Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 74668 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74668 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
I did lose my battle with my puke when Downy pulled the baton out.
Downy waited patiently for me to finish before he lifted me up, his hand underneath my arm.
He guided me around the body, and I kept my eyes tightly closed until we were well past the man and his prone body.
“That was sick,” I wheezed.
He tightened his hand on my arm minutely. “He shouldn’t have hit you.”
I snorted. “It wasn’t that bad.”
He stopped and turned me until I was staring at his face.
His blunt fingers lifted up until he touched my jaw area, and I winced from that touch alone, even though it was well away from the original injury.
“Yeah,” he murmured, staring into my eyes. “That’s what I thought.”
His jaw was hard, how I could tell through all the swelling over his own face was a miracle, but I managed to do it.
“Oh, Downy,” I whispered.
He leaned in and gave me the softest of kisses on my lips before turning around and starting back around the side of the building.
We weren’t noticed.
There was well over a hundred people in this part of the yard.
Men and women. Even some kids.
They were all hooting and hollering, and yelling about something we couldn’t see.
That’s when I realized that the fight had already started.
Downy kept a hold of my hand and walked up to the first person we saw that looked like he was officiating.
He had a long stick in his hand, and on the very end looked to be a Taser of some sort.
When a dog would get near, he’d zap it with the end of the stick.
Was that what a cattle prod looked like?
I wouldn’t know, though. I’d never seen one. Only heard about them.
Downy didn’t waste any time, though.
The first thing he did was cold cock the man.
Who dropped like a fucking stone to the wet grass at our feet.
I looked around to see if anyone had witnessed it, but all of their attention was on the dog fight.
My heart panged when I saw Peter and Mocha back to back, snarling and snapping at an approaching dog that looked like he was on steroids. I couldn’t even tell what breed he was by all the scars.
Downy bent down, recapturing my attention, and took the cattle prod. He handed it to me and said, “Watch my back.”
I nodded and took the improvised weapon, brandishing it like a fuckin’ avenging angel, even though everyone’s attention was still on the fight and not me.
However, we were on the man’s radar that was directly across from us.
His eyes were narrowed, and he reached behind him to get something, but a hole appeared in the middle of his chest, blooming scarlet right in front of my eyes.
I looked over in time to see Downy with a gun in his hand.
He was lowering it to his side as he scanned the area some more, eyes darting around like he was trying to see everything at once.
Which made me pay even more attention.
The crowd, I saw, was now looking at us instead of the dogs.
The dogs, however, didn’t stop. They still fought with a single-minded focus.
Just when all the men started towards us, a sudden flurry of people started to pour through the area. People came from…everywhere.
So many, in fact, that I got dizzy.
I would’ve gotten worried, too, if I hadn’t seen one of the first people to enter the fray.
My daddy started batting people around with the palms of his hands, popping one after the other like one would do with a tennis racket. Also similar to the way a cat pawed at a ball. Except my father was using people’s heads.
Big Papa was with him at his side, as he always was.
Downy’s relieved sigh had me turning to him just in time to see him yank the pole from my hand and wade over the rib high concrete barrier that kept the dogs in and fighting.
I felt someone at my side, and turned to see Nico there, standing at my shoulder like a sentry.
Relieved, I turned my attention back to Downy.
He walked through the dogs, not scared at all that they were fighting, and went to the two that mattered most to him.
Mocha and Peter were still back to back, but they had two large, muscular dogs on them.
They were holding them back, but just barely.
Using the cattle prod, he zapped the first dog he came to with his Taser.
Down like a sack of potatoes.
I’d never been so happy before in my life.
***
“How’d you find us?” I asked my dad as we waited for news on Downy.
“GPS,” he murmured.
I winced. He really hadn’t wanted to tell me he had GPS on me, I could tell.
“Where’s it at?” I asked quietly.
“Your birth control implant isn’t so much an implant, but a tracker,” he murmured.
I closed my eyes, not knowing what in the fuck to say to that.
“What. The. Fuck,” I asked, turning on him. “What the fuck, dad!”
He grimaced. The lines of his face multiplying as he waited for the melt down that he knew was coming. And oh, Good God Almighty, did I give it.
“You’ve got to be fucking shitting me!” I bellowed at the top of my lungs¸ drawing not just the attention of my mother, but every man in the room: cop and Dixie Warden alike.
He leaned forward, whispering to me warningly. “Sit down.”
“Sit down?” I asked shrilly. “You want me to sit down when you just told me that the ‘birth control implant’ in my arm that, now that I think about was kind of weird for mom to offer to take me to get, is not actually an implant, but a GP-fucking-S?”
“Yes,” he said, no bullshitting.
I laughed humorlessly. “Jesus, this is fuckin’ rich.”
And I couldn’t complain, could I?
My father had saved not only mine, but Downy’s life, today. All because of a GPS he’d had implanted in my arm over three years ago.
“You know,” I said, a thought occurring to me. “I could be pregnant, all because you fucked me over. Do you understand what I’m saying?”