Free Envy the Night by Michael Koryta

the back door to where they stood, and Frank made about forty of it before the guy heard him or sensed the motion. He twisted his head, saw Frank coming at him, and shoved Nora Stafford away. A small pile of bolts and a socket wrench hit the floor with her, bouncing off the concrete in a jingle of metal as the tall man reached under his jacket and brought a gun up.
    For his thirteenth birthday, Frank Temple’s father gave him a musty hardbound book with a blue cover.
Kill or Get Killed
, the title. A close-quarters combat text. His grandfather’s book, then his father’s, now Frank’s.
Read it,
his father told him.
All of it.
Frank had. Two weeks later, his father challenged him to try to take a gun out of his hand. The first of many lessons.
    The gun facing him now was a 9 mm automatic, and the man who held it was used to the sight of a gun having some stopping power on its own, because he kept lifting it, passing over Frank’s body and aiming for his face. He wasn’t planning to shoot. Frank knew that as he closed the rest of the distance between them. Put a gun in the face of most people, they’ll stop moving. That was the expectation. The reality was going to be a little different.
    Frank’s first strike, delivered a quarter of a second before the next, was with the edge of his left hand on the wrist that held the gun. He moved his head down and to the right as he did it, and then the gun was pointing harmlessly away from him. The second strike was really two at the same time—he hit the tall man’s chin with the heel of his right hand while he brought his right knee up and into the groin. It was a simple move, using the momentum he already had from his forward rush, but it was effective. He actually missedwith his knee, hit on the inside of the man’s thigh instead of the groin, but since the guy’s head had already snapped back the blow was enough to keep him going. He hit the same toolbox that he’d pinned Nora Stafford against, and now Frank caught the man’s wrist with his left hand and slammed it into the metal edge of the toolbox. The gun came free and bounced away. Frank ignored it, got his hand behind the other man’s neck while he released his wrist and then slammed him forward, using his leg to upend him and spill him onto the floor.
    The guy took the fall well, rolled back onto his feet and lunged upward just in time to be greeted with the socket wrench Frank had recovered from the floor. He laced it downward with an easy stroke, about fifty percent of his strength going into the blow, but it was plenty. Caught the guy right across the back of his skull and dropped him back onto the floor.
    It should have been done, but Frank was caught by the tide now, unsatisfied with just how damn easy this had been, wanted to grab that gun off the floor and put it to the bastard’s knee and blow a cloud of blood and bone onto the concrete. He went for the gun, saw it wasn’t on the floor, and looked up to see Nora Stafford standing with the weapon in her hand. Her eyes moved from Frank to the man at his feet, and then she held the gun out.
    “Here.”
    It was a Glock, no safety to remove, just squeeze that trigger and watch the thing kill. Frank knew the gun well. By the time it touched his palm, though, the flush of rage was gone, a cool calm sliding back into its place. He slipped the Glock into his waistband, cast one glance at the unconscious man on the floor, and then turned back to Nora Stafford.
    “It would seem,” he said, “that you should probably call the police.”
     
    Frank was worried about her until she came back out of the office. Was she going to fall apart, get hysterical, give him another problem to deal with before the cops showed? Then she stepped back into the room and stared at the tall son of a bitch stretched out on the concrete and he knew she was fine. The look was laden with anger and disgust, not fear.
    “You’re early,” she told Frank.
    He nodded. “Didn’t want my