Free A Mighty Fortress by S.D. Thames Page A

fired.
    “I think I got him!” Kiki said. He grunted, gasping for his breath. “Jimmy?”
    Jimmy was screaming, and by the sound of it had regressed to a prepubescent pitch.  
    I had to be quick now. Kiki lit a match. Just as he glanced down at his partner moaning and writhing in pain, I knocked Kiki back with a left-right combo. Then I grabbed his neck.  
    This choke would knock him out. It took less than five seconds, but who was counting? You can feel the loss of consciousness once it occurs. You can also fake it if you’re on the other end of the choke and know what you’re doing. I didn’t have to worry about Kiki faking it. He was out. Cold.  
    I held his body and eased him onto the ground. It was the least I could do. Once he was prostrate, I found the main light switch and turned it on with my shoe. Fluorescent lights warmed up and revealed my handiwork. Jimmy’s thigh was bleeding, apparently from the last shot Kiki had fired, and I was pretty sure the kid was shedding some tears too. I was relieved that he hadn’t taken one in the gut. He’d live, but he’d be slow for a while. Maybe the time off would do him good, allow him to reconsider his calling in life.
    I figured Kiki would be fine, too. He’d come to in a matter of minutes. He’d probably be a little disoriented, and he could expect a throbbing in his head and neck for a few days. But overall, it was nothing a good breakfast and massage tomorrow wouldn’t take care of.
    I opened the door with my shirt wrapped around my hand, to keep my prints off the doorknob. Once outside, I made a run for the Volvo.
    On the way out, I was blinded by the lights of a van. I was relieved not to see the lights of sirens—it was just Hector rolling his window down.
    “What took you so long?” I said.
    “I got here as fast as I could.”
    “Let’s go.” I looked in every direction and made sure we were alone. “And don’t tell anyone you saw me here.”
    Hector grimaced like a dad who’d just caught his son taking the family wagon out for a spin. “Let me guess—you took the Scalzo job.”
    I shrugged. “Too much to explain right now.”
    “You can explain it while we work.”
    “Work?”
    “Yeah, we’re supposed to bottle tonight.”
    “That will have to wait, but I’ll treat you to a beer for checking in on me.”  
    I told him we needed to make a pit stop, and then I slowed down where Jimmy had thrown out my phone.   I finally found it and picked it up. The screen was shattered, as were the phone’s guts.
    Better the phone’s guts than mine.

CHAPTER SEVEN
Monday Morning Coming Down  

    When my alarm sounded at seven o’clock Monday morning, I awoke to pain in most of my extremities and the innermost caverns of my brain. I killed the alarm. I should have slept in. The night before, Hector and I had agreed to postpone our bottling party due to my run-in with Mr. Chad Scalzo, but we still stayed up past midnight drinking from my existing stash while I told him about the Scalzo job and its aftermath. Hector said he regretted not tagging along, but I was pretty sure he was relieved he’d stayed home. Crawling out of bed that morning, I sure wished I had.
    Swollen eyes and modestly bruised cheeks greeted me in the bathroom mirror. My regular appointment with Dr. J was in less than an hour. If there was ever a time I deserved to miss an appointment, I figured it was today. Hell, maybe she’d even waive the late-cancellation fee. But I’d never missed an appointment with the good doctor, and wasn’t about to start on account of Chad Scalzo and his incompetent goons.
    Truth be told, Dr. Ellen Jasinski was one of the reasons I’d decided to stay in Florida after testing its warm waters a few years earlier. A nationally renowned expert in treating guys like me, she kept an office at the VA Hospital and taught at the University of South Florida. I’d been seeing her long enough that I had dibs on the first appointment of the week, Mondays at