Chapter 66 Chicago, 1927—Rick #2
Bowes drew back for another swing, but his boot caught the corner of a rug. He stumbled, shoulder-checking the wall. Rick’s instincts kicked back in. He drove the base of his palm upward into Bowes’s neck, where it met the shoulder.
Bowes grunted—half breath, half growl—but Rick wasn’t finished. He set his stance and threw another punch, all his body weight behind it. The strike landed at the hinge of Bowes’s jaw with a meaty crack. Satisfaction flared through Rick as Bowes went limp, collapsing face-down onto the rug.
Rick’s boot found the man’s kidneys once, hard and final. Then he rolled him over and tore open his coat. A Colt rested in the left-side holster. The opposite was empty. Rick yanked the gun free and shoved it into his waistband before turning to the surrounding mayhem.
The sitting room was carnage—splintered furniture and glinting glass under the white spill of moonlight.
Clay was locked in a brutal brawl with the greasy-haired man from the racetrack, fists flying.
They crashed into a table, sending a lamp sprawling.
Clay snapped his knee upward toward the man’s groin, but Greasy Guy twisted, absorbing the blow in his stomach.
Behind them, movement.
A fourth man materialized out of the shadows, a carbine leveled against Rick’s chest. His thumb curled over the hammer.
Rick’s adrenaline surged. His brain calculated angles before thought caught up. He whipped up the Colt in his left hand, catching the barrel just as the intruder’s weapon pushed against his vest. The man tried to fire—too slow.
Rick slammed forward, driving him off balance and into the wall. The gun arm pinned. Rick followed with a driving shoulder thrust under the chin. Skull met plaster with a brutal thunk, and the man slid down, unconscious, before he hit the floor.
Rick turned back just in time to see Clay pinned beneath Greasy Guy, the thug’s brass knuckles flashing with every jab. Rage flared hot in Rick’s veins when he saw the man draw a knife.
Rick charged and kicked him across the collarbone. The man lurched backward with a strangled cry. Rick hit him mid-torso, tackling him to the floor. The impact cracked through them both. The air left Greasy Guy’s lungs in a painful rush.
But somehow, impossibly, he bounced back up—spring-loaded, wild-eyed.
Rick scrambled upright, half-second behind. The man’s hand darted under Rick’s jacket, ripping free the second pistol hidden there. He swung it like a club, grazing Rick’s cheek with the cold steel of the barrel.
Rick countered. He tore his backup weapon from the holster at his thigh, swung, and caught Greasy Guy hard across the temple. Blood spattered. The thug retaliated instantly, a flat-palm strike toward Rick’s face. Rick twisted, avoiding the worst of it, but the force still rattled his jaw.
He blocked the next hit, spun, and drove his elbow into the man’s chin. A crunch followed—the sound of something breaking—but still Greasy Guy fought on. Another punch landed low, punishing and deep. Pain lit up Rick’s ribs in searing waves.
His muscles screamed he was done. His mind disagreed.
He wasn’t a twenty-year-old Marine anymore, not even the detective he’d once been. He was a fifty-one-year-old vintner with a stubborn heart and a family waiting for him. He couldn’t lose—not here, not now.
From the corner of his vision, he saw Tavis locked with a brute taller by a head, heavier by fifty pounds. They slammed through furniture, both bleeding, both refusing to stop. Splinters and glass cut across their skin, but they kept hitting.
Greasy Guy swung again—his wrist scudding across Rick’s throat. Rick countered with a final, heavy strike that connected flush with the man’s jaw.
The thug went down, groaning.
Rick pivoted—just in time to see Bowes, battered but conscious, lurch back to his feet.
He charged. Rick met him with a driving left, then a clean shot to the liver that sent the man folding in half, arms slack, face a bloody ruin.
Rick grabbed a handful of dark hair and tilted Bowes’s head back, lining up one last, finishing punch.
He never got the chance.
White-hot pain exploded through his chest. Bowes had buried a knife there, angled just below the collarbone.
The vest slowed it, but the impact still felt like being rammed by a steel fist, driving the air from his lungs.
Rage flooded Rick’s veins. All the hatred—years of it—boiled to the surface.
He grabbed Bowes’s wrist, twisted, and fought for the blade.
They struggled, both straining for control.
Rick drove his weight forward, forcing Bowes back.
The knife turned in their locked hands. The edge carving through linen and skin.
Blood welled in a thin red line across Bowes’s chest. The sight only fueled him.
Rick’s pulse roared in his ears. For a flash, the face before him wasn’t this man’s—it was Colonel Bowes, the monster who had raped Penny.
The taste of blood filled his mouth—his own or the other man’s, he didn’t care. He pressed harder, forcing the blade back toward Bowes’s heart. The man’s breath came hot and foul, the smell of rot and whisky and everything diseased about his family.
“Rick!”
Tavis’s voice. Distant. Unheeded.
“Patrick!”
Even his mother’s voice couldn’t break through the red haze.
“If this is what you want, end it now,” Tavis said more gently, his hand landing on Rick’s shoulder. The pressure anchored him—solid, human.
