Startled, he glanced at her—and then gave her the finger. His girlfriend—sturdy, dressed in tight clothes that would have been snug on Gwen’s smaller frame—stood up and turned around. “Bitch,” she said. “Did I hear you talking to my boyfriend?”
“Dammit,” Gwen muttered, and the woman behind the counter met her glance with alarmed understanding. Right here, right now. Someone was deliberately pushing it, all right. The feel of it washed through her, as dull as it had ever been for her, and yet somehow not touching her.
Demardel.
She faced the girlfriend squarely. She might have lifted her chin, but it wasn’t deliberate—or, probably, smart. “Brother,” she said evenly. “Cop.”
The girlfriend looked around the diner. “Don’t see no brother.”
By now the teen had lifted his head from the game, realized what he’d gotten in the middle of, and froze. The beefy guy slapped the game from his hand to clatter across the tile floor, and that’s when Gwen realized her mistake.
Too late.
These two had already been brimming with anger and resentment. Like the church group in the park, the young tough at the gas station...these two had been cruising for a target, and the hatred had found them willing hosts.
“Not in this diner!” the woman behind the counter ordered them, but her voice had gone thin behind its determination. “I have an alarm button back here and if you don’t leave, I’ll hit it!”
“Plenty of time before the cops get here,” the girlfriend said, and her fleshy features took a briefly inhuman cast—pure meanness incarnate.
With quiet and economical motion, the waitress placed a baseball bat on the counter. It sat there for only a single meaningful moment before Gwen grabbed it up—finding it short, stout and weighted at the end.
The girl brought out a switchblade. The guy looked plenty comfortable with his fork and his muscles.
And that gut instinct of hers cried danger. The teen slid quietly under the table, an impressively Dali-esque move.
“Dammit,” Gwen said again. “I didn’t know they even made switchblades that big.”
The couple marinated in the waves of hatred even as they stayed outside of her—a surge of everything cruel and mean and frightening, and a thing that had twice taken Mac down already. She didn’t dare glance for the Jeep as she retreated a step. Didn’t dare hope the woman had meant it about that alarm button. And she wondered if she turned tail and ran, just how far she’d get.
Because she didn’t think this was coincidence. She thought that man—that man—had realized his failure. Mac had come back, battled the fight he was expected to lose, and walked away in control. She thought that man had lost his patience, and she thought he meant to flush them out and take them down.
Or just plain take them down.
“Brother!” she said, and heard her own desperation. “Cop!”
But they came for her anyway, and she took a better grip on the bat—thinking of the absurdities that came with batting advice. Stay loose. Hit beyond the ball.
Adding one of her own: Make the first one count.
She’d go for the guy, not the switchblade. He could kill her with or without the knife. Yep, that was the plan, and because he was beefy and top-heavy, she’d go for the knee—because he didn’t have to be out, he only had to be on the floor and— Oh, my God what am I even thinking?
They stopped, pure surprise on twin expressions.
Gwen felt it, then—the odd trill of acknowledgment from Demardel, the sensation of space in use behind. “That had better be you,” she said, and wasn’t at all surprised when her voice came out shaky.
“He’s no cop.” The girlfriend managed to make that sound mean, too.
“I’m not her brother, either.”
But oh, he sounded dangerous—that confidence coupled with the certainty of what he could and would do. Had done. The waitress saw it, reacting to him as she had not before, as he moved up beside Gwen.
Narrow diner, bottleneck at the counter—the troublemakers were trapped, though they didn’t seem to know it.
Mac knew it. Gwen saw it on his face—worn in comparison to the night she’d met him, but honed by it. Lean and tight and fit, muscled in a way that showed through the fit of his shirt and the power of his stance. The healing abrasions on his arms, the lingering bruises on his face—they were the injuries of a man who had been where these two now only thought about going.
But in control. Who he was, and not who the blade was.
For now.
And if he still needed rest, if he needed recovery—he damned well didn’t show it.
“Put your toys away,” he told them. “Leave this place while you can. Don’t forget to leave a tip.”
The man pointed at Mac’s empty hands with a jutting chin. “You got nothing.”
“He doesn’t need to have anything!” the waitress said, her voice both angry and shaking. “I want you to leave! For years you’ve gotten good food here, and now you think you can do this? You are no longer welcome!”
Gwen sucked in a breath with a new onslaught of warning, a jangle of nerves and anger swirling together with the flow of imposed feeling. Her ears warned her; her eyes warned her. Cocky male voices, careless steps—and there they were in the doorway, crowding it—taking the space, and taking in the situation. The rest of the local bullies had arrived—and just that fast, had taken sides.
The girlfriend smiled at Gwen, a smile reeking of nastiness and satisfaction that made words unnecessary.
Mac moved. He snagged Gwen by the waist and hoisted her up to the counter, shoving aside a napkin holder and industrial sugar shaker. She released the bat to him and swung over to the other side of the counter, where there was a red alarm button attached to...
Nothing.
The woman caught her eye, shook her head...shrugged.
Not that the cops weren’t already a hundred percent occupied on this day in this town.
Or that Mac needed them.
The bat in one hand, the blade in the other—suddenly it turned saber, fast enough so Gwen had missed it and the assembled young toughs didn’t at first understand. Not the usual thing, a sword. And they’d been busy, pulling out stout switchblades...pulling out a gun.
The waitress ducked behind the counter and tried to drag Gwen down with her—but Gwen clawed her way back up, looking around for a weapon, any weapon.
Mac said, “You leave now, or someone dies.”
They snorted. Riding their overload of confidence and driven by somebody else’s goals without even knowing it. Someone else’s keen lust for violence and hatred. “Yeah,” one of them said. “You.”
Gwen couldn’t help it; the words burst out. “You don’t even know what this is about!”
“Don’t have to.” Only one of them said it, but they all meant it. And then one of them pointed at Mac, eyes narrowed in an exaggerated expression. “You,” he said. “I know you. You got in our way the other night.”
“I did more than that,” Mac said, and Gwen had no idea how his voice kept that even tone, matter-of-fact while at the same time so full of meaning. Of promise. “You know damned well I can do it again.”
“Naw,” said the guy who spoke for them all, the one with the gun. “You can’t swing that thing in here. You’re goin’ down.”
The blade must have agreed. A glimmering runnel of light and the Bowie knife replaced the sword, but Mac struck out with the short bat first—lightning fast, a one-handed sweep, crowding them and making it clear that the tight space worked against them as much as him.