Page 100 of No Good Fight

“Already am.” She digs a phone from the pocket of her housecoat with one hand while the other clamps around my wrist. “Sit down before you fall down.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re full of shit, Alexandra Harmon. Now sit down, because don’t think I’m not calling your parents about this either. And that brother of yours. No one fucks with my building.”

I sit.

Not because she’s right.

Because my knees won’t hold me up anymore.

My phone is still on the floor near my bag, Ryder’s voice coming through the speaker over and over. I crawl two feet, grab it with shaking fingers, and press it to my ear.

“Alex.”

“I’m here.” My voice breaks on the second word, and I hate that. I hate it so much my eyes burn. “I’m here. He ran. Mrs. Vance hit him with her cane.”

There’s a sound on his end, not words. A door slamming. An engine. Someone yelling his name.

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t know.”

“Stay with Mrs. Vance. Don’t go inside. Don’t hang up.”

Mrs. Vance lowers herself beside me with a grunt and keeps her cane across her lap like she’s guarding a bridge. “Tell that boy I said he better drive careful, because I’m not scraping another one of you off the floor today.”

Ryder hears her. “Yes, ma’am.”

“He sounds smart,” she says.

“He’s not,” I whisper, and then I start crying.

Not pretty crying. Not quiet movie crying. The ugly kind that comes after your body figures out it almost got taken and doesn’t know where to put that information. Mrs. Vance doesn’t hug me. She presses her shoulder against mine, hard and bony, and stays there while the dispatcher asks questions and doors start opening down the hall while neighbors check on us then go back to minding their own business.

Remy arrives first, blaring lights and sirens as his cruiser pulls in.

Ryder arrives thirty seconds after him, which means laws of traffic were probably violated. He comes down the hall in his department hoodie and work pants, hair windblown, face so controlled that I almost don’t recognize him. His eyes find me on the floor, then my hands, my face, my throat, my arms.

He stops in front of me and crouches.

Not close enough to crowd.

Close enough that I can reach him if I want.

I do. I grab the front of his hoodie with both hands, and the control on his face cracks just enough to let me see what it’s costing him not to pull me into his chest hard enough to hide me from the entire building.

“I’m okay,” I say, which is a lie and not one at the same time.

His hands come to my elbows, gentle around the places the attacker grabbed. “I’ve got you.”

That does it. Something inside me caves, and Ryder catches me when I lean forward. His arms close around me carefully, like he’s afraid every part of me hurts, and I bury my face in his neck while Remy speaks to Mrs. Vance in a calm voice that doesn’t match the way his eyes keep cutting toward the open apartment door.

Nobody lets me go inside alone.

Remy clears it first with another officer, then Ryder steps in with me after I insist on seeing what the attacker came for. Even though I know the real answer. He wanted me.

My living room looks mostly normal, which is worse somehow than everything being destroyed. The couch is fine. My backup laptop charger is still plugged in near the wall. The mug I forgot on the counter days ago has dried remnants of coffee in the bottom.