He grabbed his damaged hand. “You broke my finger, you stupid bitch.”
“Unless you knock this shit off, that won’t be the only thing I break.”
He roared and bull-rushed her, his thick arms spread wide.
She easily sidestepped his charge, clenched his left arm as he went by, and ripped his elbow up even as she brought his wrist inward at a drastic angle. When he tried to pull free, she drove a bony knee into his already damaged right kidney. Ken yelled out in pain as she used his arm to lever him to the dirt once more, while he screamed obscenities at her.
He reached with his other hand to his back and a pistol appeared in his hand. He shrieked in fury, “I’m gonna kill you, you mutherfu—”
He didn’t finish his sentence because Cain let go of his arm, grabbed both sides of his head, and pulled him toward her; at the same time she smashed her very hard knee directly into his face. He fell back with the blunt impact, but still managed to bring the gun up, and fired. The shot passed within a few inches of her head.
As he staggered up, Cain charged forward and hit him with two quick jabs to the jaw and a left hook to the oblique, which again dropped him to his knees. She gripped his wrist and struggled to break his hold on the gun. The son of a bitch was strong as a bull, she had to give him that.
He suddenly lunged for her, hitting her in the throat with the crown of his head. She fell back, her breathing labored from the blow, but she had managed to wrench the pistol away from him. Then he grabbed her hand and tried to pull the gun free.
This was getting way past critical, she thought.
Cain brought her knee up and hit him right in the chest with it, twice. He staggered back but pulled her with him, both of them still holding the gun. His finger managed to reach the trigger and pulled it. The shot blasted out of the gun and smacked into the wall of the motel.
Okay, Cain thought, I need to end this.
The move she was contemplating was complex, but she’d done it a few times in a cage fight. Still holding on to the gun with one hand, she got a headlock on him with her other and used that as a fulcrum point. She lifted herself off the ground so that he was supporting her entire weight as well as his. She arched back, her face pointed to the sky, and pulled with all her strength. He flipped over her as she went under him. At the last possible moment she let go. His head slammed into the dirt as she managed to lithely roll through on the other side.
A moment later Cain rose holding the pistol, because the torque on the flip move had forced him either to let go or blow out his rotator.
Cain stepped back, her chest heaving, and looked down at the pile of Ken on the ground bleeding and unconscious.
“Holy shit!”
Cain gagged, spit up, and rubbed at her bruised throat before looking over at Painter’s Pants Man, who was standing there goggle-eyed, his Bud still in hand.
“What?” asked Cain.
“You just kicked the crap out of Ken,” he said in disbelief.
“So?”
“But you’re a girl and he’s a guy.”
“That’s not an answer,” she said in a croaky voice.
She knelt down and examined Ken. He was unconscious, but she checked his pulse. It was strong. She tugged on his arm and one of his legs. Though unconscious, his body reacted to the pull and the limbs involuntarily jerked back.
Okay, didn’t seem to be any spinal damage from his head hitting the ground.
She rose and looked at Rosa. “You okay?”
Rosa was staring down at Ken with stark fear.
“Madre de Dios. He . . . he will kill me when he wakes up.”
“Go get your things,” said Cain.
“Que?”
“You got any kids? Any . . . ni?os?”
Rosa shook her head. “We’re not . . . married.”
“Okay, go get your things. I’ll take you to a place where you’ll be safe.”
Rosa ran back into her room and they could hear her banging and slamming things.
“Hey!”
Cain turned to see the office woman striding toward her.
“Hey what?”
“You assaulted Ken.”
“I was defending myself.”
“I don’t think so. I’m going to have to call the police,” she said.
“I thought you might do that when he was beating the shit out of Rosa.”
“He was just disciplining her. You shouldn’t have butted in.”
“Well, the fact is, we’re leaving,” said Cain.
“Who’s leaving?”
“Me and Rosa.”
The woman said stubbornly, “You’re not getting your money back. No refunds.”
“Yeah, I can see how you might think that.”
“’Cause it’s true.”
“How long has Ken been here?” asked Cain.
“A month.”
Cain pulled out her phone. “Then I’ll make the call to the cops.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” the woman exclaimed, utterly thrown by this abrupt change in the discussion.
“Ken broke his parole. So I’m notifying the cops that he’s here and that you’ve been harboring him for a month.”
“Shit, are you drunk or what? How do you know he’s on parole?”
In answer Cain pointed to a tat on Ken’s arm. “That’s the membership symbol for the Aryan Brotherhood. They’re a prison hate group. You get that tat when you go inside. I can tell it’s a prison tat because it’s a shitty job; they use melted-down junk for ink and crappy, homemade shivs to do it. Now Ken’s on the outside. He’s a young guy. Parole is usually for quite a few years. That tat looks almost brand-new. But he’s got a knife and a gun. And he just assaulted a woman. Triple-strike parole violations. And you just admitted that you know he does this regularly. So that makes you an accessory. That’ll get you at least a year in jail, too.”
The woman took a step back, her confidence draining away along with all the color in her face. “How do you know so much about all that?”
Cain knew all about that because she had been picked up hitchhiking and then assaulted by one of these “Brothers.” She’d briefly been held against her will before escaping, and had left the dude looking a lot like Ken did right now.
But she said with authority, “I’m a cop.”
“Bullshit! Show me your badge. And what would you be doing here?”
“I’m undercover investigating some of the lowlifes in the area, so I’m not carrying a badge. Besides, you think every gal could take out somebody like Ken without special training?”
It was sometimes stunning to Cain how easily she could produce lies that sounded authentic, like she had with the security guard that morning. But for most of her life Cain had been in situations where coming up with an alternate reality on the fly and under stressful situations—and making it sound so real that sometimes she believed it herself—was the only thing that allowed her to keep breathing.
Practice makes perfect. And practice under penalty of death makes better than perfect.