And oh, he was.
He used himself as a missile, aiming low and striking Trent hard, his shoulder hitting the kid at his beltline, lowenough to throw off Trent’s balance and knock his legs out from beneath him.
Holy shit, it worked.
The impact also knocked Jules down, too, but he tried to aim his body at Trent, to keep the other boy from bouncing back up and going for the girls, but shit, he missed, instead face-planting on the lawn.
But Hobbit and Belle were right behind Jules and they flopped themselves down atop Trent, with Rod launching himself up and over Jules, piling on. Together they held Trent down while Jules rolled closer, reaching into the kid’s right front pocket and grabbing that wad of paper he’d used to transport his drugs.
As Trent realized what Jules was doing, he fought back with renewed fury.
Jules rolled as best as he could out of flail range, to find Tom ready and waiting for the handoff.
“Guard the evidence!” Jules reminded him of his extremely important job—keeping safe that jelly jar of spiked beer—rolling even further away from Trent’s kicking legs, even as Sadie and Meg both shouted, “Beer’s secure!”
“Oh, I’m on it,” Tom promised, even as he spoke directly into Shelly’s video camera lens, holding up the scrap of paper. “Exhibit B, used by the suspect to contain the crushed flunitrazepam, taken from suspect’s front pocket by Jules Cassidy, and handed to Tom McCall for safe-keeping.”
Meanwhile, the pile of chaos that was Rod, Belle, and Hobbit atop Trent thrashed and quaked. As Jules clambered to his feet, Trent’s flailing landed him two very lucky blows, one right after the other. An elbow connected hard with Rod’s head, which was surely a star-exploding, bell-clanging hit that pushed the bigger boy back and down—and allowed Trent an equally powerful kick to Hobbit’s balls.
Belle tried her best to hang on while Hobbit howled and Rod attempted and failed to shake his brain back into place, but Trent scrambled free, pushing himself up and sidestepping around Jules to book it, double-time, across Carter’s yard.
Soccer player, soccer player! Trent was both fast and nimble, but Jules launched himself after him, determined to grab him by the back of his shirt and slow him down enough for Rod and other others to catch up.
He followed Trent around the side of the house and out into the front yard. He was heading for the street and, no doubt, his car.
Ugh, tackling him on the asphalt was going to suck for both of them, and Jules put on a burst of speed, hoping to bring him down on the front lawn instead.
Rod, Belle, and Hobbit were right behind him, with Sadie, Meg, and Shelly with her video camera still flashing its red record light not far behind. He could hear Tom in the distance, using his stage voice to tell the kids at the party exactly what was going on, and basically deputizing them to help him guard the evidence.
“Trent!” Jules shouted. “Stop! It’s over!”
But Trent didn’t stop. He ran into the street, down the line of cars parked on both sides of the road.
With luck, he’d locked his car, which would allow Jules to catch him as he unlocked the driver’s side door, but Trent didn’t drive an ancient POS the way Tom did, or even a not-quite-so-ancient but economical subcompact like the car Jules had inherited from his dad. Trent’s car was in fact a truck—giant and shiny and brand-spanking new—and it had one of those combination locks on the driver’s side door that didn’t slow him down as much as Jules hoped.
Still he finally caught up as Trent pulled the door open.He grabbed the back of Trent’s shirt as the taller boy tried to climb into the cab, except he wasn’t trying to climb up and in, instead he was reaching beneath the front seat.
And when Jules pulled him out—one hand still holding Trent’s shirt, the other on the waistband of the kid’s jeans—Trent had grabbed something he’d hidden down there.
Holy crap, it was a gun—not a very big one, but then again, it didn’t have to be.
Jules froze, but only for a fraction of a second because the items on his current to-do list just increased exponentially from the single-mindedness ofStop TrenttoDon’t dieandDon’t let anyone else die.
“Gun! Get down, get back!” he shouted to his friends, even as part of him was desperately wishing he’d taken Hobbit up on his offer to take him to a firing range and teach him a thing or two. Because he knew shit-all about guns—only that they fired bullets that could kill with shocking swiftness and ease. His sole information came from TV, movies, and books, and the vast majority of that was so totally fictional it was grade-A bullshit.
But apparently Trent’s education about guns had a similarly dubious source, because he was fumbling with the deadly little thing, trying to look at it, to maybe... take off the safety? That was Jules’s guess and since according to Columbo and Dragnet and the countless cop shows that followed, until the safety came off, a gun was hardly more dangerous than a ham sandwich, well, maybe a little more because it was heavier. Getting hit by a sandwich wouldn’t hurt.
Instead of backing up and scrambling to find cover, Jules again launched himself at Trent. If he was wrong, God help him, but at least his body would keep any bullets from harming his friends.
Trent clearly had been expecting him to retreat at the sight of his weapon, so he was completely startled. Which helped because Jules’s attack was awkward there in the space between the open car door and the car. There wasn’t any extra room to maneuver or even push the kid down, so Jules went with the time-honored knee to Trent’s nuts even as he clasped his hands together and brought his arms up, like a volleyball bump, to knock the gun out of Trent’s hands before the sandwich became a functioning weapon.
And sweet baby Jesus, it worked!
The gun went flying, up and over the open car door as Trent doubled over, pushing Jules out and down onto the street.
Which yes, was as not-soft as Jules had anticipated. But with Trent now on top of him, he scrambled to hold onto the other boy, to keep him incapacitated even as he shouted for someone, anyone to grab that gun before Trent could get it again.
“Freeze!” someone yelled. “Now!”
