“Tink’s here,” he said, “he just stepped out. He’ll be back—”
The man behind him stepped on the cable, jerked his arm.
“Who are you?”
“Tom Hawkins. Tom Bowe-Hawkins. “ That name had never been an asset in his life, but it seemed that way now. “Excuse me. “ He closed his hand on the cable to pull it free, looking at the man dead on. The trouble warning was flashing through his nervous system. It doubled when the guy didn’t move his foot. “I pay favors,” he said.
“Well, what about some favors?” the clown said. “You handing it out, boy?”
“You want meals off-schedule, you ask and say please, or you talk to Cook about—”
The guy jerked the cable. He was ready for it, but the guy outweighed him. He had the counter corner between them. He used that for a brake, but the pull put his arm in hostile territory and hurt a wrist getting sorer by every pull on it—hurt it considerably, and the guy grabbed his arm to jerk him around the counter and into the galley.
Another jerked on him and he got him—threw all the weight he owned at the target he found clear—the guy’s throat, that being what he exposed, and grabbed the guy’s sleeve as he slid across the counter and the others closed in. He had one hand free, the other was tangled with the cable, and he couldn’t swing, but he tried to grab the cable and get it around a neck, any neck, he wasn’t particular. He got part-way up when he landed, got hits in anywhere he saw open, between efforts to keep them from doing a complete take-down, the way they were trying, not just the one, all of them. “Get him, get him, get him,” someone yelled, and as the sheer weight shoved him down, his head hit the cabinet handle, boomed off the doors, his shoulders hit the floor and five or six guys were piling on him, weighing his legs down, hanging onto his arms. A blow caught his temple and knocked him blind, a knee landed in his gut, and he kept trying to swing, but he couldn’t get the one hand clear, couldn’t get out of the vee they’d jammed him into, and couldn’t fend the next blow or the next or the next…
“What in hell are you doing?” somebody yelled, and he kept trying to swing—caught one with his elbow. “Break it up. Now, damn it! Break it up!”
Somebody waded in and pulled the guys off him, told them to get the hell out—didn’t sound like Jamal, didn’t sound like Tink… he still hadn’t gotten his sight back, but whoever had gotten them off ordered them out, said he wouldn’t put them on report, just get the hell out. “This is my brother,” somebody yelled next his ear, the same somebody holding him on his feet. “You lay a hand on him again and I’ll kill you.”
Christian? He didn’t believe it—but somebody who called him brother was holding him up, arm around his bruised ribs. His knees weren’t working at all well, he couldn’t get his breath. One of them had hit him in the gut, and he couldn’t keep his feet when his rescuer let him down to the deck against the cabinet and lifted his eyelids one after another.
“‘m all right,” he said, trying to get his wind back. “Can’t see—they caught me one in the head.”
“Goes away,” Christian said, and it was, to the extent he could make out lights and darks, the white of the floor, the dark of Christian’s knee. He was preoccupied getting his breath and still didn’t comprehend why Christian who’d given him, hell till now was holding him from falling on his face—his Polly girl’d hold him like that, defend him like that, but, different, he thought dimly, different, never had anybody pull him out of a fight who hadn’t likewise lit into him, and him being close to falling on his face, and the rescue being somebody he didn’t otherwise trust… he didn’t know what he thought or felt… whether he resented it or didn’t when Christian shouldered his weight, ran a hand through his hair and called him a damned ass in a tone gentler than Marie ever used with the same endearment.