Jack’s thoughts were scattered by an explosion of pain in his chest as Grizzly Adams delivered his first blow and, he wassure, broke another one of his ribs. Christ, the man had fists like bowling balls. The impact and pain brought a broken woofof sound from him, but made Lacy shriek like they were connected and she felt the pain. He’d barely noted that when a secondblow landed, this one to the already broken jaw. It sent his face turning sharply to the right.
Stars exploding in front of his eyes, Jack had to blink to clear his vision enough to see when a door burst open at the endof the room. It flew inward, crashing against the wall with the impact of an explosion, raising dust and dirt in a cloud thatpartially obscured the figure now standing in the doorway. At first, Jack assumed “the boss” had arrived, but as the duststorm settled and he took in the silhouette framed against the streetlight pouring into the room, he realized it was a womanand a very shapely one at that. Which didn’t mean it couldn’t be the boss, he supposed, but the reactions of his captors madeit clear it wasn’t.
For one second they were all tense and silent with shock like himself, but then they each relaxed and even began to smile.
“Well, look what we have here, boys,” Grizzly Adams said, a mean grin pulling at his lips. “Someone else to play with . . .The boss said no messing with the schoolteacher, but he didn’t say anything about wild women who wander into our playing field.”
Jack blinked at the wild woman comment. He couldn’t see her well, but with the light surrounding her like a nimbus, she lookedmore like an angel to him than a wild woman. Until the men started toward her. The moment one got close his angel turned intoa demon.
God in heaven, she moved fast, Jack thought with awe as she went from completely motionless to a Tasmanian-devil-speed spinfrom which her leg shot out and caught the nearest man in the head. It was a hard hit, lifting him off his feet before heflew backward and crashed to the floor. He didn’t get up, Jack noted before shifting his attention back to the woman. Theother men were converging on her much more swiftly now. No doubt they were angry at what she’d done to their cohort and eagerto get some revenge.
Instead, what they got was pain and a close personal introduction to the same floor their unconscious friend now lay on. The woman took out all comers, one, two, and three at a time as they reached her. Jack could hardly track her, she moved so fast, and even he had to wince as he heard various bones snap and watched skulls bounce off the cracked tile floor. By the time his angel was done, nothing in the room was moving and there wasn’t a sound to be heard. Even Lacy had stopped her whining whimper.
“Breathe.” The word was a bare whisper of sound from where she stood halfway across the room, but Jack heard it and realizedhe’d been holding his breath. He sucked in a deep one now, and heard Lacy gasp in a shuddering breath of her own, but hisgaze didn’t leave the angel. Now that she was out of the beam of light coming through the open street door, he could see herbetter. Not well, but enough to note that she had long, dark hair pulled into a tight bun at the back of her head and everystitch of clothing she wore was black leather: high-heel black leather boots, skintight black leather pants, and a tight blackleather jacket that was half-open over a black leather bustier. None of which hid the killer figure it covered.
The woman was walking sin, Jack thought faintly as he watched her slide a phone out of the black leather jacket and beginto punch in numbers. Just three of them. 911 was his guess as she murmured something into the phone and then pushed a buttonand put it away.
“Help will be here soon.” The words were soft, almost a whisper, which made it hard for him to identify the trace of accenthis ears caught. Without another word, she left the building the same way she’d entered, walking out the open door. But herexit seemed to leave a vacuum in the room that sucked the air out of it. At least, that was how it seemed to Jack as the darknessbegan to close in around him. His last thought before losing consciousness was that he had to find out who his angel was.
One
“Professor Straithe is late.”
“Si, but he’s always late,” Ildaria pointed out as she pulled her notebook and a pen from her knapsack and then set the bag onthe floor next to her seat.
“Yeah, but he’s really late tonight,” Lydia responded and then added eagerly, “Five more minutes and he’ll be fifteen minuteslate. Then we can leave. Class will be canceled and we can hit a bar or something.”
Ildaria shrugged as she opened her notebook to a clean page and predicted, “He’ll walk in one minute before the fifteen-minutepoint and we’ll be stuck here. He’s done it several times this semester.”
“Yes, he has,” Lydia agreed, sounding deflated now, and then her tone turning irritated she added, “It’s a night class for cripes sake, not a morning class he has to drag his butt out of bed for, yet the man is always late.” She scowled and then muttered bitterly, “And then he’s
