Rival Forces (10 page)

Stokes canted his head to one side. “You're not listening. I'm not asking, I'm telling you how it's going to be. I need this position. I'm not working vice and I'm sure as hell not going back to patrol. So you just write the letter and give me a dog and we're even.”

He had taken a few steps toward her when the curtains in the window beside her collapsed from the inside and Oleg appeared in the window, lips drawn back from his feet as he furiously tried to scratch his way through the glass.

Stokes banged the glass with a fist and laughed as Oleg's fury redoubled. “How you doing, fella? That's right. Me and your bitch handler are gonna have some good times together.”

Yardley's left foot began to jiggle. This wasn't the attitude of a sane man. It was way too reckless for an officer on the job. Even bad cops knew they could push their outlaw tendencies only so far. The appearance of respectability was essential.

“Your department's let you go.”

Stokes's attention snapped back to her. “That's why I need the letter. I need my job and my position as a K-9 officer back.”

She couldn't get him either of those things, even if she wanted to. But she knew better than to further anger him. “You're not the only officer who's been turned down by the kennel.”
Keep it neutral
, she thought.
Don't acknowledge his anger with your own.
“There's at least one person a year who doesn't—isn't compatible with our program.”

“Bullshit.” His neutral expression slipped. Anger glinted in reflected flashes of lightning. “I watched you. You get your jollies out of putting grown men through their paces, making them watch you. Eager to follow you around like lapdogs in case you give one of them a chance to cover you.”

Yardley stopped listening. She couldn't afford to take the trip he was about to give her into the inner workings of his mind. She got it. He was going to attack her. It was a struggle she needed to win. That's all she needed to know.

She was out of practice. Hadn't taken a self-defense course in a while. She wasn't by nature a fighter. Even as a child she was always struck before she hit back. But she always hit back harder, longer, stronger until her opponent cried for mercy. Reservation life wasn't for the faint of heart.

She didn't realize she was backing up until she noticed he was coming toward her. “—think you're hot shit. What you need is for a man to show you who's in charge. What you need is a good fucking over.”

She hesitated too long. His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist just as she was about to swing the two-by-four-foot screen at him. She cried out as he twisted her wrist painfully and her fingers lost their grip. Her legs hit the banister just below butt level. He tried to jerk her forward but she used the screwdriver in her free hand and stabbed at his wrist holding her hostage. He cried out, freeing her. And then she was falling, off the edge of the porch.

The sky opened up in that moment. As she hit the ground painfully, weight on one shoulder while the bricks of the flower bed border dug into her back and scraped one elbow, rain like a fire hose sprayed down on her. Scrabbling like a turtle, she tried to right herself.

Stokes got there before she gained her feet.

He didn't say a word, just grabbed her from behind and flipped her onto her back. And then he dropped his full weight on her as she sprawled in the grass.

Yardley worked with strong muscular animals, still donned a bite suit on occasion, and knew how to leverage the bite of ninety-plus pounds of canine fury to stay on her feet. But she hadn't been in a real fight since she could vote. Now she was in the fight of her life.

He was tugging at her cargoes. He was bent on rape. That. Was. Not. Going. To. Happen.

She was so angry, so angry. She reached into her pocket, looking for the hammer she'd brought outside. She found it.

She was remembering things now. Go for the soft parts. Neck, crotch, eyes. Painful and messy but effective.

Stokes had forgotten about her as an adversary. He was in full rape mode. His mouth was all over her, her neck, a breast he'd freed. She was drowning from the rain pouring into her nostrils as she lay pinned to the ground. She raised the hammer very slowly, twisting it so that the claws would strike. Something soft. Something vulnerable. More vulnerable than she was.

She swung but didn't connect. He was flying backward. Propelled by what seemed to be superhuman forces—a mini tornado? Then she heard voices, two men shouting obscenities as they struggled. Freed, she levered forward into a sitting position. That's when she saw two men backlit by a vehicle's brights. Kye McGarren had Vance Stokes in a head lock on his knees.

It was surreal, so surprising, she shouted the first thing that came to mind. “What are you doing here?”

