Page 51 of Simon Says… Fight (Kate Morgan Thrillers #11)

She groaned. “I’m so damn sorry. I tried. I really did.”

He closed his eyes and whispered, “At least you made it. I don’t think she wanted me to make it through this.”

“No, she wouldn’t give you that option,” Kate noted.

“This wasn’t about a fair fight—or even revenge for things that have gone wrong in her world.

Her brain injuries added to the explosive backlash of somebody emotionally overcharged and not rationally dealing with the inherent unfairness of her life,” Kate pointed out.

“But it’s over now. You, sir, are on your way to the hospital, or you will be very shortly,” she said, with a smile.

Rodney grumbled, “The last thing I want to do is go to the hospital.”

Simon smiled. “You may not want to,” he interjected, “but, from the looks of your face,… you’ll need to. At the very least, you’ve got stitches in your future.”

Rodney groaned. “But who’ll look after Kate at work?” he asked Simon, trying to open his swollen eye. “Do you have any idea how much trouble she gets into?” Simon raised one eyebrow, as Rodney attempted a smile, then moaned. “Don’t make me laugh,” he said. “This shit hurts.”

Moments later, the building swarmed with police cars and ambulances. As two paramedics came over to Kate, she pointed at Simon and Rodney.

Simon frowned at her and bellowed, “Oh, hell no. You got hit twice by Tambo. Check her out first.”

She glared and shook her head. “You’re at least getting checked over.”

“Yeah?” he muttered. “And what about you?”

“What about me?” she asked.

He smiled. “I guess you don’t have any idea what you look like right now, do you?”

She stopped, her gaze going from Rodney back to Simon, then she shook her head. “Doesn’t matter,” she muttered. “I’ve got shit to do.”

“I’ve got shit to do too,” Rodney wailed, as they helped him to his feet. “God, that bitch could hit.”

“She could,” Kate agreed, “but, as the Irish would say, my dander was up, and no fucking way was I letting her take me down.”

Rodney grimaced and shook his head. “You are just making me feel worse.”

Now she shook her head. “This ain’t nothing. Wait until Colby finds out. He’s bound to put you in for extra self-defense training.”

He groaned at that. “You know that he will.”

At that, Colby, who apparently had arrived with Lilliana, walked over to join them. “She’s right. If the bad guys keep up this shit, we’ll have to get the team to a different level of fitness.”

“Maybe not fitness,” Kate clarified, “but training.”

He looked over at her and nodded. “What the hell was that you used to kick his ass?”

Simon answered that. “She goes to the dojo almost every week,” he shared. “I’ve watched a couple times but not very much. She’s pretty wicked.”

Colby just stared at her, then at the hulk of a man on the ground. “You know he’s dead, right?”

“I’m not surprised,” Kate muttered, followed by a heavy sigh. “Does that mean I’m in deep shit again?”

Colby snorted. “I’m pretty sure the witnesses here will say it was self-defense.”

“It was self-defense,” Kate confirmed, “plus he’s way-the-hell bigger than me. He’s got to be three hundred pounds and all of it muscle. I hate to say it, but he was pretty pissed because I’d wiped the floor with his sister.”

Simon nodded. “Yeah, and I think that part was what finally made him realize how she’d been lying to him all this time.”

Kate agreed. “It wasn’t so much that he was angry at me, but he was angry at her, and then… I was just an easy target.”

“An easy target?” Lilliana repeated, staring at her. “I don’t think so. You do realize they had cameras in here, right? So we’ll get to watch it over and over again.”

At that, Rodney groaned. “Please no,” he muttered. “Getting my ass kicked by a woman half my size was one thing, but having you guys watch it and bug me about it, or making it a teaching point for the station? Just kill me now.”

Colby laughed. “But it is something we need to do,” he declared, “to confirm Kate’s in the clear.”

“She’s in the clear,” Simon vowed, as he sat for the paramedics. “That was definitely self-defense.” He looked over at her and added, “For the record, I probably wouldn’t have done it quite the same way, but I would have been just as good.”

She smiled at him. “I was pretty sure you would be unimpressed with my saving your ass again,” she stated. “However, it just balances things out a little bit.”

His gaze warmed, and he laughed. “Okay,” he conceded. “If it’s important for you to make checks and balances out of this, I’m fine with that.”

Colby shook his head. “The two of you just need to stop this shit. How about that?”

“We want to,” she noted, “but this is another pretty major case we’re closing.”

Colby beamed. “It absolutely is, and, if we’re lucky, we might even get some more staffing because of it.”

“Ah, don’t hold your breath,” Kate said, with an eye roll.

“I’m not sure the higher-ups will be that impressed.

After all, Andy has been on extended medical leave for how many months now?

And we still don’t have a replacement for him.

The powers that be don’t seem interested in letting you fill that opening. ”

He smiled. “You could be right,” he admitted, yet grinning from ear to ear. “They probably won’t. On the other hand, we’ll be dealing with this for a while.”

