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A couple of guys who looked to be in their twenties were pacing in and out of view in a small clearing beyond the base of the hill. One of them was the cocky guy I’d seen badgering the toy store owner.
They were from that small-time gang Rafael had identified.
That would have been enough to raise my hackles on its own, but a third figure knelt on the ground between them. A teenaged boy, I saw—he couldn’t have been more than sixteen from the peek I got at his smooth face, still a tad soft around the edges.
One of the goons lunged at him and smacked him across the head. The kid cowered and gasped in pain.
My body went rigid. This was so many levels of not okay that I wanted to scream.
“So what I’m hearing is that you don’t have the money,” one of the goons said. “Is that what I’m getting from you?”
The boy cringed. He let out another yelp when the prick behind him cuffed him in the head.
“I—I have some of it,” he stammered. “The guys at school, they just wanted to try the stuff! T—they didn’t have a lot of money, so —”
“So you let ‘em have our product for free?” the first man asked. He tutted to himself. “I’m afraid that’s not how we work around here. Tell him how we work around here, Barry.”
Barry, the bigger goon by a good twenty or thirty pounds, pulled back his fist and slammed it into the kid’s ribs. The highschooler slumped onto his side with a choked noise.
They’d tried to bring the kid on—to peddle drugs for them, probably, based on their conversation and the business endeavors Rafael had mentioned. Stupid to turn to an inexperienced teen for that anyway.
It was their idiotic mistake, and they were making him pay for it.
My gut churned. I hated this,hatedit.
It was far too easy to picture the faces of my mother’s lackeys in these assholes’ overconfident and cocky grins. It was like I’d run all the way across the continent for nothing. Nothing at all.
“I have some of the money.” The high schooler coughed, choking out a string of phlegm that he hastily wiped away. “I can get the rest, I swear! J—just please give me a little time. Just a few more days!”
I peered from Barry to his fellow thug. They looked momentarily pensive, as though they were considering the kid’s offer.
What should I be hoping for? The only thing I could ask from the universe was for two asteroids to come down and squash these two assholes, but of course, I couldn’t count on killer space rocks.
Iwas here… but I really shouldn’t draw attention to myself. If I burst into the clearing and gave the two goons a much-deserved ass-kicking, the very next thing I’d have to do was leave town.
The gang would still be here, just even more pissed off than before. And if Mom ever got wind of a petite young Latina woman who’d started handing wannabe gangsters their asses, she’d tear Hobb Creek apart looking for me even if I’d already left.
If I was going to do anything about these pricks, I had to plan it carefully. I had to make sure they were completely done and that they never realized who’d hit them.
“I don’t know, Barry,” the mouthy guy said. “Do you think we can trust this kid? I mean, he’s already screwed us over once before…”
The high school kid’s eyes zipped left and right as the thugs stalked around him. I braced my hand against the rough bark of the tree trunk, and conviction hardened in my chest.
I wasn’t going to watch these goons kill this kid in front of me. Low profile or no, there were some places I drew the line.
If Rafael was shadowing me from afar like usual, he’d just have to bite his tongue and deal with my decision.
I had my trusty knife in my purse, but it wasn’t going to do me any good at a distance. My gaze swept over the ground for something, anything, I could use.
There. I leapt forward a couple of steps and snatched a rock the size of my palm off the ground. Then another, and another, and another.
Tucking the extras under my arm, I eased closer through the trees. The goons were looming over the kid again.
One of them had gotten out a switchblade. Oh, hell no, there was no way I was letting this continue.
Before either of them could make any further threats or use that knife, I hurled the first rock from my hand.
It collided with Barry’s flabby cheek, striking him directly below the eye.
