3. Your Dad Sucks
Chapter 3
Your Dad Sucks
Taz
Mourningkill, New York
“Son of a bitch,” I bit out, as a big ass fists slammed into my face.
“Fuck you!” My quarry’s drawled, before he slammed his forehead into my nose.
Christ on a cracker… this guy had some fight in him.
In his defense, I had come into his house and told him he was under arrest. He’d taken a baseball bat to my head. I dodged the strike, the bat broke against the wall before we grappled onto the linoleum floor. In the roly-poly wrestling, he ended up on top, his tobacco-chew scented breathing wafting over me, turning my stomach.
I slammed my boot into the soft spot of his inner thigh, nicking his family jewels. He squeaked, his hands going slack. I slid out from under him with a few well-placed kicks to his thigh, chest and shoulder, and struggled back on my feet.
“If you didn’t want to get caught, you should have at least left the county,” I said through my heaving breaths.
Criminals are mostly stupid. The number of people who ditched their bail because they didn’t think they’d get caught is way further North of zero than you’d think. Kyle Lowell was definitely that guy. His “secret” hideout from the law was his Baby Mama’s bed in the middle of the Catskills, in a town with no name.
“Don’t hurt him!” A glass vase shattered on the back of my head, broken shards falling down my shoulders, the small pin pricks of sharp edges grazing my skin – annoying, but ultimately harmless. White lights danced across my eyes as I blinked the pain away – I mean, at this point, what’s another concussion? I’d had half a dozen already.
I was totally going to try and keep civilian casualties to a minimum, but she just pissed all over that, didn’t she?
I turned around and with one hard punch, hit her square in the temple, knocking her out cold.
She fell, crumpling like she’d been deflated.
Her screaming, shirtless kid came over, the chewing tobacco in his lip spitting onto the floor. “Don’t you touch my Mama!”
He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten. Jesus, it was early to be developing that habit. He obviously got it from his daddy.
“I won’t, kid,” I said, turning my attention back to Daddy Dearest. “Not if she stays out of my way.”
I didn’t want to hit a child, but if the brat tried to get up and take me on, I’d knock his ass out, too.
Lowell and I circled each other, fists up. He was shirtless, patchy clumps of hair growing across his chest. His bare feet were black at the soles, his fingernails covered in dirt.
The house they lived in was as well maintained as his physique.
I’m not one to get judgy. I live in a travel trailer, after all. The truck I used to haul it around wasn’t even mine. It was a loaner from Kai Griffith until he came back state-side to reclaim his beloved Denali. But this house was just sloppy, even by my less-than-exacting standards.
“You know, if you turned in those cans and bottles, you could get money for them, right?” I said, as I accidentally knocked a bunch of beer cans over, and they rolled across the floor.
“Fuck you, bitch,” Lowell said, lunging for me, his fists windmilling towards my head.
I ducked, and his swing knocked him off balance. I landed an uppercut into his sternum.
“With a vocabulary like that, you must have grown up at a real Algonquin Roundtable,” I said, rolling my eyes.
Lowell’s face flashed confusion. His brows knit, his mouth gaped open. “What?”
Yeah, that one went right over his head.
I said things like that for myself – not because I thought the person I was speaking to would get it.
He circled and circled, and I played the little tap dance with him. He rushed, diving into a small kitchen cabinet, and fumbled for something. He smirked, a triumphant smile displaying his yellowing teeth.
“Gotcha, bitch,” he said, brandishing a pistol in his hand, the barrel pointed right at my chest.
I feigned surprise – but not well. Because I’m just not that good of an actress. “Oh, no, whatever shall I do? Mercy me!”
“Fuck you!” he said, and his elbow bent as he pulled the trigger. His hand pushed forward as if he needed to toss the bullet from the gun as he fired. Did… did he think that punching the gun forward when he fired would make it travel faster? Like… seriously?
Click.
I placed my hands on my hips, cocking my head to the side.
He looked confused. His son screamed a guttural, “Get her, Daddy!”
I waited to see if the proverbial lightbulb above his head would ever click on.
He tried again. Click.
Then again, and again, and again. Click. Click. Click.
“You know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result,” I said, flatly.
“Fuck you!” he said again as he tried to pull back the slide to figure out what was wrong with the gun.
Click.
“Okay, this isn’t funny anymore.” I pulled my Glock from the holster in the back of my trousers and pointed it right at Kyle’s head. “And seriously? You can’t tell that there’re no bullets? You can’t feel the weight difference?”
