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“Huh?”
Before she could answer, a furry flash appeared as the cat leaped out and sailed over their heads. A second later, a man stuck his head out and hollered at the feline.
Double shit.
He glanced down and his lips formed a smile that would have made the devil hesitate. “Hola, Americanos.”
Acting on instinct, Ryder reached up, curled her fingers around the man’s shirt front, and tugged. He tumbled out of the window and landed with an audible umph at her feet. He popped up and yelled for his compatriots just before her fist connected with his windpipe. The man’s eyes bulged and he dropped to his knees like an anchor tossed overboard. He flopped over to his side, knocking his head on a rock. Lights out.
“Nice job.” Devin nudged her and pointed to the window. “But there’s more work ahead.”
She whipped around. Two muscular men were staring at them from the other side of the window. Footsteps thundered through the house. A screen door creaked, then smacked against the siding. At the same time, the two guys leaped over the paint-cracked window frame.
As if they’d been doing it their whole lives, she and Devin instantly took positions back to back, guards up and fists ready.
“You take care of the assholes in the window.” A feral grin transformed Devin’s face as a group of men rounded the corner. “I got these five.”
“Don’t worry.” Using her thumb, she cracked each knuckle on her right hand, her eyes never leaving the duo in front of her. “I’ll be done with these two in plenty of time to help you clean up.”
Both men stood an inch or two shorter than her. But what they lacked in height, they more than made up for in bulk. The one with shoulder-length hair looked her up and down, his leering gaze never going higher than her tits or lower than her hips. Laughing, Long Hair nudged his freckle-faced buddy and let out a stream of fast-clipped Spanish as they stood shoulder-to-shoulder in front of her.
Ryder only recognized one word: puta.
She could do bitch. Hell, it would be rude to disappoint them. Raising her fists to protect her face, she rolled her weight to the balls of her feet then blew the ring leader a kiss.
Long Hair sauntered forward, smirking at her and leaving all the vulnerable spots north of his collarbone unprotected. That was a mistake. A big one.
She winked at him…just before landing an uppercut to his chin that snapped his head back like a rubber band. He stumbled back, but she wasn’t about to give him a chance to get his bearings. Her second punch connected with his left eye, which she followed with a high kick to the side of his head.
Wrapping her arm around Long Hair’s neck in a choke hold, she pivoted just in time to use him as a shield against Freckles’s punch. The hit landed square in Long Hair’s solar plexus. The punch rattled her teeth, so she wasn’t surprised when Long Hair’s knees gave way and he turned into a wet noodle in her arms. She shoved him forward into Freckles. Both men staggered back before Freckles shoved Limp Hair face-first into the dirt, sending up a small brown cloud.
The element of surprise gone, she had to take a different approach to neutralize Freckles. They circled each other, both ignoring the fight behind them as Devin took on the rest of the Molina’s thugs. Ryder took advantage of the slowdown in the action to bring her breathing under control and assessed her new opponent. She had an easy two inches on him, giving her the wing—and leg—span advantage, but all the pale brown spots covering the creep’s face didn’t mask the jagged knife scar on his left cheekbone or the tear tattoos under his right eye. Long Hair might be the leader, but the air around Freckles vibrated with evil intent.
All the lessons she’d learned while sparring with Cam at Paulie’s Gym came into perfect focus. Keep your guards up. Don’t stop moving. Attack first. Hit hard and hit often. Aim to disable. Then get the fuck out.
The whump of a body hitting a hard object sounded by the corner of the house, followed by a moan of agony. Freckles’s gaze flicked to the side for a split second. Long enough for her to get off two solid punches to his face. He retaliated with a solid jab to her sternum. Pain exploded in her chest and her defenses faltered. Seizing the advantage, he backhanded her across the face hard enough that her ears rang and she lost her balance, landing hard on her side. Pebbles hidden in the dirt bit into her cheek.
Alarms screamed in her head. Paulie’s mantra echoed in her head. No one wins from the floor. She had to get up now or she’d be dead. A shadow appeared and she rolled, narrowly missing the strike of a steel-toed boot aimed at her skull. Clawing up a handful of earth, she scrambled up and tossed it into Freckles’s face.
He howled and wiped the brown muck from his eyes.
Ryder kneed him in the balls, remembering to hit him as if she could kick straight through him. He cried out and doubled over. Hitting him where it counted would slow him down, but it wouldn’t take him out, so she cocked her arm and struck him directly in the nose, aiming upward. A crack sounded and blood spurted everywhere. A roundhouse kick finished him off.
Lungs heaving, she turned to find Devin facing off against two men going at him at the same time. Two others lay on the ground. A third stood off to the side, his attention wholly focused on the two-on-one. Another mistake.
Reacting on pure animal instinct, she sped toward the action, stooping low to swipe up a baseball bat-length tree limb from the ground. She had it cocked and aimed at the dickweed’s head before he even realized she was there. The violence of the impact ricocheted up her arms. He crumbled to the ground.
Devin landed a hard haymaker to one opponent’s right eye. His elbow connected with the second guy’s solar plexus. What followed was a vicious combination of hits and kicks to both men. The whole thing looked more like a caged mixed martial arts fight than a street fight. He might work in fashion, but the muscles and ink weren’t just for show—dollars to donuts, he’d earned both the old-fashioned way. Within thirty seconds, he had the men moaning on the ground.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here before more show up,” she called to him.
He nodded and sprinted to the front porch, grabbed an empty wine bottle, and smashed it against the railing. Dark red liquid splashed over the wood. Gripping the bottle neck, he trotted down the steps to the driveway and plunged the sharp edge into the trucks’ tires, flattening at least one tire on each of the four trucks.
Then they took off across the pineapple field, dodging the spiky bushes as they made quick work of the distance. They had to get to the police before the rest of the Molina family found them.
…
The local police headquarters was housed in the only two-story building on the island. The tan stone structure stood like a plain cousin amongst the brightly colored stores that lined Andol City’s downtown. And because this whole trip was FUBARed already, it seemed appropriate that the station sat right across the street from Tea Time.
