separated a couple of notes from the fold with my fingers and pulled my hand out. I held the money out to the side of me, wanting to make him work for it.
The skinny kid smiled unpleasantly and nodded to his companion, who came forwards just far enough to grab the money, then retreated again to check his booty. It was obviously a system they’d used before.
“It’s just a coupla twenties,” he said, disgusted.
The skinny kid’s smile became a sneer.
“What kinda fool d’you take me for?” he spat. He took a couple of steps forward, rolling the knife almost delicately between his fingertips so the blade flashed in the light. “Gimme the rest.”
“No,” I said.
He stopped. For a moment the only noise was the steady crash of the waves on the shoreline and the crackle of the fire behind me.
Trey had moved up to my right shoulder but I was under no illusions that he was about to act as my wing man if it came down to it. His body was rigid, jaw clenched. When our eyes met he let his slide meaningfully down towards my back where the SIG was lying under my shirt. I gave the briefest shake of my head and turned back to the kid with the knife.
I sighed. “Look,” I said. “I’ve had a very shitty day. I’m tired. You’ve just made twenty dollars each for ten seconds’ work. Be smart and quit while you’re ahead.”
He bared his teeth. “Wise-ass, huh? Always heard you English chicks didn’t put up much of a fight,” he said and something else was gleaming in his eyes now. “Always heard as how it was like fucking a corpse. Looks like we’ve found ourselves a fighter, huh?”
My heart accelerated, starting to flood my system with oxygenated blood. I could hear the echo of it thundering in my ears. “You have no idea,” I murmured.
He came at me fast then, leading with the blade. I went to meet him, taking a couple of quick steps forwards to keep him away from Trey. I blocked his knife hand with my left forearm and snaked my arm around his so his wrist was locked up under my armpit.
He jerked at his trapped arm and when he couldn’t immediately free it he tried to launch a wild left-hand punch instead. I tightened my grip, jamming my fist up under his elbow to force the joint straight beyond its limit. He gave a surprised grunt, the pain preventing him from turning far enough towards me for the blow to connect. I steadied him for a moment, then turned my body in towards his and jerked my knee up into his groin, quick and hard. The fight was over.
The skinny kid’s eyes bulged as his legs gave way and he began to gag. I loosened up enough to let him fall to his knees, putting some twist onto his right hand as he went down to prise the knife out of his fingers.
The fat kid hadn’t moved an inch while all this had gone on. He just stood there with his mouth hanging open.
“Beat it,” I told him.
For a moment he didn’t move. I hefted the knife one-handed, tossed it up and caught it by the blade, then brought my hand back like I was a circus knife thrower going for the big finale.
The fat kid didn’t wait to see how good my aim was. He gave a kind of startled squeak, hurled the twenty- dollar notes down onto the sand, and then he turned and ran.
I let go of the skinny kid’s arm and stepped away from him, but I needn’t have worried he was about to launch a counterattack. He just took it back and, very carefully, tucked both hands between his legs, cradling himself. His breath came quick and shallow, almost a pant, and his eyes were wet with tears.
I leaned down, keeping my tone conversational. “Now, I wouldn’t like you to kid yourself that I’ve just been lucky and caught you off guard, because we both know that isn’t true, don’t we?”
He managed a weak nod. The action shook loose a couple of tears, which tracked down the sides of his nose and dripped to the ground.
“Good,” I said, still calm and pleasant. “So, we’re going to leave now and you’re going to crawl back to whatever hole you came out of and you’re going to stay there, aren’t you?”
Another feeble nod.
“Good boy,” I said encouragingly. I held the captured knife up in front of his face and watched the fear sharpen into focus as it caught his attention. “Because if you don’t, next time we meet I’m not just going to kick you in the bollocks, I’m going to cut them off, is that clear?”
“Y-yeah!” he yelped.
I straightened up, jerking my head to Trey. He picked up the fallen money and the towel I’d dropped, then stood looking down at the skinny kid for a moment, his face expressionless.
“OK, let’s go,” I said gently. We carried on along the beach, leaving our would-be robber behind us, crying quietly into the sand.
We kept walking, away from the campfire and the brightness of the big hotels and towards what looked like a residential area. Trey was quiet as we trudged along. I left him to work out what it was he wanted to say.
My heartrate was slowing to its normal level, the tension going out of my body now.
After I’d left the army I’d taught self-defence classes to women. Dealing with a situation like the one presented by the skinny kid and his mate was exactly the kind of thing I’d covered, week in and week out, for the best part of four years. There was no way he could have known that, so he’d woefully underestimated me.
Sometimes that was annoying, being mistaken for less than I was, but at others I had to admit that it came in very handy.
“Why didn’t you shoot him?” Trey asked suddenly.
“What?”
“You had a gun,” Trey said, sounding petulant, as though I’d somehow cheated, “so why didn’t you just, like, shoot him?”
“I’ve already shot my quota of people for today,” I said, flippant.
I heard his breath huff out.
“Look, Trey, it’s not as simple as that,” I said. “What if he’d had a gun, too? Suddenly we’re in the middle of another shoot-out. If you pull a gun, you have to be prepared to use it. I wasn’t – not against a couple of chancers like those two. Besides anything else, I don’t have the ammo to spare. And if I’d just threatened them with the gun I’m sure they would have remembered us. This way, well, I don’t think matey-boy’s going to be in a hurry to go round telling anyone he’s just had his arse kicked by a girl, do you?”
“No, I guess not,” Trey said. A slow smile spread across his face as the truth of it dawned on him. “‘Sides, man, it wasn’t his ass you kicked.”
***
We found a secluded space by the side of a pair of weather beaten wooden steps that led up into the dunes and that’s where we spread out our beach towels for the night. I’d seen the amount of tyre tracks all over the place and I didn’t want to put us somewhere we were likely to be run down in our sleep.
Trey rolled himself up in his towel and went out like he’d taken a punch, leaving me to lie awake listening to the relentless sea and the noises of the insects clicking incessantly into the night, and to think about the fact that I’d killed a man.
Now the immediate dangers were past, that inescapable fact surfaced again. I replayed it over and over. Saw in minute detail the Buick slewing to a stop, the guy in the passenger seat putting his left hand on the A pillar to pull himself out of the car, the gun levelling in his right, the clenched concentration in his face.
I tried to remember my own emotions, to put my actions down to extreme fear, or anger. Anything but the cold calm deliberation with which I’d shot him. In the end I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t blame heat for what I’d done because, in truth, beyond a determination not to let them get to us first, I hadn’t felt anything at all.
Nothing.
So what did that make me?
Maybe it was partly down to my familiarity with guns. I associated them with sport, with accuracy and skill more than death.
I’d been a first-class shot in the army, selected by my training instructors for the shooting teams in very short order. The first Skill At Arms meeting I’d done they’d brought me out almost as their secret weapon, gleeful as the scores came in for this unknown WRAC private. If I didn’t know better I’d almost say that most of the senior NCOs
