AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Goodnight, hon!”
Rose waved merrily, distracting me for a second as she disappeared from the break room. Somehow I waved feebly back. The machine punched my card. The harsh, mechanical jolt of its interior mechanism made me wince.
Ugh.
The past twenty-four hours had been among the worst of my life. I felt like I’d been hit by a train, then picked up and forced to work on that train for the next twelve hours. Considering the size of the man who’d hit me, the analogy wasn’t far off.
“Fletcher!”
I turned slowly at the sound of my last name. The restaurant manager’s scowl looked the same as it did a shift and a half ago.
“Don’t be late tomorrow.”
I nodded to indicate I understood, then slunk through the doors and into the fresh outside air. I’d be back soon enough, and hopefully with a little more sleep.
But there was a hell of a lot to do before any of that could happen.
Damn straight.
Steeling myself against the bone-weary tiredness, I made the bus just before the doors closed. Thankfully it was mostly empty. I sank into a seat two-thirds of the way down, letting my head loll back and my eyes close as the air-brakes hissed and the vehicle started up again.
He was tall — even taller than my attacker.
A vision faded into view. It appeared before me with an almost uncanny quality that provided stark, unquestionable detail.
He was dark-haired, too,I thought to myself. And he had a beard. A full beard with a goatee.
I didn’t have many gifts, that was for sure. But my memory was damn near photographic. And apparently that was rare.
He was handsome, also,I thought pleasantly.Damn-near gorgeous.
For a moment I fixated on the man’s face, all full-lipped and angular with a strong, masculine jaw. His eyes had been a beautiful light brown. The color of powdered cocoa. Even in the darkness of the alley I could see them flashing in my mind.
And he was dangerous. Borderline deadly.
Again and again I replayed the fight, which I’d witnessed only groggily from my knees. Each time I picked up more detail. Each time I hit the rewind button of my mind’s eye, I saw more and more of the events as they unfolded.
He had extensive training. Military, maybe. Or even—
My eyes flew abruptly open. An image of his shirt appeared, white lettering on black, and the words scrawled across it. I’d only seen it for a split-second, when he took his jacket off. But a split-second was all I needed.
Elite Mixed-Martial Arts
The bus took a gentle bounce as the driver turned onto the next block. I whipped out my phone, punched in the name, and came up with hundreds of hits.
Shit.
I needed more. And the only way to get it was to close my eyes again.
Over and over I replayed last night’s events in my mind. I could hear the deep, gruff voice that had stopped my beating. I could see the measured, confident way he carried himself into the alley. His strikes were short, quick, devastating. He’d taken out three men in the span of twenty seconds. He’d broken bones and collapsed windpipes…
His arm.
In reaching for me, his forearm had extended beyond the sleeve of his leather jacket. And on the inside of that forearm…
A tattoo!
It took a little longer for the image to coalesce on the canvas of my mind. My concentration was broken first by the hiss of more air-brakes, then by a wet, unhealthy-sounding cough from one of the people seated behind me. Ireallyneeded my own car again!
