the clamp and fumbled over the glass and screws and metal on the bench behind me, never taking my eyes off my opponents. There wasn’t time to choose carefully. I lifted something.
A claw hammer. We all looked at the tool. I turned it in my hand so that the claws faced forward. I was feeling pretty good about myself until Kazz reached for a weapon on the bench beside her and pulled up a shiny new hatchet.
Chapter 49
“THAT IS NOT a good idea,” I said, trying to keep my voice strong. Kazz examined the hatchet. Gammy, looking as confident as I did about her partner’s choice, stood trembling nearby.
“If we kill her, she’s not worth nothing,” Gammy mumbled. The hatchet was so new, it still had a price sticker on it and a plastic guard over the blade. Kazz peeled the guard off and smiled. I could see the handle of my gun beyond them, poking out from beneath some of the papers they’d discovered in my bag.
Kazz hefted the hatchet in her hand, gave it an experimental swing. “Get on the fucking ground,” she ordered, pointing to the floor with her free hand. Big mistake. The pointing caused her pain. She winced. I realized I had indeed done some significant damage to her collarbone, maybe cracked or dislocated it. Weak spot. I sidestepped along the bench, the hammer feeling like a lead weight in my fist.
“I’m leaving here,” I told the women. I looked at Gammy, whose commitment to the fight seemed to be waning. “I’m leaving alone, and of my own free will. That’s a fact, ladies. You just have to decide how much blood you’d like to donate to the floorboards before I walk out that door.”
“You got a lot of fucking nerve.” Kazz shook her head. “You’re losing. Look at you.” I felt a dribble on my lip and realized my nose was bleeding. I must have caught a stray hand or elbow in the scuffle, and the drugs had been masking my pain. There was blood running down my ankle. My breath was coming in hoarse growls, like my ribs were crushed. I sidestepped a little more, making my way toward the gun.
They followed, keeping their distance.
Without so much as a glance at each other, they came again. I watched the hatchet swing before me, threw myself backward into the shelves. She swung too hard. Before Kazz could swing upward again, I lunged at her, going for that injured collarbone, punching the hammer forward like a sword. I hit paydirt. She screamed but didn’t back off, using her weight to shove me into the shelves. Something sharp pierced my back, not deep. I twisted away, lifted the hammer and brought it down hard. The two claws embedded themselves in the soft meat of her shoulder.
She didn’t have the strength to draw breath, to scream again in pain. While she was stunned, I grabbed for the hand that held the hatchet but missed. The hatchet blade swished past me and thunked into Gammy’s upper arm as she tried to join the fray, slicing right through her jacket into bone. Gammy’s howl made my eardrums throb.
The hatchet fell, Kazz letting go of it in horror. I grabbed it and threw it away, used the distraction to make a break for my gun. Gammy was sitting on the floor, clutching her upper arm, blood running in dark rivulets from between her fingers. She was stunned, out of the fight. Kazz was crawling after me, her white shirt quickly becoming red where I’d stabbed her with the hammer, her teeth bared. I grabbed my gun and rolled, lying on my back, pointing the barrel at her. She stopped her advance in an instant. Her face tightened, grimaced with the realization of her defeat. I smiled and couldn’t resist telling the older woman what she plainly already knew.
“I never lose,” I said.
Chapter 50
WHITT CRASHED. Like a plane slowly pointing downward, sailing toward the ground, rushing faster and faster as gravity pulled him. He let Vada drive him to the dingy motel by the side of the highway that had been commandeered as a base of operations. She guided him between the groups of officers waiting there, just barely getting him through the door before he saw the bed and fell onto it, landing just short of the pillow, his arms and legs limp before they hit the coverlet. In the hours he slept, he recalled snippets of movement. Vada taking