Page 30 of Puck

“What is?”

I lowered my hands and opened my right palm to show the knife. “Here.”

He held his gun low, at his hip, aimed at me, and shuffled toward me, arm outstretched. Dumbass. Had he told me to drop it, kick it to him, or toss it, I’d have been fucked, but he looked young enough and naïve enough to maybe fall for this little trick. And yes, he did. He inched toward me, reaching for the closed knife in my hand, trusting the threat of the gun to be enough of a deterrent.

Dumbass.

I waited until he made his move, stretched his hand out to snatch at the knife. There was a split second when his attention was on my hand, on the knife, rather than on me, and that was when I struck. I lashed out with my left fist, batting his gun hand away and darting forward into him. My left hand fastened onto his wrist, and I crushed down with all the force I had, hard enough that I felt bones grinding, and he cried out. The instant I made my move, I flicked open the knife blade that thankfully had a nice, smooth action and decent spring to the blade, so one little push of my thumb sent the blade snapping into place. My hand was already low, at belly level, which made a throat shot tricky. I crashed into him, keeping a crushing grip on his gun hand wrist, and jamming the knife between us, angling down, down. I felt the rough scratch of denim and the bulge of his zipper; I angled a little lower and then drove the blade into the meat of his inner thigh, high up. He grunted in pain and I twisted the knife, dragged it back toward me through muscle, and then I withdrew the blade, my knuckles dripping hot and wet with blood. I slammed the blade into his throat just beneath his Adam’s apple, and his groan and scream of pain turned to a nasty wet whistle. I backed away, dropped him, stripping him of his pistol as he fell, blood spurting in thick, bright red gushes from his severed femoral artery.

I heard a shout and turned my attention to Layla and Temple. The other thug had Temple held in front of him against his chest, arm across her chest, but he didn’t have his gun to her temple. He had orders to bring her in alive, obviously, since she wasn’t worth anything dead. Which made his posture as a hostage taker an empty bluff.

I made sure he got a good look at his buddy, bleeding out. “Let her go, dickhead.”

“Nemaye . . . vpadit’ nizh,” he said, jerking his chin at me.

“I don’t know what you’re saying, bud, but for your sake, I hope it was ‘I’m a pussy, I give up.’”

Colbie snickered. “Actually, he told you to drop the knife.”

“No shit. Some things translate themselves.” I met her gaze. “Tell him to let her go, or I’ll kill him slower than I did his friend.”

Colbie rattled something off in Russian, and the dumbshit was foolish enough to pivot away from me to face Colbie, leaving most of his torso open. I chucked the knife at him, and as soon as the knife left my hand, I drew the .45 from behind my back. Life ain’t like the movies, though, and folding knives aren’t weighted for throwing, so unless you’re an expert, that shit ain’t sticking blade first into anything, and even experts would say that was nearly impossible. And in my case, I wasn’t an expert knife thrower. So the knife hit the asshole right in the center of his chest with the handle. Didn’t do jackshit to hurt him, but it did provide exactly what I needed: a distraction. He jerked his attention back to me, and the moment Temple felt his focus shift, she tore herself out of his grip and hit the ground. Smart girl. Now the playing field was even. By the time the stupid fucker realized what was happening, I was already inside his reach and had my pistol barrel shoved up under his chin. He blinked stupidly for a second, and then raised his hands.

“Shit,” I groaned as I took his weapon. “This complicates things.”

“What does?” Colbie asked.

I grabbed the guy by the hair and shoved him into the ground at the base of the oak tree. “This cockmuncher,” I said, gesturing at him with the barrel of the pistol. “He surrendered, so I can’t just shoot him, now.”

“Oh,” Colbie said. “I suppose that wouldn’t be very nice, would it?”

“No. It’d be downright unfriendly, I’d say.”

People watched, staring at the dude bleeding out, wondering what was going on. I had to make this whole scene less conspicuous right the hell now or we’d have to find somewhere else to sit, and I was kinda starting to like this park.

“Hey hooker, grab his ankles,” I said to Layla.

“Don’t call me a hooker, dickhead,” she retorted.

Layla tucked her pistol into the waistband of her jeans at the small of her back with practiced ease and grabbed the now-dead dude by the ankles. I grabbed him by the armpits, and we carried him to the back corner of the park and dumped him. Not much I could do about the giant pool of blood on the sidewalk where he’d bled out, but at least there wasn’t a body lying out in plain view. He wasn’t exactly hidden where he was; mind you, just . . . less obvious.

A quartet of men in business suits drifted past the park just then, and my heart slammed in my chest as one of them glanced our way, but he didn’t seem to see anything amiss, and they all kept walking. This park was some distance from the busiest roads and didn’t have much traffic, pedestrian or vehicular—thank god, too, because that hadn’t exactly been the most unobtrusive of situations.

Layla sat back down on the bench with Kyrie and Lola, who were comforting Temple. Layla had her pistol out and was positioned to keep an eye and a gun barrel on our hostage, who seemed content to sit and not be dead, for the moment, at least.

I picked up my knife off the ground, folded the blade back in, and pocketed it, then resumed my seat on the bench. After a moment, Colbie returned to sit beside me.

“You make that look so easy,” she said.

“Which part?”

She gestured at the spreading pool of ruby-red blood. “That. Killing people. I’m not even sure what you did, or why he bled out so fast.”

I grabbed her hand, placed her fingers on the inside of my thigh, high up, so her knuckles were inches from my crotch. “There’s an artery here, the femoral artery.” Colbie’s breath caught, and her fingers splayed out on my thigh, digging in, as if fighting the urge to move higher yet; I released her, but her hand remained on my thigh. “The femoral is one of the biggest arteries in the human body, transporting over three hundred fifty millimeters of blood per minute. If that motherfucker gets severed, you will bleed out in less than five minutes.”

She tightened her grip on my thigh, and I felt myself going hard behind my zipper even though she was inches away from my cock, and we were discussing a man’s death. “So . . . if you’d severed his femoral artery and he was going to die of blood loss anyway, why did you stab him in the throat?”

I rested my palm on her knee, and then gently, slowly, hesitantly slid it up her thigh in minute increments, under the hem of her skirt; she let me, and my heart started doing a ridiculous pussy virgin teenagerthumpity-thumpity-thumpjust from a fairly innocent palm to her leg.