Kye didn't bother to answer as he rose and hauled the man to his feet.

“Do you know who the fuck you're dealing with? I'm the goddamn police!” Vance jerked and twisted, trying to find an advantage, but Kye had him locked in with an elbow about his neck and his arm twisted up behind his back.

“What you are is about half a second away from a dislocated shoulder. I can feel your rotator cuff shredding under the pressure. Your call.”

“Let me go!”

Kye gave him a push that forced Stokes down hard onto the gravel on his hands and knees.

Yardley was on him in an instant, kicking and punching and lifting the hammer to strike.

“Whoa, Yard.” Kye grabbed her from behind, one hand gripping the hammer to stop its descent as he lifted her off the man. He pulled her back in tight against his chest, one arm clamped across her torso to hold both her arms to her sides. In the driving rain, no easy task. “You're okay. You're okay, Yard.”

“You bastard!” It was a desperate cry torn from the back of her throat.

Over the roar of rain and rumble of thunder Kye kept talking low, directly into her ear. “Breathe, baby. Come on, get a grip. I don't want you hauled into court behind this. He's not worth it.”

Finally she stilled and he let her go. She swung around on him, her eyes wild, her hair streaming water, fury in every line of her. “I had that.”

He grinned at her. “You did. You sure as hell kicked his ass. Now call the police.”

 

CHAPTER TEN

“You say Ms. Summers was on the ground when you arrived.” Sheriff Wiley looked at his notepad. “Where, exactly, was the alleged perpetrator?”

“On top of Ms. Summers. I can draw you a picture.” Kye's tone was arctic as he watched Yardley, who sat a few yards away talking with a female EMT.

“I know it's irksome to have to keep repeating things. Ms. Summers has a lot of respect in this community. Her story isn't in dispute. But we need to make certain we haven't overlooked anything that could allow the suspect to beat the charges. Stokes is pretty beat up.” He smirked. “You take a few swings? Just for fun?”

Kye's gust of laughter was more of a snort. “Ms. Summers was giving as good as she got when I got there.”

The sheriff's eyes widened. “Everything they say about her being hard-core is true, I guess. Still, it's too bad he caught her without her dogs.”

Both men glanced toward the front windows. The drapes and blinds were in shambles on the floor. Long Cujo-type scratches marred the glass. Deep claw marks in the wooden window frame looked like a buzz saw had been at work. On either side of the front door, huge pieces of plaster had been gouged out down to the studs. Oleg had tried his best to come to Yardley's assistance. The dog was now kenneled in a back room, to protect the enforcers of the law.

The sheriff grunted. “Maybe Stokes is lucky you came along when you did.”

Kye didn't reply. His heart had just stopped slamming in his chest.

At first, he hadn't been able to accept what he was seeing in his brights as he came up the drive. Rain was sheeting down his windshield so fast the wipers were almost useless. But there, in the twin cones of his headlights, were two figures wrestling in the mud. A flash of lightning confirmed that the figure on the bottom was Yard.

Despite what movie-choreographed brawls portrayed, being on the bottom in a fight was a position only the most highly skilled fighters ever reversed. She'd needed help. Or a weapon.

His mind did a quick flashback to the hammer she'd raised just as he'd reached them. She might have made that first strike count. It didn't bear thinking about what Stokes might have done to her if she'd missed, or only slightly injured him. And he hadn't been there for backup.

“You haven't said what brought you out here today.”

Kye looked back, surprised that the sheriff was still talking to him. “I'm visiting. As a friend of the family,” he added as the man's gaze turned speculative. “I trained with her father, Bronson Battise. Her brother Lauray Battise and I served together in Afghanistan. K-9 military police.” He pulled out his business card for the second time that day. “In case you need me to make a formal statement or anything.”

Sheriff Wiley nodded. “We're just about done here.”

Yardley straightened from her slump when she noticed Sheriff Wiley and Kye coming toward her. Kye had hardly taken his eyes off her. He came toward her now like some vengeful totem, his face a mask of controlled anger as he stared down at her.

