Devine planted his left foot firmly on the ground as his fulcrum. Doug’s head was lined up like a ball on a stand for an eager Tballer to bang a home run off. He let loose a ferocious roundhouse kick that impacted the left side of Doug’s head with both power and velocity. The man’s head kissed his right shoulder and his eyes rolled back in his head, as his brain checked out. A moment later he joined WASP on the ground for a long sleep and a painful awakening. This had all taken seconds.
Rick grabbed Devine from behind, lifted him off the ground, and threw him face-first against the brick wall. He struck it hard, painfully so. His shoulder howled, and his face bled and swelled with the impact with the rough brick. Then Rick slammed against him, driving him into the brick wall another centimeter, and cutting his skin below both eyes. Then he landed a trio of hard punches to Devine’s back, which was stupid. Head shots would have been far more effective, particularly against unyielding brick. That was what Devine would have done. You couldn’t fight back if you were unconscious.
The man stepped back to view his handiwork. However, if Rick thought his opponent was down and done, he was seriously mistaken. That might cut it in college football, but not in Devine’s world. And poor Rick was about to realize the consequences of his misjudgment. Devine levered off the wall and used that momentum to boomerang back on the former Ivy League lineman.
He gripped the man’s throat with one hand while he hit him with two uppercuts straight into the diaphragm with the other. Then he landed a bruising hook into the oblique. And one more on top of it. Rick moaned and staggered back, with Devine still holding on to his throat. In combat, with a serrated Ranger knife in hand, Devine would have gutted the guy in the midsection area, upward slash and then side to side, to get to the intestines and aorta, and the fight would be over.
Devine once more glanced at Stamos, who was looking terrified and stunned into silence at what she was seeing. In response, Devine let go of his neck grip and pushed Rick violently back against the wall, where he slumped down holding his gut and his throat. Devine had never not finished a fight, and he was unsure about this time. Maybe he was mellowing in his early thirties.
Still looking at Stamos, Devine turned and started to walk toward her.
“Look out!” she screamed.
He pivoted and put up a blocking arm. The trash can lid wielded by Rick hit him on the forearm. It hurt like a bitch, but broke nothing, only bending the flimsy metal nearly in half. But if it had hit him in the head, it would have been a different story. Devine planted a fist into Rick’s chest right at the heart, which fired off messages of cardiac panic to his brain. He then leapt forward and used the crown of his head to deliver a staggering blow to the man’s chin. Rick’s lower teeth jammed into his upper teeth and blood shot out as gums and hardened calcium collided violently.
Rick screamed and slumped to the ground sobbing, his hands pressed against his mangled mouth.
Devine glanced over at Stamos, who looked stunned in the face of this carnage.
He turned and walked toward her. She backed away, looking fearful.
He wiped the blood and snot off his face and onto his sleeve. “Thanks for the warning. And call an ambulance for those guys.” He paused and added, “And I’ll see you at the office, sweet cheeks.”
He walked down the street, put on his helmet, cranked his bike, and blew past as she stood outside an alley where three large and disappointed young men lay with the city’s trash.
CHAPTER
13
DEVINE SLEPT FOR A COUPLE hours, with an ice pack around his arm and another on his shoulder and a third bag on his face. He’d applied ointment to the cuts and brick rash. He rose, put on his workout clothes, jogged over to the high school football field that was right behind his neighborhood, and started his daily workout.
A tractor tire lay on the football field. The football players used it to build up the thrust strength of their arms and legs. Devine flipped it down to one end, turned around and flipped it back to the other, until he was drenched in sweat. With every flip he had a new thought about Sara Ewes and her death, and Cowl and Comely. Then there were regular car tires that he threw like discuses to build up his obliques. As he did so, Devine thought about his new gig with Emerson Campbell.
Next, Devine ran the bleacher steps until he was soaked in even more sweat. He did pull-ups and chin-ups on a pull-up bar. One hundred of each. Twenty at a time followed by twenty seconds of rest. Two hundred push-ups, fifty at a time. With each rep he imagined Sara swinging on the end of that cord.