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“Hey!” The asshole spun away from the kid. “What the fuck was that?”
“What?” the skinny guy asked. “The hell are you going on about, dipweed?”
Barry squinted into the sunlight, staring toward my patch of forest. He was looking about forty degrees in the wrong direction, although even if he had looked my way, I doubted he’d have made me out in the shadows.
I bit down a laugh. If I thought he looked stupid before, the flabby douchebag looked even more like a buffoon now.
“I don’t know,” Barry sputtered. “Somethinghitme.” He touched his cheek.
And it’s Lou Cordova with the pitch. She lines up her shot… and there it is! Strike!
I nailed the skinny bastard with the second rock, right in the temple. His hands flew up to his face.
I whipped the last two rocks in quick succession, braining Barry in the side of the head and scraping the skinny guy’s chin. With a yelp and an angry shout, they barged toward the trees.
I ducked behind the nearest trunk, but not before I spotted the kid sprinting to safety while they were distracted. Mission accomplished.
“Who the fuck is throwing shit at us?” Barry bellowed.
I didn’t stick around to answer him. Hightailing it through the trees, I’d vanished over the top of the hill before I even heard their footsteps crunch into the layer of pine needles on the forest floor.
Emerging on the beach side, I slowed to a casual stroll and made my way to my car in the small parking lot. When I reached it, I glanced over my shoulder.
The two would-be gangsters were just marching out of the trees, scowling but with no real target to direct their anger at.
I hid a smirk as I slid into the driver’s seat of my car. They’d never know who’d interrupted their beatdown.
But as I started the ignition, my good humor faded.
I’d interrupted them for now. Soon enough they’d be hassling that kid—and who knew how many other people in town—all over again.
But my next steps no longer felt like a question. Something was stirring within me, something righteous and full of fury.
I hadto get these guys out of here. They were a threat to me and to everyone in this town, and I’d be damned if I was going to stand back and watch them take over the place while I was the only one around remotely prepared to do battle.
I’d made my decision: I was going tofuckwith them.These guys were clearly brainless, leaderless idiots, nobodies who were just making a buck off the innocent locals.
It hadn’t been hard to screw with the two goons here. There shouldn’t be any need to resort to much violence. My mind would be enough to do this gang in.
I rolled my shoulders and thought of the tattoo stretched across my back.
Maybe Niko was right—maybe I wasexactlywhat he had called me.
An angel. An avenging one.
EIGHT
Niko
Magic.
That’s what I was watching. There was no other word for it.
My two trainees could create something miraculous on the ice, even if they weren’t aware of it yet. My job was to make them see it themselves.
I followed them with my eyes, taking in every dip of their shoulders and every subtle movement of their limbs. They’d only gone through two practices with a focus on pairs, but their synchronization was already impressive.
I wasn’t a total stranger to pairs skating. I’d done some as a teen before it’d become clear I was better off carving a path on my own, and after I’d made the suggestion, I’d gotten in touch with an old friend back in Japan who was more experienced in that area and had offered some tips. So I thought I’d been guiding them reasonably well as they spun and swayed across the rink.
