Max Collins - Before the Dawn

With a seemingly casual sideways glance, she focused in and watched as a wad of cash passed between them... also a package the size of a fist, wrapped in brown paper, passing the other way.

Drug deal.

Max had an instinctive dislike of hard drugs — possibly linked to the medical tampering she’d been subjected to — and suddenly, an inner smile forming, she knew exactly where the money for Vogelsang was going to come from...

She had always been that kind of thief. Moody had made sure to send her after unsavory types; something about crooking a crook just... sat better with Max. This would be like ripping off the Brood, only minus the acrobatics — easy, profitable, and stealing from guys who weren’t exactly model citizens, anyway.

The bartender gave her the pitcher, she paid, and hustled back to the table, her smile wide and genuine.

“Nectar,” Sketchy said, accepting the pitcher as if an award for Best Bike Messenger 2019, and started sloshingly filling glasses.

“Just say no,” Max said, holding up a hand to block Sketchy from pouring her another glass; her peripheral vision still trailed the drug dealers, who were on the move.

So was she.

“Gotta jet,” she said.

Original Cindy looked at her with only partly feigned outrage. “Yo, Boo, you just got here! What can be more important than kickin’ it with your homeys?”

“Just remembered an errand I’ve got to run... for me, not Normal.”

“Take care, my sister,” Herbal said, in benediction.

“Catch ya in the mornin’, girl,” Original Cindy said, picking up on Max’s distracted gaze but unable to latch onto whatever Max was trained on.

Sketchy saluted her with a beer glass but said nothing, having just moved into a nonverbal state.

The two drug dealers split out different exits. Max tailed after the one with the cash — dealing the drugs was a line she couldn’t cross.

Outside, the light was little better than in the bar, and Max couldn’t tell much about the guy except he was tall, and so skinny he seemed lost in that expensive brown leather jacket; also, he had short brown hair, big ears, and walked with a definite slouch. Except for the short hair, from this distance, he could’ve been Sketchy.

She stayed with him for several blocks, on foot, on the opposite side of the street, hanging back enough to keep the guy from making her. The brown leather jacket kept moving, and half a dozen blocks melted away, as he led her into a seedier side of the city than she’d yet seen as a messenger. Max was still more than a block behind him when three figures emerged from the shadows and planted themselves in front of the guy.

They obviously planned to rip him before she did — and that pissed her off!

As she crept forward, she watched two of the interlopers move to either side of the dealer, leaving the third facing their mark. These were wide, tough men, buzz-cut white guys in muscle shirts who’d pumped themselves into brawny animals — blocky torsos with arms, legs, and no necks, possibly part of a local neo-Nazi group, the Swatzis, known to loot dealers and then peddle their own shit through intermediaries to minorities... making money off their idea of homegrown genocide.

The apparent leader, positioned in front of the dealer, stepped forward. Trimly Satan-bearded, he was smaller, still muscular, though he probably depended more on his brain than his brawn. Plus, there was that nine-millimeter auto in his hand...

“Give up the money, lowlife, and you just might limp away.”

Traffic was nil; Max didn’t even have to look both ways when she raced across the street in an eyeblink, and sprang high; she came down in the middle of the four men as if she’d fallen from outer space, poised with catlike grace in a battle stance.

Their mouths all dropped open at once.

One at a time, she closed them.

Starting with the devil-bearded gunman: she decked him with a left, the automatic flying out of his hand and clattering to the street; then she spun, taking out the nearest would-be Nazi with a sweeping kick. Down low, she swung an uppercut to the dealer’s groin, and, coming up, headbutted the last Nazi and watched him teeter, then tumble to the sidewalk, as unconscious as the cement that received him.

The scrawny, big-eared dealer rolled on the ground, his hands clutching his jewels. The Nazi she’d kicked to the pavement struggled to his knees in time for his face to halt a flying kick from Max. He, too, fell unconscious, his face a bleeding, broken mess. Scrabbling in the street to find and snatch up his pitched pistol, which he managed, the gunman turned, grinning, raising the automatic as he came.

Just as he leveled the gun, Max dropped and rolled toward him, exploding out of the roll with a vicious blade of a left hand that chopped the gun from the man’s hand, then sent a chop across the bridge of his nose, which broke it, leaving him bloody and unconscious on the sidewalk near his buzz-cut companions.

“I hate guns,” Max said, not winded.

Sucking air like a two-pack-a-day smoker, the dealer — his hands still protecting his crotch — made it to his knees. “You... you saved my life,” he managed.

“That’s right.”

“But I think you broke my balls...”

Looking down at him, she said, “Ice pack may help. Just wanted to make sure you didn’t book.”

His eyes were as wide as a puppy begging a bone. “But... why? If you were gonna rescue me... why?...”

Arms folded, Max stood amid the fallen Nazis, all of whom were slumbering, and said, “Just didn’t want you to leave without paying.”

The Dumbo-eared dealer’s face went blank. “Huh?”

“You think I saved your life out of the goodness of my heart?”

“I was... kinda hoping...”

Max shook her head, dark locks bouncing. “What world do you live in?... Hand over the wad.”

The dealer’s voice came out a squeak: “You’re... muggin’ me?”

“That’s such an ugly term. Let’s just say I’m claiming my reward for savin’ your scrawny ass.”

“But... I don’t have any money.”

“Aw, you just want me to put my hands on you,” Max said. “I’m flattered... left front pocket. The money you made tonight at Crash? Selling whatever drugs were in the brown paper wrapper.”

He winced. “You saw that?”

“I recommend a dark alley next time. Time-honored thing, y’know. Give.”

His hands came off his privates and folded prayerfully; begging. “Please... please... you can’t take the money... if I don’t pay my connection, he’ll kill my ass!”

“Here’s how this works — I just gave you a reprieve. Next death sentence, you’re on your own. You rather I knock your lights out, so you can wake up about the same time as the master race, here?”

“I’m not kidding, lady... really, he’s a badass... he’ll kill me... real slow.”

Max sighed, shook her head. “You run with a rough crowd, son, you break a toenail now and then.”

“Jesus! This is serious shit! ”

The gunman seemed to be rousing, and Max kicked him in the head, then said to the jug-eared beggar, “If you run you might get away... you can start over. Find a new life, or stay a lowlife, down in Portland or Frisco.”

He got himself to his feet. “What the hell with?”

“With your skin for starters. Hock the jacket.” She pulled back, ready to hit him again. “Or lights-out...”

“All right, all right!” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the wad.

Taking it, Max asked, “How much?”

“Fifteen hundred... Maybe you could steer your way clear to...”

She glared at him. “Disappear.”

The dealer took her advice.