With Private Eyes Part 18

"Here go, then, Jarmon. Catch!" The one holding her shoved her at one of the others. Who laughed and shoved her at the next one. Who spun her around, squeezed her breast and pa.s.sed her to another.

She stomped on someone's foot and was spun around hard again, nearly falling. Her purse slipped from her shoulder and she swung it at someone. He grabbed it, threw it on the ground and flung her at the next one. She tried to punch him, missed and was spun to the next set of grasping hands-and the next. Faster and faster, they shoved her around in dizzy circles. She was terrified, cold, wet and furious. And helpless.

Oh G.o.d, dear G.o.d, please make them stop. Because she couldn't.

Until a low voice growled, "Let go of her."

The hands withdrew. She stopped moving. The world swung lazily around her once, twice, like a saucer rocking on its rim. Then settled.

Ethan stood six feet away. His legs were spread wide. He wore a black hat with silver conches circling the crown and a wide, flat brim, and he carried a black walking stick, wet and shiny from the rain. His trench coat was long and black and none too clean, and he looked huge. Wonderfully, fabulously big.

Also angry.

"Hey, man," one of them said. "We was just playin'. No one's hurt."

"Come here, Claudia."

Oh, yes. Good idea. She took a wobbly step toward him-and Hector's arm shot out and wrapped around her waist, hauling her up against him. He laughed. "Sorry, big man. Get your own woman. We found this one first."

"Wrong. She's mine. You need to let go of her. Now."

Claudia's street-corner friend had been right. When Hector got high, he got stupid. He laughed again. "I don' think so. You're big, but there's one of you and there's, let's see-one, two, three, four of us. Yep, four. An' I say we got dibs."

Things happened very fast then.

Ethan's stick shot out and tapped Hector on the head. He made a funny noise and let go of her, and this time she didn't hesitate-she shot straight for Ethan. But one of them grabbed her arm, spinning her around, and dammit! She'd had enough of being spun! She tried to knee him in the groin and connected with something, but the other two were going at Ethan real fast and one had a knife. Someone screamed.

Ethan's stick was everywhere. Thunk, crack, whap! A knee, a hand, someone's ribs-the knife went flying, so she stopped screaming, jerked herself free and got out of the way.

Only it was all over. Three of them were on the ground-two sitting, one flat out. That was Hector. His eyes were closed and there was blood on his head, mixing with the rain. Another one was cursing Ethan and clutching his thigh. He seemed to think his leg was broken. The fourth one was backing up, his hands held out, palms up. "I didn't pull steel on you, okay? Didn't hurt her none, either. No harm done, okay?"

Ethan made a noise low in his throat. It didn't sound like agreement.

Claudia gulped, cleared her throat and said, "I would really like to leave now."

"Get your purse."

She edged around the one clutching his leg and s.n.a.t.c.hed her bag from the ground.

Ethan was holding out his keys. His eyes never left her a.s.sailants. "Open the driver's side and climb in."

She ran to his car and did that. Her hands were shaking, so it took her a moment to get the key in the lock. Once inside, she stuck the key in the ignition, tossed her purse on the floorboard and scooted over.

Ethan was right behind her. "Duck," he said, and she did, and his stick went over her head and into the back seat as he slid behind the wheel. The door slammed shut.

One of them had gotten back on his feet. He was holding his side with one hand and a knife with the other, and he and the one that had been left standing were coming toward the car. Hector was still on the ground, as was the one whose leg might be broken.

Two more young men in red-and-black jackets came running out of the doorway the others had been lounging around.

Ethan gunned the car backward a couple of feet, jerked the steering wheel, shifted and pulled out from between the parked cars. He missed the one in front by nearly an inch.

Claudia let out her breath. Oh, my. She didn't feel well at all. "That was," she began, "you and your stick, I mean ... I've never seen anything like that."

"Claudia. Shut up."

She bristled and looked at him-took a good look at him-and saw the white-knuckled hands gripping the steering wheel, the white look around his eyes, and the thin, grim slash of his mouth.

Out of the frying pan, she thought. And remembered what Rick had told her about what happened years ago, when Ethan lost his temper back in high school. Guilt struck.

She shut up.

Eight.

T here was a buzzing in his ears. Ethan gripped the steering wheel as hard as he could. If he held on tightly enough, maybe the shaking inside him wouldn't get out.

He hadn't been this angry since he was sixteen. Or this scared, though back then the fear had hit after the fight, not before. When he was waiting to see if Robert Parkington would make it through surgery. Waiting to find out if he would be arrested. If he was a killer.

Trying to put that out of his mind was like trying not to think of a particular word. The images were just there. And the feelings.

He remembered the way Parkington's head had sounded when it hit the railing. A dull sort of crack, but loud. The second he'd heard that he'd known things had gone wrong. Bad-wrong, more wrong than anything since the day his aunt told him about his parents and the mugger his father had tried to fight off.

One of Robert's buddies had swung at Ethan, still p.i.s.sed and not realizing how wrong things were. Ethan had thrown him aside. Just picked him up and tossed him, and that shouldn't have been possible. The guy had to have weighed one-seventy, and while Ethan had been young and strong, he was no Superman.

But he'd had to get to Robert Parkington, who'd been lying so still, crumpled up against the iron railing. Lying where Ethan's blow had sent him, a blow struck in the heat of rage, with all his strength.

Parkington had been a bully and a coward, but he hadn't seriously hurt anyone. He hadn't deserved to come so near to dying. He wasn't a killer. Not like the pair of muggers who'd killed Ethan's parents. Or the lowlifes who'd been tormenting Claudia today.

This time he hadn't lost control. But it had been close. From one breath to the next he hadn't been sure he could hang on. Use your temper, don't lose it. That was what his sensei had told him later. Anger was a force, like electricity or gravity. Properly channeled, it could be used. Uncontrolled, it destroyed.

He'd done okay today. He'd stayed loose, let the anger flow through him instead of letting it direct him. He'd done the amount of damage he'd had to do to get Claudia safely away, and no more. But when he thought of her white face, the wild fear in her eyes, the way she'd tried to fight back... d.a.m.n them. Pathetic, miserable excuses for men, tossing Claudia around their circle like kids tormenting a kitten. He wanted to go back and hit them again. And again.

And when he thought of what would have happened to her if he hadn't come along... "Dammit, why don't you say something?"

"You told me to shut up."

"Since when do you do what you're told?" h.e.l.luva a time for her to discover a talent for obedience. He needed her to talk, to say stupid things and argue with him so he could yell at her.

"Could you put the heater on? I'm rather chilly." For the first time since getting in the car, he looked at her. She was sitting cross-legged, her arms hugged around her, her hair plastered to her cheeks and hanging down her back in sodden strings.

Not only was he violent, he was stupid, too. He might have enough adrenaline churning up his system to keep him warm for another year or two. She didn't. She was scared, cold and in shock.

He switched the heater on. "Are you okay?" he asked gruffly. "Hurt anywhere?"