LITMIR.BIZ

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than the woman had.

      Shocked by the force of Novak’s grip, the man dropped his victim in a hurry. Novak had learned a long time ago never to waste time or expend undue effort in a fistfight. If you’re going to mess it up with somebody, mess it up hard and fast. He doubled his right fist and punched the guy in the nose, a hard, quick jab, the kind that put all the strength in your shoulder behind it and would send blood gushing like a geyser. Let a bully face a man bigger and stronger, a man who gave no quarter and played by no rules, and see how long he lasted. Novak’s blow was brutal enough to knock the guy off his feet. He went over backward and under the water and came up choking on the blood and the briny seawater.

      Novak felt the urge to hold him under the way he’d done to the boy, let him endure the kind of panic the boy had no doubt felt as his breath ran out, but decided to forgo that unless it became necessary. Sometimes a punch that brutal would end the game before it got started. Novak shoved the goon under again, and the guy floundered around a bit, perhaps drowning, but maybe not. Novak didn’t really care, but he got a hold on the back of the stupid leather vest and towed the limp man back onto the beach. He dropped him on his face in the sand, where he lay hacking and strangling.

      Once the guy got his breath back, he unwisely decided it would be a good idea to engage Novak. That meant he was not only a big bully but stupid, too. Novak watched him struggle to stand up and then stagger drunkenly around with his fists up like a gentleman boxer in the 1890s. He threw a punch so wild that Novak didn’t have to move, but then his opponent made the mistake of grabbing Novak’s arm. So Novak sent another hard jab into the guy’s solar plexus. That did the trick. The guy grabbed his belly, gasping and coughing, and appeared to pass out on his back in the shallows. Novak dragged him up farther onto the sand, dropped him there, and then looked around for the woman and kid. He was pretty sure now that they were Claire’s clients. He could barely see them. They were hightailing it up the deserted beach at a full run.

      Novak started out after them, curious as to what the hell was going on. His gut was telling him that the woman was Alcina Castillo, so he needed to catch up with her and get her the hell out of danger. Wherever that hooligan had come from, there were bound to be others incoming and dressed just like him. They liked to travel around in packs. About ten yards up the beach, he heard them behind him. He turned around. Two guys were running straight at him. A third guy was kneeling beside their bleeding buddy. They all had on those skull vests. Novak stood his ground and waited for them to reach him. Both were bigger than the first guy, but neither had weight or height on Novak. They didn’t look particularly strong or intimidating. They looked like the kind of guys who needed guns to take care of business because they couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag. They also looked like the type who would use those guns to hunt for victims in numbers, like timber wolves.

      Novak was unarmed, which was unusual for him, but he’d jogged the beach every night since he’d arrived with no problems. It was a tame tourist area and not known for serious criminal activity. That was about to change, but Novak could mess it up with the best of them, and he could disarm these two kids any day of the week. His military training often came in handy. So he stood and waited for them to get close enough to put down.

      They had the smarts to pull up a couple of yards away and point their Ruger semiautomatics at his bare chest. In the condo’s lights, Novak ascertained that one man looked to be Hispanic, but the other one was definitely Caucasian. Both had heavy beards and long ponytails tied at the nape and more tats on their bare arms than a Folsom Prison lifer. To Novak, they looked more like frat boys at a Hells Angels party. They didn’t threaten him verbally, which surprised Novak, judging from his past encounters with similar types who liked to scream out profane threats and cocky bravado.

      “You got a problem?” he asked them, already on the balls of his feet and ready to move, only waiting for one of them to step in closer. These sorts always came closer so they could attempt to intimidate him. These two didn’t. Instead, the short Hispanic man said, “Shut up and start walking. Down that way.” He motioned toward the nature preserve with his gun.

      “How about telling me why I should do that?”

      The speaker wore a gang-inspired black-and-yellow bandanna tied across his forehead. He had lots of badges on his vest, mainly skulls and crossbones in various configurations to match the big one on his back. The name Mario was embroidered across the front. The other guy’s said Larry. That wasn’t smart at all. If they were going out to perpetrate crimes like drowning women and children, they shouldn’t wear their names on their clothes. These guys were stupid, all right, but definitely members of a gang. Novak needed to know which gang it was; he’d found out the hard way that these sorts of clubs posed different threat levels.

      Mario said, “Just start walking, unless you want us to end you right here.”

      “Maybe you should tell me where we’re going?”

      “You just asking for a beatdown, aren’t you, dude?” That was the white guy, getting in on the fake bluster.

      Novak hated it when somebody called him dude; it was just a little quirk he had. Unless it was Lori Garner, who loved to spill out all kinds of social media crap and abbreviations he’d never heard of, but he liked her and she was good looking, so she got away with it. These two didn’t appeal to him. “I’m not going anywhere with you, so get the hell out of my face before I take that gun and shove it up your ass.”

      What that got him was Mario’s gun barrel jammed up under his chin. A mistake, that was. Novak moved so fast that the younger guy was caught flat-footed. Ducking to his left, he snatched the gun out of the man’s hands before he could even move, then slammed it hard against his cheekbone. He shoved him to the ground and beaded the Ruger on the other guy’s face. This one was not so circumspect and pulled his trigger in panic. Novak felt the burn of the bullet on his left biceps. It barely tagged his arm, so he ignored that and disarmed the second guy and then knocked him unconscious with a hard uppercut with the Ruger. Unfortunately, the condo lights went out about the time two more gangbangers showed up out of the dark and grabbed Novak from behind. He managed to throw one off but was now outnumbered by three. So he gave it up, stood still, and put his hands up as a gun barrel was thrust hard into his kidneys.

      Lucky for him, they didn’t shoot him right then and there. That was a mistake on their part. It probably meant they weren’t used to murdering people in cold blood, or maybe they didn’t want to do it in front of a four-building condo complex. Maybe they thought drowning was less noticeable. They started prodding him down the beach with four weapons pointed at him, front, back, and either side, boxing him in as tightly as Secret Service agents guarding a president. They stopped next to the first guy Novak had put down, who was still wallowing and moaning in the shallows.

      Fingering the flesh wound on his arm, Novak decided it was nothing to worry about. He glanced at the condo complex, hoping for signs of concerned residents dialing 911, but no such luck. It was pretty much dark. Surf was too loud and the beach was too dark. Maybe he’d get lucky and some Good Samaritan hiding behind closed curtains had already summoned the cops. He listened for the shriek of sirens, but no luck there, either. He was on his own with a gang of incompetent but heavily armed little bullies. Not such good odds. Still, they had picked the wrong victim this time. He would wait until he got the chance and then take them down as best he could. He could take one of their guns easily enough, no problem. That would even things up considerably, so he said nothing and did what he was told.

      This whole altercation was all about the woman and boy, no doubt about it. Both had disappeared into the darkness and hopefully headed somewhere safe. These guys were not well-trained military personnel by any stretch of the imagination, but they weren’t Eagle Scouts, either. They weren’t as tough as they liked to think, but they knew how to pull a trigger, had already done so, and that made them dangerous and unpredictable. He would make his move at the right time and find out how tough they really were. Fortunately, they made no move to tie him up, thinking it was over and he was afraid of them.

      One particularly annoying guy kept jabbing Novak in the back with his gun barrel. They were taking him into that nature preserve, which would be a damn good place to kill him and leave his corpse to rot hidden under

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