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He went down on one knee with a grunt. Izzy answered his grunt with a snort of derision. “I don’t think—” she said. But she didn’t really have time to sort out what she thought because Caleb was on him. He had the scrawny, scruffy man by the back of the neck. Caleb hauled him up and hurled him into the wall beside her. There was a thud as the man’s face cracked the cheap plaster. He was about to go down a second time when Caleb grabbed him again and swung him backwards, his fist connecting with the man’s already bruised face. Unlike Izzy’s clean, hard, shot to the eye, Caleb’s large fist smashed dead center, sending a spray of blood outward from all angles. She gasped as she heard the crunch of bone. The tweaker finally did fall and Caleb with him. The larger man straddled the broken, bleeding bastard and began pummeling him mercilessly.
Izzy held her breath while she waited for the beating to stop. When it didn’t, she shot forward, hopping over the meth-head’s flailing legs, and grabbed Caleb by the upper arm. “Hey!” she said. Caleb’s fists kept raining down on the screeching man. He didn’t seem to have heard her. She leaned down and used both hands to grab him by the shoulders. “HEY!” she yelled loudly. “He’s had enough, Caleb!”
She had no time to say anything more. Caleb surged up, knocking her backward. Before she could tumble onto her ass, it was his hands on her shoulders. He pushed her back until she was once more pressed against the motel room wall. But unlike before, now it was Caleb’s hand at her throat.
Chapter 15
Caleb was nearly out of breath, though not from the exertion of the beating he’d just meted out. The asshole moaned and groaned behind him, but Caleb barely spared him a thought. Instead he was entirely focused on Izzy, who herself was almost out of breath and he could feel the frenetic throb of her pulse as his fingers brushed her throat.
There was no redness, no swelling, and no darkening discoloration of an impending bruise. The asshole hadn’t managed to get a tight enough grip on her. His fingertips skimmed lightly over her pale and unmarked skin, assuring himself one final time that she was okay. Then his eyes skipped to her face.
A lock of her dark hair had loosed itself from her ponytail and fell over her eye. He carefully swept it back. Here she did have a bruise. Not a nasty one; the impact hadn’t split her skin, but it was already turning dark. There was virtually no swelling, though, and the eye itself seemed undamaged.
“Caleb,” she said softly. If he hadn’t been so close to her, he might not have heard her over the harsh complaints of the man on the floor. “Caleb?” she repeated and he blinked, not voicing an acknowledgment but meeting her gaze with his own.
“Are you hurt?” he asked. She had no visible signs of a concussion, but she could be dizzy, disoriented—sometimes it came on slowly.
She shook her head. “No,” she said in a quiet but strong voice. “I’m okay.” She glanced over his shoulder. “But he’s not. Caleb, he needs to be checked out.”
Finally reminded that a scumbag lay writhing on the floor behind him, Caleb sneered in disgust. Reluctantly, he stepped away from Izzy and turned to assess the man.
“When patrol gets here, they’ll clean him up,” he declared.
“Caleb,” she replied, but she stilled at the sound of sirens edging closer.
Caleb spotted his phone on the floor and he crossed the room to retrieve it. He’d identified himself as off-duty PD when he’d called in and dropped the phone when Izzy had been attacked. The dispatcher must have heard the resulting struggle and relayed it to the patrolmen en route.
He snatched up the phone and assured the dispatcher that the situation was now under control as he quickly headed toward the open door. One cruiser screeched to a halt several feet away, in the middle of the lot, another was hot on its tail. Caleb held up his hands in a placating gesture. He wished he still had his badge on him just in case he didn’t recognize the responding officers. Getting shot by some trigger-happy rookie wasn’t high on his to-do list today.
As the driver’s side door of the first car opened, Caleb tried and failed to place the patrolman who exited the vehicle. He wasn’t young, thankfully, but he looked agitated enough under the circumstances.
“I’m Officer Barnes,” Caleb told him, turning the face of his cell phone outward so the man could not mistake it for a gun. “There are two civilians still in the room. One’s a female vic,” he said, indicating the open door behind him. “My badge number is—”
