Page 140 of Things We Hide from the Light
He sneered, his face turning harder and uglier with the effort.
“So go ahead, asshole. Take your free shot, but it’s the only one you’re gonna get. Once we’re done with you, there won’t be anything left to pin a badge on,” I said.
He straightened and balled both hands into fists at his sides. I could see him weighing the options in his tiny, inebriated brain. But before he could make my day by making the wrong move, a large hand landed on his shoulder.
“Think it’s time you went home, pal.”
I looked up and then up some more at the man who’d stepped in. Cereal Aisle Guy to the rescue.
Dilton turned to face him. “Why don’t you mind your own damn…”
The rest of his sentence disappeared a split second after Dilton realized he was talking to the man’s Adam’s apple, not his face.
I smirked, and a twitter of nervous laughter rose up around us.
“You wanna finish that thought?” Cereal Aisle Guy asked.
Dilton glowered at him. “Fuck you,” he spat.
“I were you, I wouldn’t want to be making a spectacle of myself. It draws unnecessary attention,” Cereal Aisle Guy said.
Dilton looked like he wanted to say something else, but he was interrupted by his asshole posse.
“Let’s hit up another bar. One with less bitches,” one of his idiot friends suggested.
I kid you not, the women at the tables closest to us started hissing.
Someone threw the remains of their fry basket, hitting Dilton square in the chest.
“Now ain’t the time, Tate,” the older man with the mustache called. “Be smart.”
There was something ominous about the way he said it.
“If you don’t get him out of here, Wylie, I’m callin’ the cops. The real ones,” Fi snarled.
“Already here.” The entire bar turned to see U.S. Marshal Nolan Graham at my back, his badge and gun on full display. “We got a problem here?”
“I think that’s your cue to leave,sweetheart,” I said to the ketchup-covered Dilton.
“Why don’t we step outside?” Nolan suggested. His tone was almost amicable, but his eyes were cold steel.
“I’ll be seein’ you again,” Dilton promised me as his friends each took an arm and followed Nolan out the door. The older man with the mustache stopped in front of me, looked me over from head to toe, snorted, and then strolled outside with a smirk.
The ladies who weren’t too busy pressing both hands to their cramped abdomens erupted in cheers as the door swung shut behind them.
I produced my credit card and held it aloft. “Fi, this round’s on me.”
The pandemonium reached hysteria levels and then someone plugged Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” into the jukebox.
I turned back to the man who had white knighted me twice now. “Cereal aisle guy,” I said.
His lips curved in an almost smile. “Unmarried friend of the old lady.”
“Your nickname is better.”
“I could call you Trouble.”
“You wouldn’t be the first.”
