just that damn mutt up the street still going at it.
Dumb brothers had come alone. Thought I’d be easy pickings.
Bet they don’t think that now.
I had time to have a shit and pull on a clean shirt before Wayne started coming around. Then I went to sort out my finger. Blood was pissing everywhere. I raided Willy’s medicine cabinet, which was about as useful as an empty shotgun—ancient antiseptic cream, a few Band-Aids that weren’t going to cover a damn thing, and medical tape, but no bandages. I did what I could and finished the job with the dishcloth wound tight around my hand again.
Then I sat at the kitchen table, drank my rum, and tried to ignore the blinding pain in my hand.
Wayne came to like a stampede, bellowing and thrashing against the ropes.
I sat across from him and let him burn through it.
His eyes went to Bruce on the floor before they found me, and what happened in his face was something I hadn’t bargained for. Grief. Actual grief, raw and enormous. Never thought I’d see that on one of these assholes.
