Chapter 17 #2
“And you’ve been hurt yourself. That’s what this is all really about, right?
Getting revenge, making sure somebody pays, somehow, somewhere.
It doesn’t matter if they’re the ones who needed to pay for each of your brain injuries.
It doesn’t even matter to you if you pick somebody who you know has done something wrong.
As long as somebody pays, as long as you get to beat somebody to a pulp, that’s all that matters because you were completely helpless last time.
Just like your brother was helpless to stop the fight coming for him, as was your birth father, and now your stepfather, who’s already lost that fight,” Kate pointed out.
“That victim mind-set inside you, that inability to grab power and to get control of your life,” Kate added, “is really debilitating, isn’t it? ”
“You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” Tamzen roared, her rage twisting her face in a fury.
But her brother looked at Tamzen and said, “She kind of does have a clue.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Tamzen snapped, “and it doesn’t matter. I’ll tear her apart.”
“In the ring.… That’ll be good,” he said, with a bright smile. He then looked over at Kate. “That’ll be fair.”
Kate shook her head. “You know that Tamzen won’t fight fair. She can’t win a fair fight. She’s worked so hard at making sure the deck is always stacked in her favor that she doesn’t even know what a fair fight is anymore.”
He looked at his sister. “Fair fight, right?”
“Yes,” Tamzen snapped, “fair fight.”
“Good.” Tambo rubbed his hands together. “That’ll be fun.”
Kate asked him, “Will you touch these men while I’m busy having a fair fight with her?”
“No, of course not,” he agreed cheerfully. He looked down at the men. “I wouldn’t hurt them anyway.”
“You might not, but Tamzen wants to kill them,” Kate pointed out, watching the confusion, disbelief, and hurt crossing his face. Kate nodded. “Yeah, and you’ve been helping her to kill the men. You were helping her deal with their bodies.”
He shook his head. “But that’s different,” he said, clearly confused. “She was just defending herself, and we know that it doesn’t matter what she says, and they’ll just get off.”
That was the missing piece. She turned to Tamzen. “That’s it. That’s really what this is all about, isn’t it? The man who hurt you so badly was never convicted, was he?”
“I never tried,” she said, tossing her head back.
“But you knew he was guilty. You knew he deserved to be punished for it. Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“I couldn’t,” she said. “I would have had to endure all the staring, the questions, the jokes. Nobody would come to the gym anymore, and they all would have mocked me.”
“So, it’s about saving face, yet knowing it was an unfair fight to begin with.”
Her brother looked at her. “But it’s okay because we got ours back.”
Kate winced at that. “Did you?” Kate asked him. “Did you make sure that he couldn’t hurt anybody else ever again?”
He nodded, a big smile on his face. “Yeah, we sure did.” His fist smacked into the palm of his other hand. “He ain’t doing that to nobody anymore. Never.”
Kate nodded and looked over at Tamzen. “So, when did you decide that wasn’t enough?
” she asked. “When did you decide that killing somebody who beat you wasn’t enough?
This man you couldn’t take to court because, in your addled mind, you felt you couldn’t stop him legally,” she pointed out.
“When did you decide that it wasn’t enough to kill your attacker and that you needed to kill more innocent people? ”
Tamzen just stared at her and didn’t say a word.
Tambo suddenly walked over and hit a button on a tape player, and the room was filled with the chants of Fight, fight, fight . He motioned to the ring. “You get to fight her now,” he declared, happiness on his face. “May the best woman win.”
Tamzen was standing in the ring right now, and all thoughts of Simon and Rodney were forgotten.
Kate took off her jacket, dropped it on the ground, then bent over to step in between the ropes.
Tamzen lunged immediately, not even giving Kate a chance to straighten up.
She took a tumble but was back on her feet in seconds, and this time she knew this was a fight she had to win.
She caught a glance of Simon on the far side, staring at her in horror, and knew that Rodney was there waiting as well, hoping she would kick this woman’s ass before something even worse happened to them.
As Tamzen came toward her with her fists up, Kate immediately went to work, and she pounded her hard and fast, using every bit of skill she had learned.
She didn’t fight as a boxer. No, that would just help Tamzen.
Kate fought with her own martial arts skills, hoping Tamzen had none.
It didn’t take long before Kate had Tamzen on the ground, bleeding from a busted nose, gasping with broken ribs, and dealing with what Kate hoped was one broken ankle.
As Kate stepped back, her chest heaving, she glared at Tamzen. “Guess what, bitch? You lose.”
