Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86455 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86455 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
As Hawk got closer to the table, he assessed the situation. As he was weighing the options, the barmaid simply shifted her feet and yanked hard, pulling her wrist in the direction where the patron’s thumb and fingers met, the weakest part of the hold. She broke free easily. At the same time, out of the corner of his eye, Hawk saw a beast of a man, only one scant inch shorter than Hawk himself, rise from his chair across the bar.
But it’s not even midnight yet, Hawk thought to himself. He still needed to lose at pool to Shooter, trade jabs with the Cowboy, and find himself a suitable female to burn off all his excess energy.
Hawk stepped up to the waitress, slid his arm around her waist, and leaned down to kiss her on the side of the head.
“How’s it going, Slick?” he asked with a smile, keeping his gaze on the two men across from them.
She leaned into him, her smaller body tucking into his, and sighed. “Fine,” she told him.
Hawk figured that other than being supremely annoyed, she probably was fine. He stole a glance at the beast, who was now standing but not advancing toward them. Of the group of people who now comprised their little makeshift extended family, only two of them had ever killed a man up close and personal. Hawk was one, having knifed an Iraqi insurgent who’d come upon them during a stealth infiltration of an Al Qaeda compound. Hawk had punctured both of the man’s lungs and then slit his throat to keep him from sounding the alarm.
The other person with a confirmed edge-kill was the little barmaid tucked into Hawk’s side. Hawk harbored no delusions of grandeur on that score; Slick’s kill had been more brutal, more visceral, and harder than Hawk’s had been. She didn’t even have the benefit of Uncle Sam’s training.
“Want a beer?” she asked him.
“Yep.”
Slick reached out and snagged the beer she’d just put down in front of Mr. Handsy.
“Hey!” the man protested as she handed it to Hawk instead.
Hawk took it and grinned. Sarah Sullivan had sass. That was for damn sure. Sometimes he wondered how her husband kept his blood pressure in check in the face of all that sass. Turning to the man across the table, Hawk’s smile died, and he arranged his own features into a look of cold, hard menace. The man immediately sat back into his chair, shrinking away.
“Pay up and leave,” Hawk said evenly. “And don’t forget the big tip.” Without waiting for a response, Hawk gave Slick a final squeeze and left with his beer. He had no qualms about walking away from the two losers. He knew who had his back.
He crossed the bar and headed to his own table, taking up the empty chair. He sat down next to the beast, who lowered himself into his own seat.
“Thanks,” Chris “Shooter” Sullivan said. Hawk didn’t have to ask what for; he simply nodded.
“Slick’s got some new moves,” the large Sioux observed, taking a pull on his illicit beer. “Easy’s doing a good job with her.”
Shooter nodded and cast a glance at Jimmy “Easy” Turnbull who was on the other side of the bar, hitting on a petite blonde. “Yeah,” he agreed. “It’s good for both of them.”
Shooter had married Slick in the fall of the past year and this summer had set out to teach his wife some basic self-defense skills. But in the wake of everything his woman had been through, Shooter couldn’t bring himself to tussle with her like that. It didn’t help that long before they were even dating, Shooter himself had cold-cocked Slick, busting her lip open. Didn’t matter that it was an accident. Didn’t matter that Chris Sullivan would never intentionally raise a hand to a woman, maybe not even if his own life depended on it.
Chris had confessed to the men that he could not stop picturing his wife bruised and broken and had asked Easy to take over giving her lessons. Easy and Slick had once had an argument that ended with the two of them actually tussling on Easy’s living room floor (Slick coming out ahead on that one). Despite missing the lower half of his right leg, Easy was an ex-Army ranger and, if pressed, would still be deadly in a hand-to-hand combat situation. But he hadn’t hurt Slick, so everyone was reasonably assured that Easy would take care with her during their lessons. So far Slick had never looked worse for wear, just occasionally a little sore.
At the pool table, the Cowboy and his woman, Vegas, were playing an intense game of Nine Ball.
“Who’s winning?”
“Who do you think?” Shooter replied with a smirk.
Hawk grinned. “What do you think she’ll make him do?”
Shooter shook his head. “I don’t know, but I hope it involves pink nail polish.”