Page 93 of Reaper
Diesel laughs and chimes in. “We wouldn’t judge you if you were. Water sports are no big deal, just make sure you clean up after yourself. This is a public place, and we don’t want to be rude.”
“I’m not going back there to pee on my lady.”
“I didn’t say you were. She seems the type to top. But whatever you do, again, don’t be rude.”
I flip him the bird and head toward the dank, dark hallway leading to the bathrooms.
The hallway yawns empty and smells like bleach is losing a war with stale beer and whatever unholy scents are wafting from the bathrooms. Fluorescent tubes hum, a mosquito buzz of light over sticky tile and a beer-stained wall poster curling at the corners. I pass the men’s room and head for the door with the cracked pink sign. There’s a sound on the other side — low, muffled, like someone breathing hard through a hand.
I stop with my palm an inch from the swing door. My brain does a quick, ugly reality check. It’s possible she’s doing exactly what people do in bathrooms, and I’m about to shoulder my way into something that kills whatever fragile, bright thing we’re building. I can live with a lot. Watching her take a — whatever involves heavy breathing and grunting in the bathroom — probably isn’t where I want to plant my flag tonight.
Then the wall thuds. Something slams into tile. A deeper grunt cuts through the door — masculine and hurt. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and the need turns into something irresistible.
I hit the door, and it slaps open into chaos.
Adriana is squared up by the sinks, shirt slashed high and wet with a line of blood across her stomach that makes my guts turn to ice. She’s got one forearm up, braced against a stocky guy’s wrist to keep a knife from dipping lower. Another man is climbing out from a shattered stall door, with a thin stiletto in his hand and a wolfish grin under a patchy beard. The third one’s flanking left, knuckles white around a box cutter. Blue eyes, cheap aftershave, Russian prison-star tattoos peeking over a collar. My night, ruined.
“Hey, fuck you guys,” I hear myself say, and then I’m already moving.
The one closest to me lunges without looking. He figures big and dumb equals easy. He’s wrong. I parry his wrist with my left — his blade grazes the back of my hand, hot and thin— and I slam his forearm down on the sink edge. There’s a crack like breaking kindling, and his fingers spasm open. His knife clatters. I shove his face into the mirror hard enough to spiderweb the glass, then bounce the back of his skull off the hand dryer. He drops like laundry.
The bearded one whistles something in Russian I don’t need translated. The one with Adriana jerks, trying to twist free. She spins into it, flowing past him, using the momentum to drive her knee up into his thigh. He grunts and swipes, wild, and the knife kisses her again — just a scratch, I tell myself, just a scratch — before she seizes his wrist with both hands and torques. His elbow pops and he screams.
I snatch the knife off the floor in one smooth motion. The flanker with the box cutter comes in sideways, eyes shiny, to open me from kidney to spine. I step into him instead, chest to chest, hook my left behind his ankle and throw him over my hip. He goes hard into the floor, air blasting out of him. Before he can suck it back in, I drop a knee on his arm and put three inches of steel through the meat of his shoulder. He howls. Not lethal if I keep it high and out of the artery. Pain for pain. A message.
“Stay the fuck down, you asshole.”
Behind me, porcelain breaks. The bearded one misjudges a kick and takes out a sink. Water gushes, spraying everywhere, making the tile slick. Adriana uses it, like she uses everything. She slips under his guard, coming up with a palm strike to the bottom of his jaw. His teeth clang shut. She slaps the knife from his hand, dancing sideways even as blood ropes down her belly. Her eyes find mine in the mirror — a split second, a question. I give her a nod that says I’m ready.
I throw a heavy fist into the face of the Russian beneath me — sending him limp — and stand. The bearded one throws a look from Adriana, to me, then back to her again. Good, he’s taking his time, trying to figure out which one of us is the easier target,and if he has any common sense, he’ll realize neither and he’ll run the fuck out of here.
He doesn't run. Of course he fucking doesn’t. Instead, he charges me like a fucking bull, all shoulders and rage. I sidestep and catch him in a clinch, feeling his breath hot against my neck as we grapple. The smell of vodka and desperation rolls off him in waves. My hands find his throat, thumbs pressing into the soft hollow where his pulse hammers like a trapped bird. He claws at my wrists, nails raking skin, but I've got leverage.
"Should've stayed in Moscow, Boris."
I slam him backward into the wall. His skull cracks against tile, and his eyes roll white for a second. That's all Adriana needs. She moves in, her fist hitting him right in the groin. He releases something between a gasp and a moan, and I release his throat, and she follows through with two more merciless kicks straight to his groin. He crumples, twitching, helpless.
The bathroom falls silent except for the sound of water still gushing from the broken sink and our ragged breathing. Blood pools around my boots, mixing with the spreading puddle. Adriana presses a hand to the slash across her stomach, crimson seeping between her fingers.
"You okay?" I reach for her, but she steps back, scanning the carnage with those sharp eyes.
"I'm fine. But we have a problem." She kicks at the bearded one's phone where it's fallen near the urinal. "Before you came in, this one was talking to someone. He said something like, 'we found them' and got a response."
Ice slides down my spine. "How many more?"
"I don't know. But they're not working alone." She winces as she moves toward the door. "We need to get out of here. Now."
I grab a handful of paper towels and press them against her wound. "Can you move?"
"I've had worse." But I can see the pain flickering behind her eyes, the way she favors her left side.
We step over the bodies and push through the door into the hallway. The fluorescent buzz seems louder now, more urgent. From the main room comes the thunderous crescendo of voices raised in perfect, drunken harmony: "Nothing really matters, anyone can see, nothing really matters... to meeee."
Mayhem and Mrs. Eng's voices soar above the crowd as we stumble back toward our table. The applause that erupts is deafening, drowning out the sound of sirens in the distance.
Tank looks up as I approach, his grin fading when he sees the blood on my knuckles, the way Adriana's holding her side.
"We need to go," I tell him, leaning close to his ear. "Russians found us. There's three down in the bathroom and more coming."
