“It’s like the damn mob and you know it,” he says. “You don’t get out. Not alive.”
A commotion sounds behind us and then a woman shouts, “Stop!”
Grimacing, I turn around to find a guy groping her. I scowl. “Hey, man, stop that shit.”
“Fuck you!” the guy yells back at me and his three big buddies all turn in our direction.
The first guy grabs the girl’s breast, right in front of me, a dare for me to come stop him.
She punches him and tells him to stop. I don’t react and neither does Adam. Not just yet.
“Stop that shit!” the bartender yells at the man. “Or I’ll call the damn police.”
The woman screams at the man and I don’t even have to turn to look at him. I stand up and take another drink directly from the bottle. “Call them,” I say. “I’ll hold down the fort until they get here.”
“Oh hell, here we go,” Adam murmurs, pushing to his feet and dropping a black American Express on the bar, shoving it at the bartender. “Charge the damage to that card.”
The bartender’s eyes go wide and I laugh. “Don’t worry. We won’t kill them. We’ll just make them look stupid, but you have a job, too. Get the girl out of here.” I twist around and charge toward the men lurking and waiting on us, only to have a big football player bastard charge toward me, a pool stick in his hand. Oh yeah. Bring. It. On.
I step into him and just that fast, the stick is in my hand, not his. I break it in half and the dude lunges at me. He ends up under my foot and flat on his stomach. The woman runs past me while another asshole charges in my direction. Adam intercepts, grabbing him and in about thirty seconds he’s taken the asshole and hung him by his belt loop on one of a number of hooks on the wall. That’s about when the entire bar of a good fifteen patrons breaks into war. It’s me and Adam against them all and I have some fun, but these boys are not warriors. They’re boy scouts with wedgies up their arses. They’re no challenge, and too soon to see that change, sirens screech and police charge into the bar. Tequila roughens up my mind but not enough to make me stupid. I don’t even think about fighting the men in blue. I turn and let one of them cuff me. I got no beef with the cops, but they damn well should with me.
Adam steps to my side and offers the same cop his hands as well. “Happy, man?” he asks me while metal clamps his wrists.
“Not even close to happy,” I assure him. “We didn’t finish that bottle.”
The bartender steps in front of us and motions to the cop. “These two were saving a woman those men were manhandling. And they even paid for the damage to the place in advance.”
“They’re still coming with us,” the cop, a thirty-something redheaded linebacker of a dude, crankily snaps before he points toward the door. “Both of you walk.”
I stumble forward, perhaps feeling a bit of that tequila, but I’m not its bitch. It’s my bitch. “We need that bottle on the bar,” I say, eyeing the officer over my shoulder. “We paid for that.”
“Just keep walking,” the officer says, nudging me forward.
“Holy hell, we don’t even get to finish the damn bottle.”
“That’s because you couldn’t just wait on the cops,” Adam says as we step into the dimming sunlight. The heat is still suffocating as fuck, too, a cluster of wimp-ass bar patrons, who couldn’t fight worth a shit, being shoved into random cars.
“Your ass didn’t wait either,” I say. “And you didn’t want to wait.” I eye the officer. “She was being groped,” I say as he grabs Adam and walks him to the other side of the car.
“Rick. Oh my God. Rick?”
At Candace’s voice, my heart freezes in my chest. I turn around and there she is, Candace is standing right here, all but in front of me. And God, she’s beautiful, her long, dark hair cascading over her shoulders. Her green eyes are like green grass on a perfect summer’s day, but they’re flecked with amber in anger. Her pale skin flushed red. “Why are you here?” she demands.
“Holy hell, woman. I need to kiss you.” I take a step toward her.
The cop punches my arm and forces me back, and of course, I could go through him and I’m thinking about it, but Candace handles him for me. “John, damn it, step back!”
The redhead, John, I guess, backs off and I don’t like him. “You know him? You fuck him, too?”
She slaps me. “What right do you have to even suggest who I did or did not sleep with?”