She didn't need his tight expression to tell her she looked like hell. Beneath the swaddling of an EMT Mylar blanket, she was soaked to the bone. There was a muddy puddle around her shoes of water that had dripped from her clothing and boots. She could feel bruises beginning to set in different parts of her body. Somewhere in the struggle she'd bitten her tongue.

The sheriff spoke first. “We got your attacker locked up tight, Ms. Summers. You can rest easy on that. With the holiday weekend, he won't be able to post bail until Monday morning.” He glanced at the EMT who nodded before saying, “We're going to send you to the emergency room to be checked out. And then we're done for tonight.”

Yardley shook her head. “I don't need medical attention.”

“It's not really an option, Ms. Summers. We need a medical opinion, and photos, of your injuries for our report. Plus DNA evidence from your clothing and under your fingernails. You don't want us to overlook any detail that might set him free.”

Yardley set her mouth but nodded. She'd been debating whether or not to mention it. But the thought that Stokes might weasel out of the charges, because she had not actually been raped, made her decide.

She pulled the red envelope out from under her blanket. “This came last night. Left on the doorstep. I didn't think it was important. But now…”

Sheriff Wiley slipped the picture out then looked back at Yardley, his expression carefully blank. “You should have called me right after you opened it.”

“I thought it was just a prank.”

“Let me see that.” Kye leaned in as the sheriff turned it his way. The look on his face said everything the lawman's hadn't. “Son of a bitch!”

“Easy, son.” Sheriff Wiley continued to watch Yardley, his face still void of expression. “This kind of thing happen before, Ms. Summers?”

“No. Oh, I get angry letters, once a year or so. All businesses do. But nothing—nothing like that.” A shiver she couldn't repress quaked through her. She shot a hard glance at Kye, daring him to make any kind of comforting or protective move.

She'd lied to herself about the ugliness of the picture because she didn't want to think anyone could hate her that much. But she saw the fallacy of her thinking on Kye's face. She followed his gaze and saw that her blanket had slipped so that her torn shirt showed. There were finger bruises on her upper breast. She hiked the blanket up, its surface making a metallic rustle.

The sheriff handed the envelope off to a deputy, who carefully bagged it. “What makes you think Stokes had something to do with that piece of shit? Excuse my language.”

She told him about an incident two weeks earlier when Stokes had set a dog on another handler. “He said his department had let him go after they got my report. He wanted me to reinstate him in our program so he could get his job back. I refused.”

The sheriff and Kye exchanged looks. “I'm going to follow up on that. Police officers don't usually get fired unless there's a well-documented pattern of misconduct.”

He turned to Kye. “You staying here tonight?”

“Yes.” Yardley glanced up at Kye in surprise. He didn't give her a chance to argue. “I'll feed the dogs and lock up. Then I'll be along to pick you up.”

Yardley nodded and stood up. She was okay until she looked into his face. Grim and tense and gray beneath his bronze skin, he looked at her with such protective tenderness that she had to work at not responding to it. No, better to stay away from his big solid strength. She was still shook up and scared to discover how vulnerable she was. She couldn't afford to want the things his expression offered. It was sentiment, the feeling one would have for any vulnerable creature.

Count on no one. Need is weakness.

She turned to the EMT. “Let's do this.”

*   *   *

Kye slanted a glance at Yardley. In the light from the dashboard he could only see her in profile. She was solemn and much too still for his liking. She'd stopped talking the second they'd exited the hospital. Her lip was swollen so it probably hurt to talk. The bandage above her eye covered the glued-together cut above her brow. Only her hand moved, stroking Lily, who uncharacteristically lay quietly in a lap that wasn't his.

The emergency room was satisfied that all her injuries were superficial. She'd be sore and bruised for a while. Nothing more.

Gut churning in lingering anger for her sake, Kye turned his attention back to the road. The storminess was nothing more than flashes on the southern horizon. But the rain had grown pebbly with ice crystals. Driving had turned treacherous, requiring nearly all his attention. The part that wasn't driving was reassessing the day.