Maelstrom

Chapter 15: Taking Out the Trash

With the sound of my footsteps quieted, I was able to hear the much heavier sound of a pair of larger feet as they thudded to the ground. I spun around and caught Red Shirt's sucker punch on the corner of my mouth, rather than behind my ear as he'd probably intended. That, in turn, meant that I fell flat on my butt and backpack when I staggered and slipped, rather than landing onto my face, out cold.

The pain of the blow made my vision go white for the briefest instant, but I briskly pushed it aside to focus on my attacker.

The asshole seemed just as mad, but unfortunately less drunk, as he was when he was thrown out of the club a few hours ago. Not good.

He lurched toward me, obviously intent on landing a few kicks with his heavy boots before he moved on to whatever else he had planned for me this evening. As he closed in I scissored my legs in his, catching him by surprise, and he went down hard.

I rolled away from him and onto my feet in one smooth, practiced move. Red Shirt was up on his knees already and would soon be upright. I didn't wait but delivered a swift kick, careful to bring the toe of my boot into the side of his ribcage, rather than kicking him in the stomach and possibly getting my foot caught beneath his collapsing weight. Or in his hands, if he was fast enough.

A faint popping sound and the jerk's gasp of pain told me I'd connected, and probably broken a rib. He grabbed his side and turned his pain-contorted face to growl at me. "Bitch!" he spat out.

Without a second thought, I launched another kick, this time catching Red Shirt right underneath the chin. The man's head snapped back and he collapsed bonelessly into the blackened snow.

Fear was making my breath come in shallow, panting gasps. I forced myself to take some deep breaths, head down and hands resting on my knees, before deciding what to do next. After a moment I straightened, and saw a bodyguard standing outside the club's alley door.

It was one of Alkaev's private security, the man who had come to my rescue earlier and tossed Red Shirt through Asylum's front doors, the guard who had then been stationed ten feet away from me for the rest of my shift. I hadn't seen him again after the bar closed, but here he was – about six and a half feet of bristling Miami muscle, his long black wool overcoat suggesting he didn't just duck out for a smoke. I swallowed audibly.

The guard walked over to the pile of crumpled dickhead on the ground and expertly took the pulse in his neck. Apparently satisfied, he stood and gave me a once over.

"I was told to follow you to the bus stop to make sure you weren't bothered," he rumbled. He looked back at Red Shirt. "Seems that was unnecessary."

My heart gave a traitorous leap – Alkaev was still looking out for me – and I squashed it viciously. "Oh, I don't know," I said, gingerly touching my swelling lip. My fingers came back bloody. "I'm always up for a little back-up in a back alley brawl."

He crossed the short distance between us and put a massive, blunt-fingered hand under my chin to tilt my face brusquely into the light. I was sure I looked like hell under the buzzing golden glare of the sodium light. He released me.

"Come back in and put some ice on that," he ordered me.

I balked. I did not want to chance running into Alkaev in my current state: bloody, clearly beaten on his property, and frankly, feeling a little more vulnerable than I ever liked to feel. I hesitated, looking down at the unconscious body in the alley.

"How did no one else see him first?" the guard asked. I wasn't sure if he was actually talking to me, or simply musing aloud to himself. "He was obviously waiting for you."

I blinked. He was right. Every Asylum employee, aside from Stefano, Alkaev, and the boss's two-man detail, had filed out of this door before me. Red Shirt had no way of knowing I'd be last, so he had to have been waiting here at least twenty or thirty minutes, but apparently no one saw him. If they had, someone – Chauncey, Shari, Bruno, one of the bouncers – would have come back inside and alerted security.

I looked around, trying to find a place where he might have hidden that would still allow him to watch as staff exited the club and see which direction they took out of the alley.

I remembered the loud crunch of snow that had made me turn around – a single crunch, and much louder than a footstep would be, loud like someone landing from a drop.

I looked up. The ladder of the club's fire escape was still in place, ending about eight feet from the ground, but the nearby dumpster had two small piles of snow near the wheels on one end. I walked around to the other side. There was a rectangular patch of bare pavement on the other side of the trash receptacle, about two feet wide.

"There," I pointed. The guard came to my side to look. "He pushed the dumpster over a couple feet, climbed on top, and climbed up to the fire escape," I explained. "He waited up there until he saw me come out alone. The sound of all this frozen slush under my feet covered the sounds of him climbing down."

I turned and looked again at Red Shirt. "He couldn't have been up there this whole time; he doesn't have a coat on." It was probably still in Asylum's coat check, if he'd even had one. I looked down the alleyway toward the street. "He could have gone to that 24-hour diner around the corner and waited until it was closing time." I shuddered; that would suggest a sustained period of anger, hours of thinking about what he wanted to do. And those thoughts had led him back here to wait for me, crouching in the cold for what probably seemed like hours rather than minutes. I didn't want to think about what that said about Red Shirt's state of mind, or his plans for me.

The bodyguard had been following my pointing finger and my explanation. He grunted. "Pretty smart," he said. I wasn't sure if he was talking about my deductive reasoning or Red Shirt's plot, but decided not to ask. He walked over to the unconscious body and gave it a tremendous kick in the ribs. I heard another crunch as the motionless form was lifted a few inches off the ground, and wondered if I was going to have to be the one to call the ambulance.

"I'll take care of this trash," the hulk said, effectively answering my question. "You get back inside and put some ice on that lip."

I shook my head. "I really don't want to," I blurted out. "I just want to get home. It's pretty cold out here; the air will probably be good enough."

He looked at me speculatively, but just said, "Wait." He pulled something white and flimsy out of his coat pocket and crossed the alley to crouch by the wall of the opposite building. A moment later he was back and holding something out for me to take.

It was a latex glove filled with relatively clean snow. I didn't want to think about why a bodyguard would be carrying latex gloves in his coat pocket. I took the proffered ice pack and held it to my lip, wincing slightly.

"Thanks," I said. I paused for a moment, then stuck out my hand. "I'm Lex."

Alkaev's man ignored the hand. "Mateo," he said after a moment. I smiled.

"I don't suppose there's any way we can keep this little incident just between us?" I asked in a rush. It was a stupid question and I knew it – Alkaev would hear about this in mere moments – but as much as that thought made me want to shrink into a tiny ball, at the very least I didn't want the other staff marveling about how I kicked some big guy's ass in the alley.

Mateo pulled himself up to his full impressive height. "It doesn't pay to gossip in my line of work," he said proudly.

I took that to mean that Alkaev and the rest of his detail would get all the gory details, but that the Asylum bar staff would be kept in the dark.

"Thanks again, Mateo," I called and hustled out of the alley to try to find a bus, improvised ice pack pressed to my puffing lip.