Free Extreme Prey by John Sandford Page A

‘What if something
happened
to Mrs. Bowden.’ If it’s nothing but thinking and talking, they’re welcome to it.”
    “Yeah, you’re shuttin’ them up, is what you’re doing. Shuttin’ them up, that’s what you’re all about.”
    Lucas pushed away from the table. “All right, you don’t want to talk. You don’t have to. You may regret it later.”
    “Tell you what,” Leonard said. “What if I kicked your ass? Cops have given me years and years of shit and you’re an ex-cop, so I kick your ass, it makes me feel good, and nothing you can do about it, ’cause you’re an ex.”
    “Nothing I can do except fight back,” Lucas said. “I promise you, you don’t want that.”
    “You that tough?” Leonard started to slide out of the booth.
    “I’m tough and you’re drunk,” Lucas said. He shoved the chair over to block Leonard’s way out of the booth. “And I’m working with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. You take a swing at me, they’ll be around to talk to you.”
    “If they can find me,” Leonard said. He tried to kick the chair aside.
    “Oh, they’ll find you,” Lucas said. “Not that hard to find the local hospital, which is where you’ll be.”
    Leonard smiled at that, took it as regular prefight posturing, kicked at the chair again. Lucas pushed it back and said, “I don’t want to fight you, Dave. I’m going now. But—you think about what I said. If you change your mind about any of it, you send an e-mail to Governor Henderson’s campaign—”
    “Fuck you. I’m gonna kick your ass.”
    Leonard tried to clamber over the chair as Lucas stepped away and turned toward the door. The chair tipped and Leonard fell down, tangled up in the chair legs. Somebody in the bar laughed, the laughter suddenly cut off as Leonard got back to his feet and looked around. The bartender called, “You boys take it outside.”
    Leonard was coming for him, Lucas realized, and he said to the bartender, “You want to call the sheriff? This guy’s about to assault me in your place.”
    “Not my problem,” the bartender said.
    “Will be when I file a lawsuit against you,” Lucas said.
    Leonard said, “Fuck a lawsuit . . .”
    The bartender had a sudden change of heart: “Dave, don’t do it, goddamnit. I’m calling the sheriff . . .”
    “Yeah, and fuck you, Jim,” Leonard said.
    Lucas was backing toward the door when Leonard rushed him, fists held high. Lucas let him come. The common belief among brawlers was that you didn’t let anyone come down on you from the top, which was why they held their fists high. But real boxers didn’t.
    Lucas was two feet from the door when Leonard got to him. Lucas did a very quick side step and moved slightly forward, when Leonard was expecting him to go back. That took Leonard’s left fist out of the fight, and Lucas blocked Leonard’s awkward right-hand punch with his own right, and hooked a hard left into Leonard’s rib cage, leading with his knuckles, and felt Leonard shudder from the blow and simultaneously make a dog-like
yip
.
    The other two men had gotten out of Leonard’s booth, and Lucas backed toward them and said, “Stay out of it or I’ll break your legs,” and they stayed out of it while Leonard, his face red as a ripe apple, came after him again. Lucas sidestepped again, this time to his right, partially blocked Leonard’s left arm with his own left, took a skimming shot to his left cheekbone, and hooked a hard right into the other side of Leonard’s rib cage. Leonard yipped again, took several steps backward, crashed into a table, then dropped into a chair.
    “Busted my ribs,” he groaned. He bent over, head on his knees, holding his sides with his hands.
    “Tough shit.” Lucas touched his cheekbone, came away with spots of blood on his fingertips. The bartender said, “I called the deputies,” and Lucas nodded and walked around behind the bar and checked his face in the mirror. He’d have a bad bruise