Benji was out of the car with a baseball bat in his hand.
Nope, that was my line. I wasn’t going to die here today.
I grabbed the waitress by her uniform and tried to lift her and move her toward the back door and the relative safety of more people.
She curled in tighter around her trash bag.
Shit.
“Help,” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Help!” And knowing that the word help rarely got people involved, I added, “Fire! The diner’s on fire!”
The bat was lifted over Benji’s shoulder. He was ready to knock one out of the ballpark.
I ducked under the blow, pushing the waitress's head down further.
Benji shifted tactics. He swung the bat over his head and was going to cudgel me with it.
It was the move I had anticipated.
What I had processed, and Benji had not, was that his buddy, Lizard, was behind me, his hands splayed on the black top as he tried to rise to the fight.
I spun, dove, and rolled over Lizard. It hurt like hell. But it was nothing compared to the excruciating pain that Benji inflicted on his buddy as that bat crashed against Lizard’s spine.
The wood made a sickening thwack.
Lizard dropped unconscious. Possibly dead.
That had been a vicious blow aimed at me.
Benji didn’t seem to register that he’d probably paralyzed his friend. Benji was hard focused on me.
The waitress laid in the path to the door on my left.
The dumpster was to my right.
Two men on the ground and an enraged Benji in front of me.
Their car, with the engine still coughing and choking, cut off my only line of escape.
I scrambled in the only direction that would keep the waitress safe, and me too. I planted my foot on the bumper. Praying that the rust could hold my weight, I scrambled up the hood of the car to the roof.
“Get down off there,” Benji yelled.
“Help!” I screamed.
“Get down off my goddamned car.”
“Help!”
Suddenly more engine roars, more tire squeals. This time it was the good guys. Iniquus had sent the calvary, and the D.C. P.D. were screeching their breaks as they came to a halt.
The waitress had finally gotten herself together. Dropping the garbage bags behind her, she pulled open the back door and slung herself inside.
Huh. Well, you’re welcome, I guess.
I had my India Alexis Sobado ID on me.
Did I just blow my op?
Chapter Seven
I slid from the car’s roof, keeping the vehicle between the officers and me.
Benji scrambled to get back in the driver’s seat, but the officers popped their doors, pulled their weapons, and shouted, “Hands where I can see them.”
I didn’t want to be involved in everything that would happen next. I didn’t want to give them my ID, or a statement, or my contact information when I’d be summoned to court to testify.
None of it.
I glanced around me and focused on the mud-splattered cement block wall behind me, painted in cheap “whatever’s in that there bucket” tan paint.
Shadow walking with prep time and an even countenance was one thing. But my adrenaline was a guizer.
My heart was pumping so hard I could almost hear the squeeze and release.
When I was younger and working with Master Wang on this skill, he made me sprint until I could hardly breathe, then I was supposed to disappear.
We would have sparring matches that put me on the mat, gasping in pain and exhaustion, and he’d command me to shadow walk. And I did.
This wasn’t exactly like riding a bicycle.
This was a fine-tuned skill that had required me to put biofeedback sensors on my fingers and learn to drop my pulse and respiration rates after extreme exertion just like the Olympic biathlon folks did when they had to cross country ski to their mark, unstrap their rifle and shoot a bull’s eye, before taking off for their next target.
I was sorely out of practice.
Still, I tried.
Standing against the wall, I projected the colors out in front of me like a mask. I slowed my inhale, moving my trembling hands behind my back. Any movement, any movement at all, would pull the human eye in my direction—a holdover from our caveman days when wild animals were our greatest threats.
In the whole “fight or flight” limbic response, it was the reason why we also developed “freeze.”
We self-paralyze when our survival-brain thinks stillness might protect us best.
Please, don’t let me freeze up here and now. I begged my brain.
Luckily for me, Blue was enraged, pinning attention to him. The cops didn’t have time to do but the most cursory scans of the environment.
He didn’t get to kidnap the girl, didn’t get to steal her tips, had a broken nose, broken kneecap—I was betting—and from the way he was clutching his chest, I’d say I broke a couple of his ribs as well.
Just desserts.
The officers traced a circuit into the scene with tiny shifts of their heads. Using their peripheral vision, they took in their partners’ actions and reactions, making sure they weren’t advancing toward the three bleeding, angry men on their own.
From what they could see, there were no women involved.
If I had arrived on the scene, I would surmise that these guys had gone after each other. Three good ol’ boys, friends, who had a falling out, “That’s all it was, officer. Nah, I don’t want to press charges,” I could imagine them saying.
This was a quandary.
What should I do?
If they were just going to get off with a slap on the wrist, they might try this same thing later with another woman. If I stepped forward and told them what
