Page 53 of Dangerous Pursuit
Wait.Anothercouple? Is that what we are? I make a mental note to bring the subject up when the time is right, before the question has a chance to make a permanent residence in my mind and continue, "You're always welcome to wake me up with a blowjob. Hence the code. Besides—"
"Hey! You!" My eyes dart to where the rude interruption comes from.
Three male silhouettes at the end of the alley seem to be walking toward us, but they're too far away, and it's already too dark for me to recognize any of them. I turn to look at Liam, who's seemingly in the same boat. "Friends?"
Squinting, he shakes his head. "I don't think so. Maybe they're confusing us with someone."
Maybe. "Anyway. Speaking of blow—"
"Hey, asshole!" The same voice cuts me off again. Who the fuck does he think he is to interrupt my attempts at acting hot?
They're still too far so that they’re faces remain a mystery, but they're definitely not far enough for me to miss the middle one pointing right at us before all three pick up pace, approaching us in a fast march and I could swear I just heard the F slur flying our way.
I look at Liam again, his face now an entirely different color than just seconds ago.
He abruptly stops walking, halting me in place. "Shit."
My rows furrow. "What is it? Who the fuck are these tools?" I shift from foot to foot, said tools roughly thirty yards away now.
"I don't know the other two, but I remember the guy in the middle. Tried to get into the club a few weeks ago, drunk off his ass. I told him to scram."
"And?" Panic sets in my voice, as I can now make out their ugly scowls.
Liam thinks for one, two, three seconds, and then— "And I think you should run."
My mind goes blank and I blink. "What?"
"Scram!" In a span of a millisecond, Liam lets go of my hand and uses what feels like all of his force to push me on the shoulder.
I stumble for a few steps, fighting to keep my balance just as the three animals materialize right where I was standing a moment ago, and a fist flies through the air, coming to an abrupt halt just inches from Liam's face when he blocks the punch as another set of hands grabs him from behind.
The second I'm steady on my feet I launch back, to help, to do something, anything to stop this madness, but the moment I move, Liam catches my eyes. He's mid-punch, connecting his fist with the stomach of a bald, bearded guy in his mid-twenties and yells, "Xander, I swear to God, if you don't goright nowI'll knock you out."
It doesn't last more than a second, but somehow my brain steps up and makes a cool calculation in the middle of chaos. The guy Liam just punched is currently rolling on the ground, hugging his abdomen. Another is swaying on his feet, both palms cupping the side of his face. The third one takes a swing. Liam ducks down, expertly avoiding the fist slashing through the air with a swish while landing a hit to the redhead's side. All the while, Liam's standing tall, his balancing swiftly on his feet, making sharp twists and turns, dodging the attacks ofone and a half opponents. And then there's me, standing in the way, contributing an absolute zero to the scene. Every muscle in my body flexes, itches, warms up for a fight, but for what's probably the first time in my life, my brain takes full charge over me.
I make a one-eighty and dash, as fast as my feet allow me to the nearest car parked about twenty yards from where Liam, wheremy guyis currently getting assaulted. The rational part of me fights hard to keep the emotional part at bay as I duck around the car, poke my head out to keep an eye on the situation while I pull my phone from the back of my pocket and blind-dial 911.
Cacophony of grunts and curses scratches the inside of my skull in the nastiest of ways, and my sense of self breaks in half when Liam takes a punch to the jaw, his head bouncing to the side.
"911, what's your emergency?"
"Three guys are attacking my boyfriend!" I yell into the phone before the woman on the other end finishes the question.
"Okay, sir," the operator says calmly, but I can barely hear her. "What's your location?"
I strain my neck as if that will allow me to see better, as if the act of my observing will someone affect the outcome, and did she just ask me a fucking question? "I don't know. I don't know! We were walking, and then he told me to run, and I—"
"Sir, sir, please calm down. I need your location to send help."
I take a few sharp breaths that do nothing to calm me as I try to remember. "We were walking down, um, Hill Street,and then we turned left by the park and there was this super tall brownstone on the other side and—"
"Okay, I've got it. Help is on the way. I need you to stay on the line and—"
I do as she asks but the rest of her words no longer register, drowned out by a clipped whine as a body that isn't Liam's falls to the ground and rolls twice before it hits the curb.
Liam has his back turned to me and there's a pair of legs flailing in front of him as he keeps a jean-wearing man that's almost Liam's size on a chokehold, the baseball cap he had been wearing lying on the concrete ten feet away.
Where the fuck are the police?
