I had left my gun in the Aston Martin’s glove box. A stupid, stupid thing to do. Just as I began to turn away from the window to go back for it Olivia screamed. It was the kind of noise a person makes when there’s so much pain you can’t hold anything back. There was no time to go back for the gun. I had to get inside right away.
I tried the window, but it wouldn’t budge. I moved back to the front door. It was unlocked. That was stupid.
Once I was inside, it was easy to understand their voices. The man said, “Just tell me where it is.”
Olivia said, “I’m telling you the truth.”
I slipped along the entry hall. I couldn’t see them yet, but the hall seemed to open into the room where they were. At the end of the hall, I knelt. I heard the bumping sound again and recognized it now that I was closer. It was the sound of a fist slamming into a body. I heard Olivia grunt, and then she moaned. Moving quickly I peered around the corner and then pulled back. I thought about what I had seen.
It was just the two of them, Olivia and the man with the gold medallion around his neck. Olivia was seated in a ladder back chair. Her mouth was bleeding. He was standing with his back to me. His weapon was holstered in plain sight at his belt. The Other One was somewhere else in the apartment, probably searching for whatever they were looking for. There was the sound of another blow, another grunt, and more moaning.
“I hate this,” said Medallion. “It’s unnecessary. All you have to do is tell me where it is.”
She said, “I don’t know what you want. Please…I swear I don’t know.”
Another blow. More moaning. I needed to stop him
On a semicircular table against the far wall of the hallway stood a ceramic vase. It would have to do. I rose, slipped across the hall, and hefted it. Moving fast, I entered the living room. Medallion’s back was still toward me. I threw the vase against the wall beside him. It shattered loudly. He turned that way, and I took two steps and kicked him hard in the small of his back. He crashed into a small table beside a sofa. I was right behind him, going for his sidearm. If I could get to it before the Other One came running, there was a good chance Olivia and I would survive.
Medallion rolled, putting his body between me and his weapon and using the momentum from my kick to keep moving away. I scrambled after him. He got a hand on his pistol. I hammered a fist into his forearm. He grunted, his hand dropping away. He swung a leg up between us and kicked me hard in the chest. I turned in the nick of time. His kick glanced off, but the ribs he had cracked the last time we met felt like a hot knife in my side. I ignored the pain and piled onto him again, the two of us wrestling on the floor for the gun. He jammed the heel of one hand hard under my chin. I got a grip on the weapon. I pulled it from his holster, but he had my wrist pinned with his other hand before I could bring the gun to bear. He slammed my chin with his free hand again and again, every blow whiplashing my head back toward my shoulders. I felt a blackout coming. Then for some reason, he stopped.
I realized Olivia was there, bleeding and beating him with a table lamp. She lifted it high for another blow, and then the Other One was behind her. He hit her head with the muzzle of his M9. She dropped to the floor. He started to swing his weapon toward me, but I rolled, coming away with Medallion’s gun. We both fired at once. Incredibly, we both missed.
I sat up and aimed as the man ducked and ran. I had him lined up just as he was about to disappear around a corner, but Medallion kicked me in the hip. It threw my aim off, and my second round hit the Sheetrock a foot behind the fleeing man. Medallion kicked me again before I could aim the gun at him. The impact rocked me, and the gun flew out of my hand. I reached around, picked it up, and swung back toward him, but he was already up and out of sight in the front hallway.
The blows to my chin had left me groggy; otherwise I might have made it to the hall in time to stop him. Instead, I stood in the open front doorway, listening as the two of them ran away into the night. A few seconds later, I heard an engine roar to life, and then tires squealing. I closed the door and locked it, then went in to Olivia.
She was conscious, lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling. There was a bruise shaped like an open hand on her cheek. One eye was beginning to swell.
I knelt beside her and said, “Tell me where it hurts.”
She tried to smile. “Everywhere.”
I felt behind her head where the Other One had hit her with his sidearm. She wasn’t bleeding much.
I said, “Can you sit up?”
“Don’t want to.”
“We need to find out if you can move.”
She rolled to her side, pushed herself into a seated position, and then kept going until she was on her feet. She swayed a little, but it didn’t look as if Medallion had broken any bones. I stepped close, slipped an arm around her back, and helped her to the sofa. I eased her down and then dropped to the cushion beside her, wincing as the cracked rib sent another spike of pain across my side. I took out my cell phone.
She said “Who are you calling?”
“The police and an ambulance.”
“Could we talk about that first?”
“Okay…”
“I’ve got some, uh, some pending legal issues. They could come up if the police get involved.”
“You don’t want to report this?”
“I’d rather not, if that’s okay.”
“We need to get some medics over here. A blow like that to the head… You could have a concussion. Maybe a subdural hematoma. It could kill you or cause a stroke and leave you paralyzed. Besides, you’re an assault victim, and shots were fired.”
“I’m okay, Malcolm. Please? It would be really bad for me.”
“Want to tell me why, exactly?”
“It’s better if you don’t know, but I’ll explain if you make me.”
“I don’t want to make you do anything.”
“I’m not wanted for murder or robbery or anything like that. They don’t want to put me in jail. It’s more of a civil issue, if that helps.”
“If we don’t report this now, we can’t report it later.”
“I know.”
“Those guys could come back.”
“I don’t think so. Not after the beating you gave them. They’re probably thinking there are easier ways to rape a girl in this town.”
“You think this was about rape?”
“Sure. What else?”
“I heard the one who beat you ask where something is.”
“Did he? I guess I don’t remember.”
“What was he asking you about?”
“I don’t know. It’s all kind of blurry.”
Sitting beside her on the sofa, I thought about how close I’d come to telling her I knew who she was, to trusting that she would come clean about her relationship to Alejandra Delarosa. Now I’d almost been killed protecting her, and she wouldn’t even admit that the same guys who had tried to kill me in the Santa Ana Mountains had been trying to beat some information out of her. I told myself I was a sentimental fool.
She laid her head on my shoulder. “I can never thank you enough for what you did, Malcolm.”
I put the cell phone back in my pocket. I pushed her away gently and stood up. I walked to Medallion’s M9, which I had put down on a table to help Olivia to the sofa. I slipped it under my belt and said, “Do you have any first-aid supplies? We should look after that cut on your head. Then let’s get some ice on that eye.”
I checked her pupils for uneven dilation. I crushed some ice and put it in a plastic baggie, then told her to hold it on her eye. I sterilized the cut on the back of her head and covered it with a little gauze and surgical tape.
Olivia said she was afraid to spend the night alone. It was the one thing she had said that I believed, so I offered the spare bedroom at the guesthouse. She packed a few things, and half an hour later, we were in the Aston Martin, heading for El Nido.