Savage Vandal (82 Street Vandals #1) - Heather Long Page 0,60
and shoving him forward. A paint can flashed up in his hand, and he sprayed it at Backwards Baseball Cap, leaving the man clawing at his eyes, and then he grappled with the third one as he swung a knife.
I moved, giving Rome more room. The guy clawing at his eyes fumbled with something in his waistband. I didn’t have anything to throw at him, so I just kicked him in the side of the head.
Fuck, that hurt my foot, but he went down and I turned to see another flash of silver vanish as it plunged into Rome. He grunted, but he was still eerily silent as he delivered several hard punches to the man’s torso and face.
Something wet splattered against my cheek, and I grabbed one of the chunks of cement. It cut against my palm, but the guy with the broken arm was rising on unsteady feet. I didn’t know if he had a weapon, I didn’t want to know.
Rome had the guy he was fighting turned and his back was to me, so I swung that rock as hard as I could. There was a sickening crunch of sound as it hit, and Rome’s next blow knocked the guy right off the wall. He didn’t pause to see what happened to him, just turned and went after the last guy.
Dropping the rock, I grabbed Rome’s backpack. It was a lot heavier than it looked, and the cans inside made the weight uneven. Rome pummeled the last guy and slammed his head against the ground until he stopped moving. But even after the guy had gone limp, Rome kept hitting him.
“Rome,” I called to him. The setting sun had accelerated, taking what heat there had been in the chilly day. Rome glanced up at me. With half his face in shadows, the other half was a frozen mask of fury. The color of his eyes seemed to stand out in stark relief against the contrast. “We have to go.”
“They were going to hurt you.” The deadly calm in his voice sent a shiver down my spine.
“They were never going to hurt me,” I told him. “I knew you were there.”
And I’d known he wouldn’t let them.
Rome glanced down at the man whose arm he’d broken and whose face resembled so much ground meat. He wasn’t getting up anytime soon.
If at all…
Then there was the guy I’d hit and Rome knocked off the wall.
“We need to go,” I said again. We needed to call the police, but they would lock Rome up. One guy against three, no one would believe it. Even if I told them…
If I told them…
They’d lock him up for kidnapping me.
“We need to go,” I repeated a third time, and Rome finally stood. A part of me wondered if he wanted to make sure they were dead before we left. He glanced toward Backwards Baseball Cap. “I kicked him in the head.”
I didn’t really know why I volunteered that information. Rome’s chest rose and fell rapidly, but he was so still otherwise. I dragged his backpack onto my shoulder and moved closer to him.
“Are you okay?”
He turned slightly and nodded. “Yeah. I have to call Hawk.”
Oh.
“We’re leaving right?”
But he already had his phone out, and I cast a look down the dark alley to where I could see headlights passing on the street. We were mere yards from others. Anyone could walk up on us. That was how these guys had gotten there.
I could still get away.
Rome had his back to me, but he glanced at me more than once as if to make sure I hadn’t disappeared. “Hawk,” he said. “Trouble. I need cleanup.”
Silence, and I swallowed as I glanced around at the still bodies. I wasn’t even sure if they were still breathing, and I didn’t want to check. My stomach clenched as I edged closer to Rome before I glanced over the edge of the broken and cracked wall. There was a figure lying at the base. Not moving.
I swallowed.
“Old community court, down near seventieth.”
I glanced back at Rome, and he stared at me.
“Yeah. I have her.”
I swore I heard the growl, even though I wasn’t right next to him. He lowered the phone and stared at it a minute, then put it back in his pocket.
“They’re coming.”
“Okay.”
He glanced at the bodies again, then moved to me abruptly and took the bag off my shoulder. A minute later, he pulled out a cloth and a bottle of water. He damped the