“Yeah, I can see that,” he snapped, a little more harshly than he intended. “Stay out of the way, okay?” He directed his attention back to Kevin, who had set down his end of the keg.
“It isn’t your property. You got your money back. Now come on, get out of that truck.”
The boy was wavering between jumping out of the truck, which would make it appear that he was obeying Wickie, or remaining where he was, which would rapidly become untenable. Sam held his breath. If Kevin jumped out, he didn’t need Ziggy to tell him there would probably be a fight. If Kevin stayed, he had no more idea than the kid did what was going to happen next.
Neither did Kevin. Hesitating a moment, he stared down at the man he knew as Wickie and at Bethica. He started to say something, and Sam stepped out from the building, away from the truck, giving him lots of space.
Inviting him, in fact. And predictably enough, Kevin took the invitation, launching himself over the tailgate and landing with legs bent, scuffing the dirt and gravel. He picked himself up and kept coming.
Once upon a time Sam Beckett had believed that the human animal, like other animals, needed some kind of incentive to attack—some signal from an opponent, some provocation. Somewhere along the line he had lost that belief, like so many other beliefs based in scientific innocence. Human beings didn’t operate like animals. Human beings responded like . .. people.
Instead of taking the signal that the older man wasn’t offering any threat, Kevin kept coming, pausing only long enough to pick up a stretch of two-by-four and swing it in his direction. Sam ducked, farther away from the building, away from the girl, hoping she had the sense to stay out of the range of the length of wood. He risked a glance back to check, and only the whistling of air warned him to drop flat. Kevin yelled in triumph. Sam rolled, hitting him in the legs, knocking him down, and kept rolling, letting the inertia bring him back to his feet, kicking the board away from Kevin’s clawing fingers, dropping to his knees and snatching the boy’s left arm up between his shoulder blades, immobilizing him.
“Now suppose we just talk about this,” he suggested, breathing hard. “You got your money back, right?” He yanked on the arm, just hard enough to emphasize his words, careful not to do any real damage.
Kevin yelped. Sam yanked again. “Right!”
“And everything’s fair and square, right?”
He could see Kevin rolling his eye to try to look at him, and pressed the boy’s face into the ground exactly as hard and no harder than needed to keep him from lifting his head. “Everything’s fair and square, right?” he repeated. “You got your money back, and we got the keg. Right?”
Kevin squirmed. “Damn you—”
Sam leaned in on him a trifle. “Come on,” he said through
his teeth. “Is this worth a damned quarter-keg of beer?”
Kevin snarled something. Sam chose to interpret it as submission, waited one beat, and then let go, getting up and standing well clear. Kevin stirred slowly, getting first to all fours and then sitting back on his haunches, brushing the dirt out of his face with the back of his hand, not meeting Sam’s eyes. “You’re gonna be sorry for this,” he muttered. “You’re gonna pay.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Sam said under his breath. He watched as Kevin staggered to his feet, rubbing his shoulder and swinging his arm in a circle, and waited until the boy got into his own truck and pulled out, spraying gravel and broken bits of tar in a long arc across the parking lot. The red truck nearly sideswiped another car as it careened onto the main street.
“He’ll come back,” the girl behind him said. “He hates you.”
“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me at all,” Sam answered wryly, not turning around.
So he was not in the least prepared when Bethica slipped her arms around him and laid her head against the middle of his back.
“You were really brave,” the girl said, giving him a quick, tight hug. He could feel her breath through the cloth between his shoulder blades, and couldn’t help squirming at the sensation.
“Ah, no, I wouldn’t say so,” he stammered, and reached up to remove her hands, stepping out and away and around in one smooth movement.
“But you were!” Her eyes were shining, and she seemed to take no exception to his escape—possibly because he was still holding on to her hands to keep her from grabbing him again. “Wickie, you were great. Kevin’s really mean. He likes to beat on people.”
“I noticed.” Where was Al, with the handy handlink to tell him who the devil this Kevin kid was? He had to have something to do with this Leap.
Another thought occurred to him, and he looked at Bethica more carefully. “Does he—‘beat on’ you?”
Pinkness gathered under her skin, and she looked down at the ground. “No,” she said. “Kevin wouldn’t ever hit me.” She raised her head to look him in the eye. “Besides, I told you, I broke up with him.”
She was telling the truth, as far as he could tell. But he’d heard those words before from . . . from Katie, that was it. His little sister, talking about her first husband. “Chuck wouldn’t ever hit me. ”
But Chuck had, and Kevin had too, he suspected. He resolved to keep an eye on Bethica—although from the way she behaved, he figured keeping track of Bethica would be the least of his problems. He wondered if Rimae knew her niece had a crush on the bartender, and what effect it would have on Rimae’s planned entertainment for Friday nights. Wickie would be lucky to get out of this one alive.
“If he ever tries, you tell me,” he said at last. “Promise?”
She ducked her head again and nodded. “I’ll tell you,” she
