Read Online Knockdown: A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery by Sarah Graves - Free Book Online

the first big fist came at Steven’s face, a hand reached out over his attackers’ shoulders and everything stopped.
    “All right, all right,” a tired male voice uttered.
    Another hand, pink and plump, joined the first, then each hand clamped firmly onto a black-clad shoulder and pulled.
    The phalanx of hostile bodies parted. Between them stepped a cop. Or at least he was wearing a cop’s uniform.
    “Boys, I’m gonna tell you this once. And you especially, Jerry,” the cop added to the ginger-haired youth. “I want you all to leave this fellow alone. I get a report he’s had any problems? You’re gonna have problems with
me
. Okay?”
    Shaking off the cop’s grip, Steven’s adversaries all nodded sullenly. “Yeah, yeah,” they muttered.
    “I mean it,” the cop pressed. “I ain’t a bit scared of any of you. You all know that from our past history together, right?”
    The hooligans were too stubborn and dumb to back away, which let the cop make his point from a distance of about three inches.
    “Right?” he repeated insistently. He had little red rosebud lips, a fluff of pale blond hair swept over the top of his head, and an air of simple unflappable confidence that said he was way more effective at law enforcement than he looked.
    “Or maybe you’d hear me better if you were in the back seat of my squad car? Maybe I’ll find out you’ve got some more of the M-80s you’ve been setting off all over town?”
    “No,” the gang’s leader muttered, and seemed ready to say something more. But then he thought better of it.
    “Come on, let’s go find candy,” he told his pals, and that puzzled Steven. He’d have expected these guys to be beer hounds, not chocolate fiends.
    But he forgot about it as they all skulked off and the cop turned to Steven. “As for you, you look like a nice guy, and this is a nice town. Believe it or not,” he said.
    “But stay out of that crew’s way. I might not always be here to pull your butt out of a sling, you get me?”
    You don’t understand
, Steven wanted to say. From down the street the gang’s leader shot Steven a look so full of threat, it was all Steven could do not to laugh out loud.
    That guy
, he wanted tell the cop.
It’s
his
butt you saved
.
    Jerry’s. Because of course Steven couldn’t kill him now. If the red-haired guy turned up dead, the cop would remember Steven.
    And as delightful as it would be to watch those mean little gray eyes widen in fear, then bulge with the onset of asphyxia, it just wouldn’t be worth it.
    “Yes, sir,” he answered politely. “I appreciate your help.”
    In a way, he really was grateful. He wouldn’t have liked taking the beating those guys had been about to deliver, even if it did give him an excuse.
    “Thank you.” His voice shook with the adrenaline that had flooded him, facing the four hoodlums. Still, something in it must’ve betrayed the fact that he was not as frightened as he appeared.
    The cop narrowed his eyes. “Yeah,” he said, “I’ll bet your gratitude knows no bounds.”
    But just then a barrage of firecracker explosions and a loud scream for help from somewhere nearby got Steven off the hook.
    “Hang on, I’m coming!” the cop shouted, grabbing the radio on his belt as he ran. Turning, Steven walked toward a lantern-lit beer garden, scanning the throngs for his attackers.
    But ginger-haired Jerry was gone, along with his black-clad pals.
Too bad
, Steven thought. A few inexpert punches, a bruise here and there … he’d have had to absorb that much from them.
    But Steven felt sure he could have taken it easily, whatever they’d dished out. And then …
    Then he’d have surprised them. Because it was all falling together now. He could feel it: the time, the place, his pent-up fury.
    The taste of the too-rich food in his mouth. He let his gaze wander to the shadows past the streetlights, under the trees. At this hour, fatigue and alcohol sent groups and a few solitary revelers