“He won’t, Jared.” The man knew who he was. Which he realized was bad. This wasn’t some random pervert. Hauck knew he was clearly here for him. He also realized there was no gain in killing the boy. If Hauck went at him, it would only incapacitate the blade.
“He’s going to let you go.” Hauck looked in Jared’s cowering eyes, taking a step closer. Then he switched to the attacker. “And when he does, Jared”-Hauck flexed the stick-“I want you to run out of here, fast as you can. Don’t go outside.” It occurred to Hauck the man might not be alone. “Stay in the rink. I want you to find Ted and hide somewhere. Call 911.”
Jared nodded fearfully. Hauck took another step. “You understand, don’t you, son?”
He nodded again, petrified.
Hauck winked at him. “Good.”
The man arched back the boy’s neck, chortling, “Fuck I’m going to let him go…”
Hauck shifted his gaze solidly to the man. The knife gleamed. An army combat blade. He no longer felt nerves, just that he was the only thing between the boy’s life and death, and he was glad it was him. He gave the man a purposeful smile.
“You know damn well I’m not gonna let that boy out of my sight.”
The assailant tensed his grip on the blade.
“You came for me.” Hauck nodded to the man. “Have at it, asshole.”
He lunged with the stick at his attacker’s head.
Hauck knew from twenty years on the job what people in these situations do, no matter what they’ve threatened, when a SWAT team charges into a room. They defend themselves. What the survival instinct orders them to do.
The man threw up his hands.
Stick high, Hauck swung it with all his might across the assailant’s shoulder, the arm holding the knife. The man took a step back, reflexively put out his arm, letting Jared go.
As the stick split in half across his arm.
The man cried out. Jared ran, screaming, out of the assailant’s grasp. Hauck took what was left of the stick and charged him, knocking the guy backward and pinning the arm holding the knife against the concrete locker-room wall.
He tried to squeeze the blade from the man’s grip.
“Jared, get out! Do as I say. Get out of here!”
But the boy just stood there, paralyzed, as Hauck wrestled for the blade against the wall. The man was strong. Like Hauck suspected, no amateur. He kept squeezing the man’s arm against the wall, trying to pry the knife free. “Jared, go!”
He spun, tried to ram the man in his belly with the butt of the stick, but the assailant pivoted and drove his knee into Hauck’s groin, crushing the air out of him. The pain shot through him. He wrenched Hauck back, rolling him over a bench, against the edge of an open, metal locker door.
Hauck felt dazed, breathless, his belly on fire like he’d been speared.
The man came at him, flexing the blade in a way that said he knew exactly how to use it. Hauck scrambled to his feet, clinging to the jagged edge of the stick to defend himself.
The man grinned cockily. “Always have to play the hero, don’t you, dude.”
He swung, ripping through Hauck’s sweatshirt, scraping Hauck on the arm as Hauck tried to block the knife with the shaft of the stick.
Hauck cried out in pain.
He looked past him for a second. Jared was still standing there, paralyzed with fear. “Jared, please!”
The attacker dove at him again. This time Hauck flung out an open metal locker door, catching him flush. Skates, pads cascading all over them. Summoning every bit of his strength, Hauck slammed the open door against the man’s hand-two, three times-trying to free the knife. Blood rushed into the guy’s face as he tried to hold on.
Miraculously, the knife fell from his grasp and clattered to the floor.
Both their eyes darted to it.
With his free hand, the assailant took Hauck by the collar and drove him hard against the locker, the pain shooting up his spine. In the same motion, he lunged across the floor for the blade. Hauck dove on him, blood trickling from his mouth, his arm burning like it had been flayed by a slicing machine. They both fell across the wooden bench and onto the floor. The man spun Hauck on his back. Suddenly he picked up the splintered hockey stick and pinned it across Hauck’s throat, venom in his eyes. Hauck’s left arm was momentarily pinned behind the metal legs of the bench. Straining, the man realized his advantage and forced the stick into Hauck’s larynx.
“Chew on this, fucker.”
Hauck pushed back against it vainly, his arm finally freed, but it was too late.
The assailant was too strong, too adept, and he leaned on top of Hauck with all his leverage. Hauck started to gag. He couldn’t push it back. His eyes flashed to Jared standing across the room, transfixed, squeezing a sliver of space for air, shouting to him, “Jared, please, run. Now!”
The boy took a step toward the door.
Hauck felt the oxygen and strength slowly seeping out of him. He strained, lungs bursting, pushing back with everything he had, twisting his torso to push the guy off. But he couldn’t! He looked into the dark, wide pupils of the man’s gloating eyes and realized, his breaths growing short and frantic, he might die here.
“Next time, be careful where you stick your nose…” The man grinned triumphantly.
Hauck’s lungs were exploding. He looked helplessly at Jared one more time, unable to even beg him now. With the last of his strength, he reached, desperate for anything he could find, fingers grasping at his side-pads, towels, nothing…
A skate.
Suddenly he felt his hand come into contact with it. His fingers fumbled at the leather boot, the laces. He slid it along the floor, clutching on to the laces.
This could save his life.
That’s when he heard someone scream. “Get off him! Get off!”
Jared coming over and beating on the man. What was he doing?
The boy’s hands around the man’s neck, trying to twist him back. “Let him go!”
Jared’s blows were meaningless. The man flung his arm around, sending him flying into the wall of lockers.
It gave Hauck the instant he needed.
He squeezed on the boot and swung it upward, catching the startled attacker in the face just as he turned back, his eyes widening in surprise.
The grunt that came out of him was fearful, garbled; his hands rushed to his face.
Hauck spun him off. They both fell onto the floor, Hauck rolling on top of him. He heard a deep-rooted groan, more of a gurgling sound, and a crack, the weight of Hauck’s body lodging the skate blade deep in his attacker’s chest.
A matted slick of blood appeared.
Eyes glazing over, the man began to breathe heavily. Blood oozed from his jacket.
Hauck rolled off him, collapsing back in exhaustion against the row of lockers.
The man just looked at him, helpless, a pool of dark blood building up by his side.
“Who?” Hauck’s throat was so tight and rasping he could barely speak. “Who sent you?”
The man just looked at him, taking short, croaking breaths. Denial in his eyes. Lips quivering. Until he stopped.
Jared ran up to Hauck. He pulled the traumatized boy against him, an arm around his shoulders, stroking his face. “It’s going to be alright, son,” he said, shielding Jared’s view from the bloody sight of the man dying.
He repeated it, telling himself as well. “It’s going to be okay.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The Greenwich police arrived a few minutes later. The first officer, a ten-year vet, found Hauck sitting, bloodied, against a wall outside the locker room, with his arm around Jared. The cop stuck his head inside and came out white-faced. “My God…”
Maybe two minutes later, the medical team arrived. They checked out Jared-he was okay, thank God, other than a few marks on his neck where the blade had nicked him. Just in a state of shock. Hauck had called Annie. She was on her way now. One of the med techs took a look at Hauck’s arm. The knife wound hadn’t gone too deep, but the flesh was torn pretty good. He’d need stitches.