Lowell looked confused. That must be his default setting.
“I took your bullets while you idiots were at the supply store,” I said, slowly, for extra emphasis. “You don’t think I scoped you out before I came in here?”
I snorted. Kyle liked to pull out his overcompensating Desert Eagle and show it to his buddies while they partied in the backyard, sitting on fold out, shooting at random trees. It was unsafe and for a minute I was worried he’d accidentally hit me while I lay in the prone position, observing his pattern of life.
“Kyle Lowell, you skipped out on bail, and you’re gonna come with me.”
“Fuck you!”
The guy was a broken record.
“Go quietly, or I shoot the kid,” I said, turning the gun to his boy, who still hovered over his mom on the floor.
I wasn’t going to shoot the kid. I’m not an animal.
“Shoot him, I don’t care,” Lowell said, and the complete disregard in his voice told me that he meant it. The guy really did not give a shit about his own kid. “My guys will fucking end you!”
“Dad!” His son cried, a fat tear rolling down his cheek.
Kyle was already searching around their kitchen, desperate for another weapon.
“Father of the fucking year,” I said, with a sneer.
I hated shitty fathers. Hell, I hated shitty parents in general. But this was beyond shitty.
I turned my gun away from the kid, back to Lowell and pulled the trigger. I struck him and he went down howling, his hand over the gaping hole in his acid-washed jeans.
“Remember this, kid,” I said, putting my weapon on safe and putting it back into the holster. “Your dad’s a piece of shit, and you don’t want to be like him.”
The wide-eyed boy gaped at his dad, then back at his mom.
“Oh, I get it,” I said, squatting down in front of the kid. I placed my finger on his mom’s neck. The kid was too terrified to stop me. When I found a pulse, I got back to my feet.
“Your Ma’s gonna be fine. Hell, she probably really loved this son of a bitch, and that’s what made you. But here’s the thing, a good parent earns their kids every single day. And this mother fucker? He didn’t do a damn thing by you when it mattered.”
My heavy boots stomped along the ground, shaking the whole house.
“Your Ma probably worked a ton of overtime. Might even have two jobs? Dad comes by, sits around on his ass, shooting the shit, and playing games, but never cleans up, and definitely doesn’t hold down employment long enough to pay a bill, huh?” I turned pointing my finger at the boy. “Am I right?”
The kid scrunched his face, and I knew I hit the mark.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” I didn’t always love being right. It was both a blessing and a curse. “Your Dad sucks, kid. Sorry for that.”
I squatted down in front of Lowell who was too busy gritting his teeth and bitching to really stop me from saying what I needed to say.
“Bruh,” I said, putting my hand down on his thigh, and squeezing the leg as it squirted out more blood from his jeans. “You suck.”
A few minutes later, ol’ boy Lowell was cuffed, his legs bound by zip ties. I had a tourniquet around his wounded leg to keep him from bleeding all over the bed of the truck. No way was I letting him in the cab. He smelled bad.
I was about to round the vehicle to get to the driver’s side when I heard the distant roar of engines. Several of them, at least 500 horsepower, if not more. A dozen bikes careened down the long, desolate country road, their black leather cuts a stark contrast to the bright green farmland around them. Silver and black bikes in a formation stopped at a distance. Every single one of them stared right at me.
Fuck.
I placed my hand at the small of my back, making eye contact with the guy front and center. He was an old dude, with a stubbled salt and pepper beard.
“Your buddies, huh?” I asked the trussed-up Lowell.
He laughed, despite the gag in his mouth.
I stood my ground, placing my hand on the small of my back where the pistol was.
I could take them.
No, I couldn’t.
Yes, I could!
Fuck it. We all had to die sometime.
I felt the pistol grip with my finger, ready to pull it up if they so much as revved their engines in my direction. If I took out one or two with some good shots, I could swerve them to take out the rest. If I could just get them down to a reasonable number, I could get them in a hand-to-hand brawl… or at the very least, I could fucking run.
The big boss glanced back at me, then nodded. He yelled something I couldn’t make out before he turned his bike around, and his friends followed suit, moving back the way they came.
I didn’t know what happened, but I didn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Horses bite.
“Well’p,” I said, as I climbed into the driver’s seat of the Denali. “That’s next year’s rent, Keanu.”
I patted the dash, as if his revving was a congratulations. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I had to give Keanu back to his real owner. I just hoped that Kai would be good to him.