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Chapter Fourteen

Liam

“ F uck!” I flung her behind me. She hit the wall with a gasp as I flash-assessed the attackers, my body in motion. Nylon stocking masks. Big. Fast. They meant business.

I was spinning before my brain kicked in, my heel connecting to the chin of the closest guy. He reeled back, plowing right into his companion, giving me a second to regroup, and register the knife in the first guy’s hand.

I danced back, eyes on the blade, evading my opponent’s lunges, but the landing gave me no space to retreat. I had to keep that blade away from Nancy.

My opponent lunged again, jabbing high. I parried with my forearm, glad that I’d worn the heavy leather coat.

I rammed the guy’s arm against the wall.

The knife clattered to the tiles. I spun to jab a knee into the gut of the guy bolting toward Nancy, but the first attacker swept my feet, and I stumbled against the wall and took an elbow slam to the ribs.

In my peripheral vision, I saw my own fiddle case slash through the air.

Crack. A hoarse grunt of pain, limbs flailing, thuds.

The second guy was falling down the stairs. Great.

The first guy dove for Nancy. She didn’t have time to load another swing with the fiddle case. The asshole barreled into her, knocking her against the wall of the staircase. She slipped, and they toppled in agonizing slow motion together, careening downward, out of my line of vision.

I hurled myself after them so fast my feet probably never touched the stairs. Now they were at the bottom of the stairs, and Nancy dangled under the bastard’s meaty arm, her body slack. Stunned.

I barreled into the guy with a shout and looped both arms around his neck.

The other attacker was nowhere to be seen.

Nancy hit the floor with a muffled grunt.

The entryway door yawned open. Light and shadow twirled and spun as the guy took a flying somersaulting leap into the dark off the stoop—and hauled me along with him.

A battering rain of blows as we rolled down—head, shoulders, back, in such quick succession I didn’t have time to really feel them. Then, a half second sprawled together on the sidewalk, trembling and panting. Christ, that guy’s breath was foul.

The heavy, masked thing twisted against me like some huge, muscular serpent and slammed an elbow into my ear, and the fight exploded freshly.

We grappled, grunted, heaved. I slammed a hand up under my attacker’s chin, knocking his teeth together.

The guy was huge, but I whipped his knife hand back with the strength of desperation, ramming it into the rails of the wrought-iron fence that separated the garbage cans from the sidewalk.

And again ... and again.

The knife fell, and I jerked part of my weight out from under the guy so our bodies crossed. He attempted to use his thick legs for traction, spreading them wide, so I reached down, grabbed the guy’s balls and squeezed them hard.

He screamed, and I lunged for the knife on the sidewalk, scooping it up. I staggered to my feet in an unsteady crouch, brandishing the blade.

The guy leaped up, wheezing in pain. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I could feel the toxic hatred coming off the man in waves. Yeah. Come at me now , shitbag.

It would be a fine joke on me if the guy pulled a gun.

The guy hesitated, then turned and ran, boots pounding heavy on the pavement.

I lurched after him, but was brought up short, as if tethered. I wanted so badly to run down my prey. Crush that asshole into a grease spot on the pavement.

Nancy. She hadn’t stirred from where the guy dropped her. The entryway door was flung wide open to the night, and it was three in the morning in Alphabet City, and I had no fucking clue in what direction that first guy had gone, or how far.

The attacker had vanished into the dark. It was quiet and still. Both men were gone.

My jaw ached with frustration as I leaped up the steps and sank down next to her inside the doorway, heart pounding.

I brushed the waves of thick, glossy mahogany hair off her face. “Nancy? Are you okay?” My voice was breathless and shaking. “Talk to me, Nancy.”

“I’m okay.” Her eyes opened, and she dragged herself up onto her hands and knees. “I think I am, anyhow. Are they gone?”

“Yes.” I helped her up, scanning for injuries. She looked dazed, disoriented, and as pale as a ghost, but there were no obvious marks on her that I could see.

She let me pull her to her feet, and I seized her. We held each other for a long moment, swaying and correcting, clinging to each other for balance.

“Wow,” she whispered. “That was ... wow.”

“Like I said,” I murmured into her ear. “One humdinger after another.”

Her answering laughter had a choppy, hysterical feel, and I squeezed her closer, stroking her shaking back. She felt so right in my arms. Like she’d always been meant for them. Only two days, I suddenly remembered. We’d known each other for two fucking days. It felt like forever.

“We should call the cops,” I said.

Her face contracted. “God. Again.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But it’s not like we have a better plan.”

“Let’s just get up to my apartment.” She sounded exhausted. “I need to sit down. I think my purse and phone must be on the stairs.”

We gathered up her stuff and my instruments as we climbed the stairs. A peek inside the fiddle case showed me that the tough fiberglass had done its work well, cracking heads on the outside, protecting the instrument on the inside.

The door didn’t look forced, but I took the key from Nancy’s stiff, trembling fingers anyway and opened the door myself, hesitating as I peered inside.

“Light’s over the stove,” Nancy forced out, through chattering teeth. “Yank the string.”

She was acting shocky. She by God had the right to, but it still worried me.

I peered inside suspiciously, but there wasn’t much to the place. I could take it all in with a single glance.

A long narrow room with a barred, grilled window at one end. A tiny water closet in the back behind the tiny kitchen.

No place for an attacker to hide.

I pulled her inside, grabbed an afghan off the couch, and wrapped it around her. She landed with a whump on the couch, legs giving out. I flipped on the light dangling over the minuscule kitchen corner.

“You swing a mean violin,” I commented.

That earned me a shaky smile and a swift peek up through those long, dark, curling lashes. “I did what I could,” she said. “But you. Whoa. Liam, where did you learn to fight like that?”

I shrugged. “Hank, my stepdad, was a cop and a Marine. He served in Vietnam. He taught me the basics. I did some training on my own, too, later. I like martial arts.”

“You were amazing,” she said.

“Hardly,” I said sourly. “I let the bastard get away. Amazing would’ve been knocking that dickhead out and tying him up, so that we could hand him over to the police. After we pounded some answers out of him. That would have been useful.”

“So you think this is connected to ...” Her voice trailed off as the look on my face answered her question. She shrank into the couch, hands to her mouth. “Liam. My sisters. I have to warn them. Right now. My phone. Where is my fucking phone?”

I helped her find it and handed it over. “Breathe deep,” I soothed. “Calm down.”

I was grateful to see a teakettle in the small array of kitchen stuff on display. I rummaged for tea bags while she talked to her sisters. She was scolding and haranguing them to go stay with friends, get out of town. Good advice. She should take it herself.

Some digging turned up an off-brand box of stale tea, but I was more concerned with getting sugar and caffeine into her than to worry about flavor.

When she hung up, it was ready, and I held out a sweet, milky cup to her. “See if you can get some of this down while I call the police.”

She sipped it while I called 911. My whole body ached now, and I had no one but myself to blame. This was what happened when a guy poked his nose into a woman’s big, hairy problems, and I’d done it voluntarily. I’d insisted on it. I’d bitched and moaned and bullied my way right into this.

When she’d drunk her tea, I took the cup away and sank down in front of her. Her hands were cold, despite clutching the hot cup. So slender. I chafed them tenderly to warm them, and contemplated a potentially life-changing realization.

This woman’s life was a fucked-up mess. I was right smack in the middle of it.

And there was no place on earth that I would rather be.