Then a blow hit her from behind. She went down and realized that Tambo wouldn’t let it be a fair fight at all. Such fury filled his expression.
Kate rolled over and managed to get to her feet, waiting for him to attack again. She stared at him and nodded. “Yeah, it’s not about a fair fight with you guys, is it? I guessed as much, but it’s got nothing to do with that.”
“That wasn’t fair,” he roared. “She wouldn’t have lost if it was fair.”
“She lost,” Kate snapped, as she eyed him warily.
“No,” he roared, “that’s not her. She’s a winner. She’s beaten up every one of those guys. I’m so proud of her for defending herself.”
“Well,… guess what, asshole?” Kate cried out. “She hasn’t been defending herself. She’s been killing innocent men, putting them into this fake boxing ring, all for her own warped satisfaction and fake glory.”
He shook his head. “No, no, no.” Then he came toward her with his own fists up, and now she was up against somebody way over her size, and she was already tired.
She shook her head. “If you want to do this,” she warned him, “I won’t hold back.”
He gave her an evil smile. “I’ll make you pay.”
“Yeah, well, fly at it,” she taunted him.
The first blow was like a sledgehammer to her ribs. She went down, but, as she’d been taught, she didn’t stay down. You never stayed down, and you never showed your belly to the enemy.
She was on her feet in a flash, her body already twisting in the air as her right boot cracked with a punishing kick to his right temple. Then she bounced back, still dancing on her feet, waiting, only to watch the behemoth slowly, in almost a cartoonish slow-motion move, collapse to the ground.
She looked over at Simon, his eyes wide as he stared at Tambo.
He asked her, “Is it wrong that I want to stand here and count to ten, just to confirm he’s truly out?”
Kate glanced over at Tamzen.
She was crying on the floor of the ring. She sobbed as she slowly scrambled to her brother. Turning to look at Kate, she shook her head, wild-eyed. “What did you do? What did you do?”
“What did I do?” Kate asked, with a mock smile. “That’s called defending myself, something you appear to have a very twisted view of.”
And, with that, Kate walked over to Simon, happily realizing that Rodney was awake now, even though one eye was swollen shut, but the other was open wide, staring at her.
She quickly untied both men, knowing that Tamzen wouldn’t get anywhere very fast, not with her injuries.
With Rodney and Simon free and clear, Kate stood up and walked over to the behemoth she’d dropped.
She checked for a pulse, then shook her head, looking back over at the other two men.
Both sadness and relief were in their expressions.
Kate stared at the sister. “Look what you did,” she murmured.
Tamzen sobbed, shrieking, possibly feeling true heartbreak for the first time in her useless life.
Oscar came running, stepped into the ring quickly.
Kate hadn’t even realized he’d been standing in the shadows all this time.
Oscar looked over at Kate, tears in his eyes. “I know why you fought, but, Jesus, did you have to kill him?”
“Whether he lives or dies,” Kate noted, “you and I both know this would never end well, not with Tamzen free to murder more innocent people.”
Oscar dropped beside the two of them and held his niece as she sobbed in his arms. He looked up at Kate. “She’s really killed people? You’re sure?”
Kate nodded. “Yes, and Tambo was involved as well. I am certain. We have five of her victims at the moment.”
He looked down at Tamzen in disbelief. “Really? Did you kill five men?”
She winced and whispered. “Seven.… I’ve killed seven.” And then she really started to cry.
Kate just stared at her. “And what was the criteria for selecting these men? Why did you pick the ones you did?”
“They had families. They had something to lose.”
“And how did you find them?”
She shrugged. “I run cabs sometimes,” she shared, “and I used it as a cover to find them.”
That confirmed what Kate had already considered.
“Sometimes,” Tamzen added, “it seemed they were just assholes. I don’t know.… I would look at them, and they would sneer at me because I wasn’t whatever they thought I should be,” she muttered. “I’m just glad that it’s over.”
“No, you’re not,” Kate argued. “You would have kept on going, until I stopped you.”
“Maybe,” she murmured. “But once you go down this pathway, it’s really hard to get out. I just got angrier and angrier because it wasn’t stopping, because I wasn’t feeling any better. The only relief was taking out the next one and planning to take out the one after that.”
*
Simon stood up carefully, letting the blood work through his arms as he walked over to where Kate was on the floor beside Rodney, who just looked at her through his swollen eye.
Rodney whispered, “Jesus Christ, you couldn’t have come a little earlier, huh ?”