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He stilled. The thud of his heart reached his consciousness, barely audible over the rush of blood in his ears.
In a neighborhood like this, Norris would prefer a knife to a gun to keep everything quiet. Using a weapon from the house left a forensic dead end and would paint the picture of a home invasion gone wrong.
Still in his half crouch, Evan cocked his head and stared across the foyer.
There were two brick-size bumps at the base of the stairs. He blinked rapidly, stimulating his night vision. As the bumps resolved, a chill tightened his skin.
A pair of shoes.
In his peripheral vision, he caught a flash of movement reflected in the black screen of the TV. He spun to aim behind him, but a blow struck him at the wrist, knocking the ARES from his grip, a shot firing wildly. He leapt back, his shirt billowing forward as the blade came low and mean, swiping at his gut.
Evan’s hip struck the kitchen table, sending up a spray of puzzle pieces. His shirt gaped wide across his solar plexus, split horizontally by the boning knife.
Norris’s head drew back slightly—a spark of recognition at Evan’s face?—and he lunged again, leading with the tip of the blade. An underhand prison-shiv stab, leaving Evan nothing to grab but the cutting edge.
Evan threw the bar of his forearm down, catching Norris’s arm just above the wrist. With his left hand, Norris hooked Evan’s neck, pulling him in toward the blade even as he kept jabbing againstthe pressure of Evan’s arm. Muscles screaming, Evan strained to hold the knife at bay, but each stab brought the tip closer until he felt it tapping his stomach, popping through the surface tension of his skin.
When Norris drew his arm back again, Evan swept his hand up Norris’s forearm to the wrist, locking it in place. The majority of knife fighters froze up here.
But not a United State Marine.
Norris dropped his grasp of Evan’s neck, whipping his hand down to meet his trapped knife hand and plucking the knife from his own clenched fingers.
Now he had it free and clear.
He jabbed it toward Evan’s side, but Evan crashed forward inside Norris’s guard, chest to chest, the blade whisking just behind his kidney. A double slam into the wall ovens, Norris’s shoulder blades striking metal, Evan dipping his chin for a headbutt, his forehead clipping Norris’s chin.
Norris grunted out a clod of air, his hat flying free, the boning knife clattering to the tile. As Evan drew back, he dug for the Strider in his cargo pants, snagging the shark fin atop the blade on the edge of his pocket so the knife snapped open.
Evan spun the Strider across the back of his hand, changing to an edge-out reverse grip, and slammed the blade through Norris’s thigh at the femoral artery.
Like many of Evan’s favorites, this fatal injury had a nickname: butcher’s thigh.
Norris wrenched away, the embedded knife coming with him.
Evan staggered back a few steps, and Norris groaned and wobbled against the stacked ovens. They took a beat, panting from the burst of adrenalized exertion. Evan’s stomach, peppered with incisions, burned. His sliced shirt flapped idiotically across his gut like sputtering lips.
They stared at each other, Norris’s dark skin even darker in the night, his eyes bright and his latex-gloved hands even brighter.
Norris looked down. The Strider stuck straight out from the upper thigh of his jeans, the tip sunk a solid two inches.
But something was wrong. He was still holding his feet.
Norris looked back up at Evan.
In the darkness his grin appeared, a Cheshire Cat float.
Reaching down, Norris gripped the handle of the Strider and tugged it upward.
The black-oxide blade sliced through the denim like butter.
The knife cut a vertical zipper through the pocket and emerged. It had impaled a fat wad of hundred-dollar bills folded once and rubber-banded.
Laughing, Norris held the knife up and wagged the cash on its end like a giant lollipop. “Now, ain’t that a—”
Evan stuttered-stepped into ayeop chagiside kick, lower body pivoting sideways around his left hip, leg chambered, ankle high, toes pulled back out of the way and angled slightly down. Since he wore only a sock, he led not with the edge of his foot but with the heel.
His foot struck the butt of the Strider on the rise, the knife plowing into Norris’s chest. There was a crackle of yielding bone, the wadded cash now rammed all the way down to the guard where blade met handle.
