Stokes canted his head to one side. “You’re not listening. I’m not asking, I’m telling you how it’s going to be. I need this position. I’m not working vice and I’m sure as hell not going back to patrol. So you just write the letter and give me a dog and we’re even.”
He had taken a few steps toward her when the curtains in the window beside her collapsed from the inside and Oleg appeared in the window, lips drawn back from his feet as he furiously tried to scratch his way through the glass.
Stokes banged the glass with a fist and laughed as Oleg’s fury redoubled. “How you doing, fella? That’s right. Me and your bitch handler are gonna have some good times together.”
Yardley’s left foot began to jiggle. This wasn’t the attitude of a sane man. It was way too reckless for an officer on the job. Even bad cops knew they could push their outlaw tendencies only so far. The appearance of respectability was essential.
“Your department’s let you go.”
Stokes’s attention snapped back to her. “That’s why I need the letter. I need my job and my position as a K-9 officer back.”
She couldn’t get him either of those things, even if she wanted to. But she knew better than to further anger him. “You’re not the only officer who’s been turned down by the kennel.” Keep it neutral, she thought. Don’t acknowledge his anger with your own. “There’s at least one person a year who doesn’t—isn’t compatible with our program.”
“Bullshit.” His neutral expression slipped. Anger glinted in reflected flashes of lightning. “I watched you. You get your jollies out of putting grown men through their paces, making them watch you. Eager to follow you around like lapdogs in case you give one of them a chance to cover you.”
Yardley stopped listening. She couldn’t afford to take the trip he was about to give her into the inner workings of his mind. She got it. He was going to attack her. It was a struggle she needed to win. That’s all she needed to know.
She was out of practice. Hadn’t taken a self-defense course in a while. She wasn’t by nature a fighter. Even as a child she was always struck before she hit back. But she always hit back harder, longer, stronger until her opponent cried for mercy. Reservation life wasn’t for the faint of heart.
She didn’t realize she was backing up until she noticed he was coming toward her. “—think you’re hot shit. What you need is for a man to show you who’s in charge. What you need is a good fucking over.”
She hesitated too long. His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist just as she was about to swing the two-by-four-foot screen at him. She cried out as he twisted her wrist painfully and her fingers lost their grip. Her legs hit the banister just below butt level. He tried to jerk her forward but she used the screwdriver in her free hand and stabbed at his wrist holding her hostage. He cried out, freeing her. And then she was falling, off the edge of the porch.
The sky opened up in that moment. As she hit the ground painfully, weight on one shoulder while the bricks of the flower bed border dug into her back and scraped one elbow, rain like a fire hose sprayed down on her. Scrabbling like a turtle, she tried to right herself.
Stokes got there before she gained her feet.
He didn’t say a word, just grabbed her from behind and flipped her onto her back. And then he dropped his full weight on her as she sprawled in the grass.
Yardley worked with strong muscular animals, still donned a bite suit on occasion, and knew how to leverage the bite of ninety-plus pounds of canine fury to stay on her feet. But she hadn’t been in a real fight since she could vote. Now she was in the fight of her life.
He was tugging at her cargoes. He was bent on rape. That. Was. Not. Going. To. Happen.
She was so angry, so angry. She reached into her pocket, looking for the hammer she’d brought outside. She found it.
She was remembering things now. Go for the soft parts. Neck, crotch, eyes. Painful and messy but effective.
Stokes had forgotten about her as an adversary. He was in full rape mode. His mouth was all over her, her neck, a breast he’d freed. She was drowning from the rain pouring into her nostrils as she lay pinned to the ground. She raised the hammer very slowly, twisting it so that the claws would strike. Something soft. Something vulnerable. More vulnerable than she was.
She swung but didn’t connect. He was flying backward. Propelled by what seemed to be superhuman forces—a mini tornado? Then she heard voices, two men shouting obscenities as they struggled. Freed, she levered forward into a sitting position. That’s when she saw two men backlit by a vehicle’s brights. Kye McGarren had Vance Stokes in a head lock on his knees.
It was surreal, so surprising, she shouted the first thing that came to mind. “What are you doing here?”
Kye didn’t bother to answer as he rose and hauled the man to his feet.