Page 111 of Chad's Chase

I whirled around and found he was still kneeling by Clementine’s body, his eyes on her wide, vacant ones.

“Are you seriously just going to sit there and let him kill you?”

“He’s my father.”

“Oh, so you just kill the people you love and pardon the people you hate?”

Nothing. He just kept staring at Clementine.

Rage had me pointing my gun at him. “Why don’t I just complete my assignment by killing you my fucking self, huh? You’re awaste. A waste of my fucking time.”

Glancing up at me now, he responded, “I hate you.” So quiet I almost missed it.

“Fuck you, you fucking coward!!!” I shouted, repositioning my aim above his head right before I fired off all the rounds in my gun, a fusillade of shots blasting through the wooden wall across the room.

Even when the clip was empty, I kept pulling the trigger out of anger.Click. Click. Click. While Chad just watched me with that ever-calm expression of his, completely unfazed by the loads of bullets that’d whizzed mere inches above his skull. He never even flinched. The sonuvabitch was so resigned on dying. How could someone be so at fucking peace with death?

To Sambo, he said, “You wanted her. Now get her the fuck out of here, and keep her safe. Or even in death I’ll find a way to fuck you up.”

Just like that, he was passing me off to another man. No more “it’s me, or no one.”

I regretted becoming straight. This kind of fickle shit didn’t happen with women.

Sambo started to close in on me, but I whirled and butted my gun against his temple, and he reflexively knocked the thing from my grasp. Spinning in the opposite direction this time, I drove the back of my elbow into his jaw, hoping for a crack. But Sambo was built like a brick house, he wasn’t that easily defeated.

I had to initiate arealfight. So I rammed a back-kick to his shin, and we engaged in a good old combat. In which I had to whip out everything I’d ever learned in fight training. Best believe I was beating Sambo down. He might be big and ostensibly indomitable, but he didn’t have half the tricks and agile dexterity I had. Which meant I was winning ten points ahead, wounding him in the small places he didn’t know to protect because those small places had big impact.

I had him. On the ground. My legs locked tight around his thick stomp of a neck. Just about to flip my whole body over so I could easily break his neck, when I was restrained from behind in a sleeper hold.

The powerful, masculine arm tightened, but not to kill me, only to ease me into unconsciousness. And with each breath that got blocked from passing through my lungs, I drifted, and drifted, until the darkness won.