Дэвид Балдаччи - Mercy

“Get back here, Rosa; don’t make me chase you, girl. It ain’t gonna be good for you if I do. You ain’t got no clothes on, you dumb bitch. Ain’t you got no shame, woman?”

Rosa turned, spat at him, and hurled a machine gun’s worth of Spanish, none of which Cain could understand, nor, did it seem, could Ken. Cain could see the bright red marks on Rosa’s arms and legs where the belt had struck her. Cain involuntarily rubbed her arms where Desiree had struck her innumerable times with her damn belt.

Ken took out the smoke and ground it under his boot heel. He snapped the belt like a whip and growled, “I told you before, you speak American . You gonna make double trouble for yourself, you stupid tacohead.” He laughed at his insult.

“ You are tacohead!” barked Rosa. “That’s why you’re so fat . You eat too many, you pig.”

His smile faded as his poor attempt at humor was thrown right back at him; he looked around at everyone staring. Cain knew that men like Ken had only one reaction to such public insult. His lack of wit and deep-set insecurities quickly gave way to his abundance of brute physical strength, and uninspired knee-jerk reactions, which would always be violence-based. Grim-faced, he advanced on her, while Painter’s Pants Man hurriedly retreated, and most of the other people got up and fled inside their rooms.

Cain turned to her left and saw the woman from the office staring at them outside the glass doorway and wearily shaking her head. Then she moseyed back inside like this was simply a daily event. And Cain clearly understood that it was. The Kens of the world all had the same playbook and never deviated from it. That made them dangerous, but predictable. And that made them imminently beatable, if you approached them just right. And Cain had a PhD in the subject of idiot boy-men.

As he advanced on a defiant Rosa, Cain stepped into his path. “Put down the belt, go back inside, get your head clear, and don’t do anything else stupid,” she said.

Painter’s Pants Man took another long step back and muttered, “Oh, hell, you dumbass woman.”

Ken didn’t say anything back. He just swung a lumpy fist at Cain’s head.

Cain sidestepped the blow and drilled a razor-sharp, thunderous uppercut right into Ken’s diaphragm. He doubled over, and his face turned crimson as every ounce of breath in his body got kicked out into space from the staggering blow. While he was dealing with that, Cain launched an elbow strike into his right kidney. It connected with the ferocious impact of a two-by-four with a nail sticking out. He screamed and, his adrenaline spiking and overcoming the pain, he threw another fist at her. She easily blocked it with her forearm, gripped his wrist and elbow, pulled in opposite directions, and Ken screamed again. She pushed him to the ground and said, “Walk away. Last warning, dickhead.”

Ken staggered to his feet, his big belly sucking in and out as he tried to get his breathing and his pain under control. He whipped out the knife. Before he could raise it, though, Cain lunged forward and kicked it out of his hand. The knife sailed ten feet away.

He grabbed his damaged hand. “You broke my finger, you stupid bitch.”

“Unless you knock this shit off, that won’t be the only thing I break.”

He roared and bull-rushed her, his thick arms spread wide.

She easily sidestepped his charge, clenched his left arm as he went by, and ripped his elbow up even as she brought his wrist inward at a drastic angle. When he tried to pull free, she drove a bony knee into his already damaged right kidney. Ken yelled out in pain as she used his arm to lever him to the dirt once more, while he screamed obscenities at her.

He reached with his other hand to his back and a pistol appeared in his hand. He shrieked in fury, “I’m gonna kill you, you mutherfu—”

He didn’t finish his sentence because Cain let go of his arm, grabbed both sides of his head, and pulled him toward her; at the same time she smashed her very hard knee directly into his face. He fell back with the blunt impact, but still managed to bring the gun up, and fired. The shot passed within a few inches of her head.

As he staggered up, Cain charged forward and hit him with two quick jabs to the jaw and a left hook to the oblique, which again dropped him to his knees. She gripped his wrist and struggled to break his hold on the gun. The son of a bitch was strong as a bull, she had to give him that.

He suddenly lunged for her, hitting her in the throat with the crown of his head. She fell back, her breathing labored from the blow, but she had managed to wrench the pistol away from him. Then he grabbed her hand and tried to pull the gun free.

This was getting way past critical, she thought.

Cain brought her knee up and hit him right in the chest with it, twice. He staggered back but pulled her with him, both of them still holding the gun. His finger managed to reach the trigger and pulled it. The shot blasted out of the gun and smacked into the wall of the motel.

Okay , Cain thought, I need to end this .

The move she was contemplating was complex, but she’d done it a few times in a cage fight. Still holding on to the gun with one hand, she got a headlock on him with her other and used that as a fulcrum point. She lifted herself off the ground so that he was supporting her entire weight as well as his. She arched back, her face pointed to the sky, and pulled with all her strength. He flipped over her as she went under him. At the last possible moment she let go. His head slammed into the dirt as she managed to lithely roll through on the other side.

A moment later Cain rose holding the pistol, because the torque on the flip move had forced him either to let go or blow out his rotator.

Cain stepped back, her chest heaving, and looked down at the pile of Ken on the ground bleeding and unconscious.

“Holy shit!”

Cain gagged, spit up, and rubbed at her bruised throat before looking over at Painter’s Pants Man, who was standing there goggle-eyed, his Bud still in hand.

“What?” asked Cain.

“You just kicked the crap out of Ken,” he said in disbelief.

“So?”

“But you’re a girl and he’s a guy.”

“That’s not an answer,” she said in a croaky voice.

She knelt down and examined Ken. He was unconscious, but she checked his pulse. It was strong. She tugged on his arm and one of his legs. Though unconscious, his body reacted to the pull and the limbs involuntarily jerked back.

Okay, didn’t seem to be any spinal damage from his head hitting the ground.

She rose and looked at Rosa. “You okay?”

Rosa was staring down at Ken with stark fear.

“ Madre de Dios. He... he will kill me when he wakes up.”

“Go get your things,” said Cain.

“Que?”

“You got any kids? Any... niños? ”

Rosa shook her head. “We’re not... married.”

“Okay, go get your things. I’ll take you to a place where you’ll be safe.”

Rosa ran back into her room and they could hear her banging and slamming things.

“Hey!”

Cain turned to see the office woman striding toward her.

“Hey what?”

“You assaulted Ken.”

“I was defending myself.”

“I don’t think so. I’m going to have to call the police,” she said.

“I thought you might do that when he was beating the shit out of Rosa.”

“He was just disciplining her. You shouldn’t have butted in.”

“Well, the fact is, we’re leaving,” said Cain.

“Who’s leaving?”

“Me and Rosa.”

The woman said stubbornly, “You’re not getting your money back. No refunds.”