This cockfight was nothing but a distraction, a way to allow Mathers to make off with his Grace. Boone could’ve just taken him out, shooting him while he was checking the perimeter. There was a purpose to this fight: to kill time while Mathers escaped. Every second he wasted with Boone was another second that Mathers was running away with his woman. He needed to end this, and he needed to end this as fast as he could before Boone eventually turned lethal.
Improvise.
He lunged forward again and kicked out, feinting that he was going for Boone’s left knee. Boone bent it in order to protect it. As he leaned away from the hit, Rick fisted his hands together and swung up with all
of his strength.
He got Boone right under his jaw. The other man’s head knocked back, throwing off his balance, and sending him to his back like a hunk of lumber.
Adapt.
Rick knew he only had seconds before Boone would shake the sucker punch off and bound back into the fight. Their training was too similar when it came to hand to hand. Despite Boone’s gig as a rich man’s bodyguard, he’d been fighting with honor—Marine to Marine. Rick went dirty first. And he knew that he wouldn’t catch Boone off guard with a cheap shot like that a second time.
He needed the gun. The loaded gun.
Where was it?
There!
Rick dove for it. From the brief glimpse he got before Boone tossed his gun, Rick knew he had a Beretta, probably a 92. He saw his Glock abandoned near the mouth of his driveway. Boone’s Beretta was thrown farther. The glint of the gunmetal was coming from closer to the curb.
He hit the ground hard, adrenaline numbing him to the pain as he skid on the road, banging into the cement curb with enough force that his whole body shook. Once he was sure he had secured the semiautomatic pistol, he jumped to his feet and dashed back over to where Boone was starting to rise.
Rick came up on Boone’s side. This time, his kick did connect, his boot slamming into Boone’s shoulder and knocking him down again.
Overcome.
Moving so that he was standing over his opponent, Rick braced his legs, readying himself for the recoil. With one quick motion, he disengaged the safety and pointedly aimed the gun.
“I’m sorry,” he said. And he meant it. He left the Marines because he was sick of the fighting. He joined the HSD because he wanted to save lives, not take them.
But this was for Grace. His Grace.
He had no choice.
Boone narrowed his gaze as much as he could. He wasn’t focusing on the gun, though. Tilting his head back, showing off his split chin, bloody lip, and swollen eye, he met Rick’s steely stare.
“Do it.”
Rick’s finger found the trigger. He let his training take over because, otherwise, he wasn’t sure what he would do. Or what he was capable of.
Right arm. Pop.
Right hand. Pop.
Left thigh. Pop.
Boone never once made a sound as Rick incapacitated him. The only sign that he felt each shot as it hit him was in the way his big body bucked, his jaw going tight as he fought to keep back his screams. Murder flickered in the depths of his dark gaze, the promise of a slow death in the way his chest heaved and his left hand twitched.
Rick could have finished Boone off. If the roles were reversed—if Boone got the gun first when he was done humoring Rick with the fistfight—he knew damn well that Boone wouldn’t have hesitated to off him with a headshot.
He would never be that kind of man. This was enough. With the three gunshot wounds, Boone wouldn’t be any help to Mathers. He could go get Grace, use the Beretta to incapacitate Mathers the same way if he had to, then buzz Sly to help him clean up this mess.
But first—
“He has her, doesn’t he?”
Boone’s eyes glittered viciously. “Fuck you.”