Rick froze. He knew Tavis wouldn’t judge him for finishing it, but Penny would. They all would.
It’s easy to kill on a battlefield, he told himself, harder when the enemy’s breathing your air.
With a guttural yell, he twisted away and threw the knife across the room. It hit the wall with a solid thunk and stuck there, quivering.
Then he drew back his arm and slammed his fist into Bowes’s face—once, twice. Bone gave way with a wet crack. Blood spewed, splattering across the rug. Bowes slumped, barely breathing, his body twitching in spasms. He wasn’t dead—but close enough that Rick didn’t care.
Rick shoved the man aside like a pile of refuse and turned toward Tavis. Both were panting, blood-streaked, half-bent from exhaustion.
“You’re bleeding,” Rick said.
“So are you.”
“How bad?”
“Cut on the side, messed up arm. Not broken, I think.” Tavis shook his head and gave a short, humorless laugh. “Aislinn’s going to murder me.”
Rick scanned the wreckage. Clay sat slumped against the overturned sofa, face swollen, one eye already closing. Rick crouched beside him. “Where are you hurt worst?”
Clay groaned. “You want the full inventory or just the bestsellers?”
Rick smiled despite everything. “Let’s start with the bestsellers.”
“Deep cut on my thigh. Right eye’s swelling shut. Head’s ringing like church bells. Wrist hurts. A couple of other dings in places I didn’t know existed.”
“If that’s the highlight reel, don’t tell me the rest.” Adrenaline still masked Rick’s own pain, but every breath felt heavier. His ribs throbbed. His knuckles were slick with blood that wasn’t all Bowes’s. Charlotte’s going to have a field day.
“I’m giving you morphine, wrapping that leg, and getting you home quick,” Rick said, reaching for the med pack. “But do me a favor—don’t let Marcelle yell at me for at least forty-eight hours.”
“I’ll try,” Clay said.
Rick loaded the field morphine injector, pressed it to Clay’s thigh. “Little stick,” he warned softly.
“Shit!” Clay howled as the needle snapped home. “Little stick, my ass!”
“See? Pain’s still working.” Rick grabbed fresh gauze, pressed it to the wound, and started a tight wrap. “Hold that. You did good tonight, kid. Fastest damn run down a staircase I’ve ever seen. Not even Jean could’ve caught you.”
Clay chuckled through his teeth. “High praise.”
Rick looked up at Tavis. “You need a shot?”
“Yeah. Arm.”
Rick jabbed him quick. Tavis winced but nodded thanks.
“What about you?”
“I’ve been worse.” He pulled another injector and stabbed it into his thigh. “Those bastards were wearing brass knuckles.” He glanced toward the heap of unconscious thugs. “Stack ’em. Pile the bags around them. Let’s get out of here.”
He half-carried Clay toward the center of the ruined room while Tavis dragged bodies by their collars. One by one, they dropped them beside Clay and ringed them with their duffels.
Rick swayed, the room tilting in slow waves. He fought to stay conscious. Get them home first—collapse later.
“Where’s Bowes’s cash?” Tavis asked. “Leave it for the damages.”
Rick fished the thick envelope from his duffel and tossed it to the floor. “Consider our deposit paid.” His gaze swept the remains of the house. Not a single unbroken thing. “Let’s go.”
“We should leave Skye a letter,” Tavis said.
Rick nodded, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “She deserves that much.”
But in his mind, he was already fading—torn between relief, exhaustion, and the uneasy certainty that this fight had only postponed the real war.
“Don’t have time,” Rick murmured, his voice rough and thin. “I’m fading. We’ll send David back to talk to her.”
He eased himself down beside Clay and Tavis. The three of them sprawled across the pile of duffels and the heap of unconscious men. Their bodies barely touched the floor anymore—half weight, half willpower.
Rick’s hand found the brooch. He forced breath into his lungs and whispered the Gaelic chant, the old words rasping off his tongue.
Alive—he’d promised. But the promise was slipping.
The fog answered instantly, rising around them like a living sea. It couldn’t come fast enough. Rick’s eyelids sagged. His veins thrummed with exhaustion. He wanted—needed—to be conscious when they broke through the veil.
Pain pulsed through every inch of him, a dull roar under his skin. No way he’d be singing harmony with Skye anytime soon. Skye… The thought flickered in his fogged brain. Would she even exist in his time now? Was she waiting there—or already gone?
His mind lurched to another worry. Elliott. I have to warn Elliott. But thoughts scattered before he could finish. The fog took over.
The shift hit like being caught in a riptide.
The world twisted, unbearable. Up became down, light spun into dark and back again.
The pressure pushed and yanked at once, turning his stomach, stretching muscle and bone until every nerve blurred.
Blood seemed to rush both out and in. His head split under the pounding.
No adrenaline this time. No rush of awe. Just pain—raw, merciless.
Then, abruptly, the pain was gone.
Silence wrapped him, weightless and warm. Rick drifted, his battered body suspended in the heart of the vortex—a strange, impossible calm. No gunfire, no fear, no gravity. Only the steady tide of peace, sweet and complete.
And then even that slipped away.