could stop it from happening. He locked eyes with Hackett.
“You sure? You taking all the angles into consideration?”
Hackett squinted at him. “Meaning?”
“Meaning it sure looks like you’re holding all the cards, but I’m coming for you anyway. What’s that tell you? Maybe I’m crazy. Or I’ve got an edge you don’t know about. Maybe I’m a black belt who’s been studying martial arts since I was old enough to walk into a dojo and I’ve already figured out ten different ways to take you down.”
Hackett tugged back his windbreaker. Just far enough to flash the revolver on his hip.
“Then maybe I should just put a bullet between your eyes, right here and now,” Hackett told him.
Tyler’s blood ran cold. He stared at the butt of the gun, that sleek killing curve. The odors of the street turned to heat-lamp hamburgers and salty fries. His legs turned to glass.
He pushed through it, forced his eyes to snap back to Hackett’s, but he’d faltered for a second. That was all it took. Hackett had seen something in Tyler’s face, his predator instincts sniffing out easy prey, and he cocked a lazy, smug smile.
“Yeah, you don’t know shit.” He waved a hand. “The hell is your problem anyway? You ain’t blood to her, you ain’t her old man. You’re about to get your ass kicked for nothing.”
Not for nothing.
Tyler squared his footing. The truth turned his spine into a bar of hot iron, holding him up straight and burning away the fear.
“Fact is,” Tyler said, “I’m the closest thing that girl has to a real father. Which means it’s my job to protect her, no matter what. So yeah, you’re probably going to win this fight and I’m probably going to go down hard. But it doesn’t matter. This is what a father has to do. And if you don’t understand that, then I’m sorry you never had one.”
Now it was Hackett’s turn to falter. A flicker-wash of emotions passed through his piggish eyes. Uncertainty, confusion. Then rage. He ran out of words and decided to finish the conversation with his fists.
He charged in and Tyler’s eyes were on his stun gun. One brush against the business end and he was finished. Hackett lunged with the gun and Tyler batted his wrist away, throwing a left hook that bounced off the thug’s cheekbone like it was made of brick. Hackett grabbed Tyler’s shirt with his free hand and drove him backward, slamming his shoulders against a parked car. He pinned him like a bug, leaning in with all his weight. Tyler’s heels scrabbled on the pavement, fighting for purchase, and the diodes of the stun gun made their stove-burner clacks as Hackett shoved it at his face. He grabbed Hackett’s wrist with both hands, straining, the weapon inching closer and closer to his eyes.
Tyler drove his knee between Hackett’s legs. He slipped, his other foot sliding out from under him, and he fell, both men tumbling to the street. They were rolling blind, Tyler throwing punches, knuckles thudding into Hackett’s chest. The stun gun clattered to the pavement, abandoned in the fight. People were pounding their horns, leaning out their car windows, cheering for the show.
A stone fist cracked across Tyler’s left eyebrow and cut it open. Blood flowed, stinging like acid in his eye, painting the world in a wash of red. Then Hackett hammered his belly with one-two rabbit punches, driving the air from his lungs. He rolled again, scrambling back, trying to get to his feet. The thug barreled at him like a torpedo and hit him in a full-on tackle, blasting him against the hood of the van hard enough to make it rock on its wheels.
Tyler grabbed him, hugging him in a boxer’s clinch, buying time to get his breath back. Hackett slammed his forehead against Tyler’s and tore open a fresh gash. He broke the clinch and threw Tyler like a sack of groceries, sending him crashing to the street, tumbling hard and landing on his back.
Tyler couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. The world was a flood of pain and scarlet. He fought to push himself up, go one more round, but his arms were made of aching rubber.
Hackett loomed over him. He turned his head and spat a gob of blood onto the pavement.
Then he pulled his windbreaker back. His revolver snaked from its holster, firm in his hand.
“Hope it was worth it, dead man.”
“Hackett,” Barr said behind him. “Don’t.”
He sighted down the barrel. A perfect kill