No Rep (Madd CrossFit 1)

The guy’s dick may be out, and his pants halfway around his waist, but I wasn’t fooling myself.

He was big, in shape, older, but still able to move.

And he would overtake a girl in a heartbeat.

Which left me with one choice.

The kitchen.

The first thing that I got to was a paring knife that I’d left on the counter from dinner. I’d started to put it in the dishwasher earlier, but Taos had stopped me, saying putting knives in the dishwasher ruined them.

So I’d left it on the counter, intending to wash it later.

I reached for it at the same time that the man caught me.

His hand went into my hair at the same time my fingers closed around the knife.

I turned at the same time he yanked and had no choice but to go down or be pulled backward.

I went down but I didn’t go out.

The moment I hit the ground, I swung the knife at the back of his ankle.

He bellowed loudly and let me go, trying to step back on the injured foot, but he cried out in pain and fell backward, releasing the hold on my hair.

I scrambled back just as the front door slammed open so hard that it banged against the wall.

I hit the cabinets across the room and started to stand myself upright as my fucking grandmother walked through the damn door.

“Francine Pope, you will talk to me right now, or else!” she cried out as she walked into Taos’ house as if it was her own.

“Grandmother,” I gasped. “Call 911 and hurry back outside!”

My yell didn’t stop her forward movements. Instead, it only caused her to hurry.

She walked into the room with her cane, took one look at the man on the ground with his still-hard cock hanging out, then one look at me, disheveled and scared out of my ever-loving mind, then stuck her cane underneath her armpit and reached into her purse.

Then she pulled out the biggest motherfuckin’ gun I’d ever seen and aimed it at the would-be rapist’s face.

That’s when I realized who, exactly, had been in the house with me.

The serial killer that, by last count, had murdered seventeen women.

“You will remain on the floor or else,” my grandmother ordered.

The man laughed and got up, putting zero weight on his bad leg.

That’s when I saw all the blood.

It was everywhere.

He tried to take a step toward my grandmother, slipped in the blood, and tried to use his bad foot to catch himself.

It didn’t work.

All he managed to do was fall back to the ground.

The man cursed and tried to get back up, but my grandmother stupidly took a few steps toward him, placed her gun on top of the fridge, then went all professional golfer on the guy’s dick.

She switched the cane around until the grip was toward the ground, then used her forty years of golfing experience to take aim at the guy’s still-hard dick—how the hell was it still hard through all of this?

I physically heard the thwack of the guy’s dick getting smacked with the handle of her cane.

I would never, not ever, be able to describe it.

The low-life went down to the ground completely, then turned, or tried to turn, into the fetal position.

While he was distracted, my grandmother picked up the gun again, twisted the cane around, and then marched until she was standing over the man who was now crying—quite loudly—on the ground.

“I don’t know what you were trying to do,” she hissed as she aimed the gun right at the man’s face, “but I don’t like it when Popes are hurt.”

While the guy’s eyes were on her, aimed at the gun she had trained on his face, she did something with the cane.

I heard another ‘pop-like’ sound and felt my stomach curdle at the high-pitched scream that came out of the serial killer’s mouth.

I covered my mouth as I realized what she’d just done.

Ruptured his testicle. Or something. I wasn’t sure what. But her cane lifted from between his legs and she stepped back.

“Call the authorities,” my grandmother urged as she stood over the man. “Tell them the Popes are in trouble and need assistance.”

I didn’t tell them that.

After hurrying toward my grandmother’s discarded purse, I reached into it and pulled out her fancy phone with delicate rhinestones—rhinestones that were probably real—and called 911.

I told them that Taos Brady’s girlfriend was in trouble.

That would get them here way faster than anything else would.

I knew it.

• • •

TAOS

My heart was pounding as I hurried toward my front door.

There were about twenty-five police cars on my lawn and in my street.

Local police. State police. FBI. State troopers. You name it, and the agency was in my house.

Getting out of the patrol car that’d given me the lift here, I ran hard to the front door, scared as fuck of what I would see when I got inside.