After a long moment, a moment she wouldn’t have granted anyone else, Craig nodded. Acknowledged her point. “Torin, Doc is . . . he’s good at violence.”
“So am I.” She managed half a smile. “Your tax dollars at work.”
He wanted to say more, but he nodded again and started toward the hatch, half hopping, half hobbling, most of his weight on his right foot.
Torin had almost forgotten his injury—pushed it to the back of her mind while she did what she had to. Injuries weren’t unusual in her old job; dealt with and the job went on. She didn’t much like that she kept forgetting Craig was a noncombatant.
As Doc came closer, Torin realized where she’d seen him before. Most recently, watching the fight in the Hub, but before that, heading into the bar, into the game, where Nat Forester had set them up.
No mistaking the tension that pleated the soft skin around his eyes. Ex-military—the tells were obvious to anyone who’d spent as much time in uniform as Torin had—with the look of someone who’d seen too much and not been able to let any of it go. He was the first person she’d met since getting out that she wasn’t entirely positive she could beat if it came to a fight.
As much as Torin wanted to destroy anyone who had a part in Crag’s abuse, she forced reason past reaction. Not fighting this man would be the smart thing to do.
“We don’t have to get into this,” she began.
“Yes, we do.” For all the teeth showing, there was nothing Krai-like about Doc’s smile. It was a very Human smile. The last time Torin had seen that particular expression, she’d been looking in a mirror. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“For me?”
He shrugged and continued closing the distance between them. “For someone like you.”
His eyes were a flat emotionless blue, not gleaming in anticipation. He wasn’t going into this fight for the fun of it; he was the deadly serious kind of bugfuk crazy. The kind that would methodically torture Rogelio Page. The kind who would cut off a man’s toe when ordered to so that the pain would teach him his place.
“Everyone figures the military broke him . . .
Torin shifted her weight. This would not be a long fight, and only one of them would survive it. She noted the minor damage she’d already suffered as potential weak points she’d have to guard. Her heart began to beat faster. In all honesty, she was just as glad he hadn’t backed down.
Unfortunately, time was on his side. She couldn’t wait for him to make the first move.
Doc blocked her kick, dropped, and slid under her leg. Torin twisted on the ball of her foot and the side of his fist slammed into the meaty part of her thigh instead of the joint. When she pushed off his shoulders in order to flip around and face him again, he dropped further. She used her weight to drive him into the deck, but he tucked his feet under his body and threw himself backward.
She kneed him in the kidneys. Rolled clear.
He rolled with her, crushing the fingers of her right hand against the deck.
Her kick knocked him back just far enough to free her hand, spraying the deck with blood from the split along a cracked cheekbone.
They scrambled back up onto their feet and Torin blocked a body blow. He lunged sideways and her stiffened left hand jabbed into his shoulder instead of his throat.
His arm spasmed. His other hand closed around her wrist.
Lubricated by the blood from the earlier bite, she twisted in his grip, negating most of the torque, and slammed her forehead into his nose.
His knee came up, hard. Torin felt a rib crack, but she moved with the blow and slammed the point of her other elbow into the thinner bone at his temple.
He staggered and released her but got an arm up in time to stop her from taking out his right eye—a blow actually intended to distract from the hard one, two, three jab to the solar plexus. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged and, fighting for breath, he fell to the deck.
Swiping at the blood dripping from her forehead, Torin gasped, “Stay down.”
Doc didn’t have breath enough to laugh, but he tried it anyway.
Teeth bloody, he surged forward, curve of his shoulders tucked under her knees, weight slamming her to the deck. Torin wrapped her