“She admitted to killing seven men,” Simon noted. “She told us that she got her revenge on her attacker, who put her in a long coma, by murdering him. I’m assuming he’s one of the seven she is taking responsibility for.”

“That’s right,” Rodney murmured through his puffy lips.

“Those three really old skeletons in the boarded-up basement are too old to lay at Tamzen’s feet.

However, we have four beating victims in other precincts.

Those could be some of Tamzen’s victims, but we’ll have to confirm that.

Maybe she’ll cooperate and just give us their names. ”

“Not sure we can count on that. Hell, did Tamzen even know their names?” Kate frowned.

“Yet we have three more bodies in the main area of the same warehouse. Were those Tamzen’s too?

Or were those just the bodies making up the rumors about that warehouse to begin with?

Maybe Tamzen and Tambo heard the same rumors and decided to start dumping their bodies there, instead of the harbor.

Like Sonny, who was probably supposed to die there but we found him first. Still, he didn’t make it.

We’ll have to confirm that we have all Tamzen’s victims accounted for.

I’m not sure all seven of hers are on the books yet. ”

Rodney nodded. “So we’ll have to go look for more, and they’re likely to be in the water.”

Simon frowned at a beep and pulled out his phone. He looked at it and smiled. “We might get some closure on the bodies in the basement of my warehouse building too.”

Colby and Kate turned to him, frowning.

“Elsie, the woman who owned the warehouse before selling it to me, has just passed on, and her nephew promised to send a letter with a whole lot of information Elsie received from her father years ago. She claimed it kept her imprisoned, as she tried to keep the family secrets.”

“Good God,” Colby muttered. “Yet it would be awesome to have closure on those deaths too. An awful lot of flak is coming at the city for not having found these bodies for decades.”

“The whole story will probably come out in some big memoir,” Kate muttered, followed by another eye roll.

“In the meantime, if we can resolve that as well, it should make everybody happier.” She looked over at Simon.

“But you still have to figure out what you’ll do with that warehouse—or the land, once you demo the building. ”

“Yeah, that won’t be an overnight decision though,” he noted, standing up after getting the all clear from the paramedic. “Great. I’m fine. They told me that I can leave.”

Rodney was being led to the ambulance. He stopped to look back at Simon and wailed, “That’s not fair.”

“I’ll come visit you,” Kate promised.

“If you do, you better bring some decent food with you,” he muttered. Still groaning, he was loaded into the ambulance and taken away.

When Kate turned to Simon, a paramedic stood behind her, his hands on his hips. “You’re next,” he announced. She raised an eyebrow and almost instinctively took a fighting stance.

The paramedic sighed. “He warned me that you would be difficult.”

She turned and glared at both Colby and Lilliana. Her boss’s arms were crossed over his chest. Lilliana had her arms crossed over her chest as well, her foot tapping the floor, as she guarded the only exit.

Simon stood nearby, a big grin on his face. “Sweetheart, you’re not getting out of this one.”

“You better feed me when I get out of here then,” she added, “because, damn, I’m starved.”

At that, they all laughed.

“That was the trick, was it? Food as a bribe to act nice for the EMTs?” Simon asked, as he waited patiently for the medic to check her over.

Her knuckles were taped, and her leg was killing her, but it was fine.

She’d just pulled a muscle. That would be something that she felt for a bit, as was the shot to her back she’d taken from Tambo.

With the paramedic done, he nodded and stated, “Okay, you’re cleared to go home.”

She groaned, looked over at Simon, and asked, “Did you drive down?”

“My vehicle is at the warehouse, but I can drive yours, if you want.”

“Good,” she muttered. “I’m really not sure I’m up for driving home.”

“I can arrange for mine to get picked up, so I’ll take you home.” Simon looked at Colby, “Is she free to go?”

He snorted. “Yeah, she’s free to go.” He looked over at Lilliana.

Lilliana nodded. “I’ve got this,” she murmured. “At least Kate left me a little something to do. I’ll help Simon get you to the car.”

Kate snorted. “Feel free to jump in any time,” she muttered, as she slowly made her way to the door.

“Actually I’m pretty happy not to be you right now. You’ll be one very stiff bitch in the morning,” Lilliana warned.

“I know,” Kate muttered. “I’ll need a hot tub or an ice bath or something.” She frowned at Simon and muttered, “You don’t even have a hot tub,” she muttered. “What’s up with that?”

He snorted. “Sorry, I didn’t realize we would be kidnapped, thrown into a boxing ring, and have the stuffing kicked out of both of us in the same night,” he stated. “Pardon me while I go correct that error.”

She laughed. “No worries. I’ll make do with a hot bath and pain meds.”

“I don’t think so,” he argued. “Food first. That was the bribe, right? The last thing I want is for you to wake up in the middle of the night, full of pain, plus realize that I didn’t feed you. After all, that was a pretty scary demonstration of your talents in that ring.”