“Yeah. I heard a few of the things he said, and I’m surprised Heller didn’t give him more than a few bumps and bruises. I’d have ripped his nuts off.”
“J.T.”
“Sorry, but he’s a dick. A dangerous one because he thinks he’s untouchable.”
She didn’t like Axel being outside with Daryl by himself. “Is he?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think he’s part of the white-power gangs in the city, but I’m not sure. He likes to talk a big game.”
“Well, that’s not good.”
“I know.”
“Daryl told me not to be by myself at night at my shop. That it could be dangerous.”
“That piece of shit.”
She grabbed his arm. “J.T., he said it so no one else could hear it. I don’t think he was threatening me. I think he was warning me.”
“You do?” He glanced around. “That’s odd. The guys he was with are real assholes. I mean, alone they’re easy to beat. But they have a habit of ganging up on people. They don’t play by any rules. They see a black man and go hunting for a length of rope and a tree, you get me? And it’s not any safer to be any shade of brown around them. They only tolerate whites, period. I don’t know what Ray was thinking to let them back in here.”
She looked around and frowned. “That’s a good point. What was Ray thinking? And where did those guys disappear to? Because I don’t see them in here anymore, do you?”
Thirteen
Axel had Daryl up against the wall out back, behind the bar, his hand around the guy’s scrawny neck.
Daryl was fighting to get free, but Axel was furious.
“No. Not to…hurt her.” Daryl struggled in Axel’s hands. “Trying…to…warn her.”
What he said filtered through, but Axel didn’t immediately believe the shithead. He dropped him and watched as Daryl scrabbled to stand, clutching his throat. “Fletcher…insane. Watching…her.”
“Shit.”
Daryl’s eyes widened over Axel’s shoulder, giving Axel the warning he needed to avoid a lead pipe to the back of the head. Instead, the hit glanced off his shoulder. It still hurt, but not as much as it would have had he not moved.
Daryl took off, so Axel focused on the two assholes in front of him. Scott and a guy they called Rabies because he acted like a mangy, crazy dog in a fight approached wearing ugly smiles.
“Oh, look, Heller wants to play.” Rabies flipped him off. “Want to get fucked up, shit for brains?”
Axel had been wanting to beat the crap out of Rabies for a while, but the opportunity hadn’t presented itself. The guy was a bully, a racist, and a perverted pig. And still Axel preferred Rabies’s company to Fletcher’s. At least Rabies didn’t hide what he was.
“We like your girlfriend,” Scott added. “But don’t you think she’s a little dark for you? You’re white, brother. Remember your blood.” Scott had been trying to get Axel to join their little crew for a while. So had Fletcher, until Axel had kicked Fletcher’s ass. But while Fletcher wanted to kill him, Scott still thought he could somehow turn Axel into a white supremacist.
Axel cracked his knuckles and smiled. “Let’s get something straight. I am never going to join up with you inbred assholes. And my girlfriend is not a subject you should ever talk about.”
Normally, Axel was cold. He fought without emotion, using skill and strategy. And he liked fighting. Not to hurt people but as a sport. He didn’t have the right technique for boxing, but he’d been built to take a hit. And he knew how make an opponent go down and stay down. The challenge of it all sent his blood rushing and made him feel alive.
Kind of the way he always felt around Rena.
Scott tried to hit him with the pipe. Rabies waited, a cunning adversary and the stronger of his opponents. Axel threw Scott into Rabies, gratified when they got tangled up together. But Scott rebounded, only to take another hit to the face that knocked him off his feet. He swore and shoved himself up off the ground while Rabies stayed out of the way, just waiting for his chance to take a shot at Axel.
Rabies started insulting Rena, using the coarsest and most appalling words Axel had heard in some time. Then Scott chimed in, and they started on talking about what they’d do to her once they got her alone and how much their friend Fletcher wanted her all to himself.
Axel knew they wanted him off-balance, enraged, and not thinking straight. For the most part, their plan worked. But they’d made a grave mistake.
When he fought cold, he controlled himself. He didn’t do more damage than he intended. That rage he kept inside, the stuff that came from his father’s side of the family, festered and boiled. But now it had an outlet. He was fired up and ready to make people hurt.
