The pain was back in my chest. I burped and it went away.

“You got a digestive issue,” Lula said.

“I never had this problem before.”

“It’s probably that you’re gettin’ old,” Lula said. “Things like that happen to you when you get old. Or maybe you’re pregnant. Oops, hold on, you’re not pregnant, on account of you’re not gettin’ any.”

“Could we please concentrate on the problem at hand, which is capturing Sasquatch?”

“Sure,” Lula said. “I could do that.”

We walked to the door, and I rang the bell. I had pepper spray in hand, ready to use. Lula was positioned behind me. After a moment, the door opened and Butch stared out at us, looking like a giant in his tiny house.

“Shit!” he said.

I gave him a face full of spray and jumped back. He bellowed and thrashed around, flailing his arms, his eyes squinched shut. “Ow!” he yelled. “Owwww!”

I was jumping around, trying to grab a wrist. “Get hold of him,” I said to Lula. “Get an arm.”

“I can’t fuckin’ get an arm,” Lula said. “He won’t stand still.”

Butch lashed out, his eyes still closed, knocked Lula back about ten feet, and charged past me like a raging bull.

“Arrrrrgh!” he screamed. “Gaaaaah!”

His nose was running and his eyes were streaming tears, but nothing was stopping him. He ran out the door, down the sidewalk, and took off. I ran flat out after him, yelling for Lula to help. I chased him half a block, and he turned the corner, crossed the street, and cut through a backyard. I could hear Lula pounding behind me, breathing hard. I wasn’t exactly breathing easy, either, and I was thinking it might have been better to let Lula shoot him in the foot, because I had no idea what I was going to do if I caught him.

He came to a privacy fence, stopped dead in his tracks, and I slammed into him and held fast. Lula came up behind me and grabbed him, and we all toppled over and went to the ground. My fear now was that Butch and Lula would roll on top of me and I’d be crushed flat as a pancake. We scrabbled around, with Butch struggling to get to his feet and Lula and me hanging on for dear life.

“Cuff ’im!” Lula was yelling. “Kick ’im in the nuts. Poke out his eyeball.”

I was trying, but I wasn’t having a lot of luck. He was too big, too heavy, too strong, too freaked out over jail. I made an attempt to slip the plastic FlexiCuffs on him, and he flicked me away like I was a bug. I was thrown a couple feet and landed on black court shoes attached to long legs clad in black cargo pants. Ranger. He gave me a hand and pulled me up. “We need to talk,” he said.

“Help,” Lula said. “Get this clown off me. I can’t breathe.”

“Let go,” Butch said to Lula. “Let go of me.”

Ranger waded in and separated them. Butch scrambled to his feet and was ready to run.

“Stay,” Ranger said to him.

Butch immediately went still. Ranger took the cuffs from me and secured Butch.

“How do you do that?” I asked Ranger.

“I speak with authority.”

“Can you teach me to do that?”

“No,” Ranger said.

He called for backup on his cell phone, took Butch by the arm, and walked him to the street. Ranger’s Porsche Turbo was parked at the curb.

“How did you find me?” I asked him.

“I called Connie, and she gave me Goodey’s address. I was on the street, and you ran past me.”

“I didn’t see you.”

Tags: Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net