out of his mouth, and I hit him again, popping him hard in between his eyes and above the bridge of his nose, then following up with a body shot, hammering his ribs. My shoulders were strained from swinging the heavy bag, but my brain and body remembered each lesson Bobby gave me on how to fight.
Boxing might be a gentlemen’s sport, but I wasn’t interested in being a gentleman, and Bobby taught me every single dirty trick he knew. The guy was still on his feet, and I needed to make sure he was in no way, shape, or form able to run once I was done with him.
So I grabbed his balls with my left hand, squeezed and twisted hard enough to make his eyes pop out, and hammered at his face with my right fist.
It took him four seconds to go down, but I didn’t let go until his back was up against the asphalt and Bobby’s foot was on the man’s discarded gun. Sitting back on my haunches, I tried to catch my breath, my chest heaving while my brain sifted through all of the adrenaline coursing through it, trying to find a single sensible thought amid the oh-my-God-we’re-all-going-to-die sparkles overloading my senses.
“Did it ever occur to you that I had a fucking gun?” Bobby growled at me, the welcome but too-late-to-the-party sound of police sirens finally breaking through the neighborhood’s uncaring silence. “I could have shot him.”
“You threw away your gym bag. The one with the phone in it,” I reminded him, scrambling for an excuse. Gasping, I continued to jab wildly at him, using my words in probably ineffectual punches to ward off his quite reasonable logic. “I couldn’t risk you throwing it at his head.”
“You are so full of shit, Princess. You didn’t even fucking think about it,” he countered, effectively putting an end to my argument. “You recognize this guy?”
I studied what was left of his face, something that was practically impossible to do since he was writhing around in pain, but I got enough of a look to know I didn’t recognize him. Shaking my head, I flexed the tightness out of my hands, then stood up, nearly bumping into what was once a sleek sports car whose back end now resembled swiss cheese.
“Never saw him before in my life, but I can tell you one thing about him,” I said, then cocked a smirk at my best friend. “We’ve now got somebody to question besides Arthur Brinkerhoff.”
Ten
“I DON’T see why O’Byrne couldn’t let us watch them interrogate that guy,” I pointed out to Bobby as I scraped at the paper on my beer bottle, “or at least get back to us about any answers he gave. How the hell does she expect me to move forward if I don’t have any place to start?”
“This is where I remind you that you’re not a cop,” he said, clicking the tongs at me. “O’Byrne doesn’t owe you anything, including answers.”
The tongs’ scalloped ends were coated with sesame seeds and green-onion bits from the marinade Jae soaked the short ribs in before turning everything over to us to grill. As much as I liked barbecuing, Bobby had an obsession with it, and it was simpler to let him take over the tongs. He just had a bad habit of using them to emphasize his points as he spoke, clattering them like castanets during a furious flamenco dance.
As dreary as the day grew, the addition we had added to the back of the house included a covered lanai, perfect for evening barbecues and lounging in reclining chairs with a cold beer. We had a larger outdoor kitchen built on the far side of the lawn, complete with a fire pit and enough outdoor furniture to host a birthday party attended by fifty preschoolers. I knew that last bit for a fact because our niece, Lisa—Mad Dog Junior—celebrated her latest circuit around the sun in our backyard, complete with a bouncy castle and at least three puking children who’d eaten too much cake and ice cream. I also knew from experience that the cost of cleaning a bouncy castle was about the same as getting a car detailed.
The addition not only gave us a back patio but also pantry space, a larger mud room for our washer and dryer, and after reconfiguring a few walls, a dining room we apparently desperately needed. When various members of my family—including Bobby—gave me shit about the lack of