Born Wild

“Boo!” one of the patrons shouted. “No contemporary country music allowed on Sundays!”

“Can it, Buzzard!” Delilah yelled from behind the bar, throwing an olive at a bearded man Eve recognized from the two previous times she’d been in Red Delilah’s. Idly, she wondered if the old, potbellied biker actually lived there. Maybe he had a sleeping bag somewhere in the back? But then Eric Church started singing about young love and loss, and she closed her eyes, letting the familiar lyrics of “Springsteen” wash over her, wallowing—yes, wallowing; a girl was allowed to do that on occasion—in her own regret.

A memory of Billy lying with his head in her lap on a patchwork quilt under a tree in Grant Park, listening as she read from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, stumbled through her slightly sluggish, strawberry daiquiri-addled brain. He’d been idly twirling a yellow flower—A dandelion? She couldn’t recall precisely—between his thumb and forefinger. And when she glanced down at him, down into his handsome face dappled with the sunlight spilling in through the leaves, she expected to find his warm, laughing eyes closed. But his gaze hadn’t been shuttered by his lids and long, dark lashes. Just the opposite, in fact. He’d been looking right at her, and the expression on his face? Oh, sweet Lord, it’d made her heart jump in her chest. Okay, not jump. Leap! Because it was the first time she’d ever seen love in a man’s eyes. And not those pale-by-comparison kinds of loves like puppy or platonic. Heck no. It was romantic love. And oh, it’d frightened her almost as much as it’d delighted her…

Wistfully swaying beside the jukebox, lost in the bittersweet memory, she was completely caught off-guard and more than a little stunned—her eyes snapping wide—when the front door flew open with a bang. Of course, even more shocking than the unexpected interruption was the man in baggy jeans, gold chains, and a ski mask who immediately charged inside.

“Hands in the air!” he yelled, holding a nickel-plated pistol out in front of him gangster-style, on its side, just as a second, similarly attired gunman stepped over the threshold.

Of course, there’s another gunman, she thought with distaste, her mind working a little slowly due to either the shock or the second daiquiri or, more likely, both. Like nuns, guys like these always travel in pairs.

Only this duo was far from anything holy…

The second thought to stumble through her sluggish brain was, geez, I just can’t catch a break, can I? The third thought was he’s holding that gun all wrong. And the fourth thought, the most appropriate thought—Hello! Finally, the right synapses were firing—was oh, crap! But before she could form a fifth thought, the unmistakable chick-schnick of a shotgun being wracked assaulted her ears.

“You picked the wrong place to rob, my friends,” Delilah growled, and Eve’s eyes flashed toward the bar. The redheaded proprietress was standing there looking, for all intents and purposes, like a playboy model—except for the teensy, tiny fact that she had a sawed-off shotgun pressed tightly against her shoulder, and a deadly challenge gleaming in her green eyes. “And in case you’re too stupid to understand ballistics, let me give you a lesson.” Her voice was tough and strident, not belying an ounce of the fear Eve knew she had to be feeling. “The chances of me tearing you to shreds with this here scatter-gun are much higher than you hitting me with one of those nine millimeter slugs.”

The masked men seemed to hesitate, then the one closest to the open door turned to look directly at Eve.

“There she is,” he said. And before she could begin to contemplate what on God’s green Earth he could possibly mean by that, he raised a gun toward her head.

Yep. Gun. Raised. Toward. Her. Head…

Everything that happened next was a blur, because her self-defense training kicked in and she instinctively dove for the man’s ankles. Knocking him off balance, he crashed onto her back, crushing her and forcing all the air from her lungs like she’d been punched in the sternum.

“Uhhhhh,” she gasped, raking in much-needed air and the not-so-much-needed aromas of heavy cologne and weed. Fear sizzled along each of her nerve-endings until she was the human version of a live wire, and it combined with the hot burst of adrenaline to give her more strength than she would have under normal circumstances. When she pushed up from the floor, she was able to partially dislodge her assailant. And then the fight was on!

“Bitch!” he yelled as they became a tangled mess of grappling arms and kicking legs, each wrestling for control of the weapon with a killing intensity. It seemed like hours passed as they strained and struggled, heaved and bucked. But in reality, it was probably only seconds. Then, Eve misjudged which way the gunman was moving, and he was able to use her lapse along with his superior strength to pin her to the floor. His black eyes bored into her from the holes in his ski mask, promising death.

If you think I’m done, her burning eyes screamed up at him, then you’re dead wrong! I’m not going down without a fight, by God!

She wrapped both fists around the wrist of his gun hand, grunting and snarling while simultaneously kicking and flailing to try to heave him off her. But to her utter horror, with both of her hands occupied with the task of preventing the masked man from pointing that Smith and Wesson at her head, there was nothing to stop him from reaching over with his free hand to enclose her throat in a meaty grip. Which was exactly what he did.

Instantly her brain buzzed from lack of oxygen, and darkness edged into her vision.

Oh, no! Help me, Lord, I’m losing it!

Her vision tunneled, and she couldn’t seem to form a whole thought. As her world dimmed, she vaguely registered the boom of a shotgun and the wall next to the front door exploding in a shower of splinters.

Bam! The first gunman returned fire, and in a tiny corner of Eve’s mind she recognized the sound of bottles breaking.

Miraculously, the gunplay was enough to distract her attacker, and with only the most instinctual portion of her brain working, she saw an opportunity. Now! Twisting the gun from her opponent’s hand, she wanted to yell in triumph when the warm metal settled into her fist. But the sweat on her palms, and the fact that there was a two-hundred-pound man strangling her, precluded any whoop of victory and had the weapon slipping from her grip.

It fell to the wooden slats of the floor with a loud thump. The masked man released her throat to make a grab for it, and she barely had enough time to drag in a wheezing breath that instantly snapped the world into focus before she was wholly occupied in the mad scuffle and scramble to retrieve the dropped pistol. She twisted out from under her attacker, latching onto his wrists. But in the process she inadvertently kicked the gun beneath the happily playing jukebox.

Damnit!

Boom! Another blast of the shotgun, this time aimed directly above her assailant’s head. The top of the jukebox shattered, the music coming to a record-scratching halt, and a shower of colorful glass rained down on them like sharp, stinging confetti. In the ear-ringing silence that followed, her attacker, now relieved of his weapon, must’ve figured Delilah was right about that lesson in ballistics. Because he scrambled to his feet and dove for the open door.

Eve flipped onto her stomach in time to see his Nikes disappear over the threshold.

Delilah had just saved her life…

But for how long?

Her head weighed a hundred pounds, but she still managed to lift it, fully expecting that when she did she’d be staring down the barrel of the first gunman’s weapon, but—

Boom! A third blast from the shotgun.

This time, Delilah caught a piece of the first masked man’s leg, shredding his jeans and the flesh beneath. He howled in agony, grabbing at the wound with one hand and squeezing the trigger of his pistol with the other. Bullets exploded from the gun in quick, ear-shattering succession as the gangster wildly laid down covering fire, his limping retreat toward the door leaving a shower of blood droplets in his wake. A light fixture burst with a crash. The red vinyl cushion on an empty booth belched up a cloud of cotton stuffing after absorbing a round.