I looked at the three strangers more closely, and noticed the suspicious bulges under their jackets and shirts. One of them was probably carrying a gun, while the other two had purely cylindrical objects attached to belt-pouches. Strangely, I was still feeling mostly nothing. Neither nervous nor afraid, and certainly not concerned for Logan. If I had to put a finger on it, I think I felt excited when I moved.
I cleared my throat to keep their attention away from the family, and stepped past the three to position myself in between them and Claire, who was still holding onto Ava.
“May I ask, how much money are we talking about?” I asked them, doing my best to sound mildly interested.
“Enough for us to chase that shithead down here. Of course, we could discuss alternatives to offset the interest at least.” he said, as he basically undressed Ava and Claire with his eyes and tried to step towards them.
I reached back, grabbed Claire’s wrist, and pulled her and Ava behind me, never taking my eyes off the guy. It wasn’t to shield either of them. It really wasn’t. It was just a matter of principle. I didn’t like his attitude. That was all.
The guy clearly didn’t like that gesture and sized me up. I knew the signals he gave off from the training sessions in the firm, and realized this would end very badly for someone. I slightly turned my head and spoke to the two behind me, without taking my eyes off the three in front of me.
“Maybe it’s for the best if you leave now.”
“What!?” Claire protested. “No!”
I waited for just a second, but when nothing happened I spoke again.
“Aaron! How about you do the smart thing and help them to the car, so I can have an undistracted talk with Logan’s friends?”
Counting on him to be overwhelmed and inexperienced with these situations worked. Sure, I personally never experienced anything like this either, but I did have training and was somehow eager to put it to the test. And for some damn reason, there was that little voice in the back of my head telling me something along the lines of ‘Without Tess, no one’s gonna miss me anyways’.
Aaron took his wife by the hand and pulled her and Ava to their car. The guy ogling them wasn’t happy about it, but I wasn’t expecting to actually talk with them in the first place.
“You gonna regret this you fucking...” he started, while simultaneously reaching for the metallic object on his belt. I decided to make my move before he could pull out his weapon.
As he talked, he kept nodding upwards, as if he was trying to look down on me despite us being the same height. I quickly flicked my lit cigarette into the face of the guy I suspected of carrying a gun to my left, and headbutted the one in front of me. Thanks to him nodding upwards, my forehead made perfect contact with his nasal bone, and I felt a satisfying crunching. Then I quickly turned to my left, facing the one I just surprised with my cigarette bud. He was still pressing his eyes shut but had drawn his gun and was now blindly pointing it in our general direction. I grabbed his wrist with my right, pulled it upwards and past me to straighten his arm, and placed a strong palm punch on the outside of his elbow.
Just as my left connected with his elbow, he pulled the trigger, but then his elbow bent inwards. It was then I realized that I couldn’t hear shit anymore after the gun went off so close to my head. That was NOT part of the training sessions. We did those with Blueguns. All I heard now was a long, drawn out, high-pitched beep.
I managed to keep the movement of my left hand going though, past his elbow, turning my upper body with it until I was almost with my back to him. Then I pulled my left arm back, ramming my elbow with everything I had into his chin. The Gun dropped and his body followed. I kicked the gun under my Jeep and turned back to the one I headbutted.
Too late, it turned out. As soon as my head was turned towards him, it snapped back when something hard hit me directly above my right eye. Surprised by the sudden pain, I instinctively raised both arms to protect my head, but then the same thing hit me hard in the left side of my chest. I took a step back, forced my eyes to open again, and saw him as he was just pulling his arm back to hit again.
He was holding a telescopic baton with a weighted head. The training kicked in again, and I moved in close to him so the thing wouldn’t have enough momentum to do real damage when it came back down on me. I managed to grab his arm, turned back around as I went to my knees, and pulled him down with me. Thanks to my body being in the way of his legs when I pulled him forward, he lost his balance and fell past me. I straightened back up and kicked his jaw hard. His hand let go of the baton and he went limp.
