game.
Judging the moment of his appearance by the sound of his swiftly
approaching footsteps, intending to scare the living hell out of him,
Heather moved forward. With perfect timing, she met him at the turn in
the sidewalk.
She was surprised to see he was taller than she was. She had expected
them to be ten years old, eleven, twelve at the oldest.
The prowler let out a faint
“Ah!” of alarm.
Putting the fear of God into them was going to be a harder proposition
than if they’d been younger. And no retreating now. They’d drag her
down. And then . .
She kept moving, collided with him, rammed him backward across the
eight-foot-wide setback and into the ivy-covered concrete-block wall
that marked the southern property line.
The can of spray paint flew out of his hand, clattered against the
sidewalk.
The impact knocked the wind out of him. His mouth sagged open, and he
gasped for breath.
Footsteps. The second one. Running toward her.
Pressed against the first boy, face-to-face, even in the darkness, she
saw that he was sixteen or seventeen, maybe older. Plenty old enough
to know better.
She rammed her right knee up between his spread legs and turned away
from him as he fell, wheezing and retching, into the flower bed along
the wall.
The second boy was coming at her fast. He didn’t see the gun, and she
didn’t have time to stop him with a threat.
She stepped toward him instead of away, spun on her left foot, and
kicked him in the crotch with her right. Because she’d moved into him,
it was a deep kick, she caught him with her ankle and the upper part of
the bridge of her foot instead of with her toes.
He crashed past her, slammed into the sidewalk, and rolled against the
first boy, afflicted by an identical fit of retching.
A third one was coming at her along the sidewalk from the front of the
house, but he skidded to a halt fifteen feet away and started to back
up.
“Stop right there,” she said. “I’ve got a gun.” Though she raised the
Korth, holding it in a two-hand grip, she did not raise her voice, and
her calm control made the order more menacing than if she had shouted
it in an
He stopped, but maybe he couldn’t see the revolver in the dark. His
body language said he was still contemplating making a break for it.
“So help me God,” she said, still at a conversational level, “I’ll blow
your brains out.” She was surprised by the cold hatred in her voice.
She wouldn’t really have shot him. She was sure of that. Yet the
sound of her own voice frightened her . . . and made her wonder.
His shoulders sagged. His entire posture changed. He believed her
threat.
A dark exhilaration filled her. Nearly three months of intense taste
kwon do and women’s defense classes, provided free to members of police
families three times a week at the division gym, had paid off. Her
right foot hurt like blazes, probably almost as badly as the second
boy’s crotch hurt him. She might have broken a bone in it, would
certainly be hobbling around for a week even if there wasn’t a
fracture, but she felt so good about nailing the three vandals that she
was happy to suffer for her triumph.
“Come here,” she said. “Now, come on, come on.”
The third kid raised his hands over his head. He was holding a spray
can in each of them.
“Get down on the ground with your buddies,” she demanded, and he did as
he was told.
The moon sailed out from behind the clouds, which was like slowly
bringing up the stage lights to quarter power on a darkened set. She
could see well enough to be sure that they were all older teenagers,
sixteen to eighteen.
She could also see that they didn’t fit any popular stereotypes of
taggers. They weren’t black or Hispanic. They were white boys.
And they didn’t look poor, either. One of them wore a well-cut leather
jacket, and another wore a cable-knit cotton sweater with what appeared