“Money? What money? Logan!?” Claire asked, clearly alarmed by what she heard.
“Oh, if it isn’t Mommy dearest. And the lovely Ava! It’s an absolute pleasure to finally meet you in person!” The stranger, who seemed to be in charge, said in a sickeningly familiar tone.
I perked up. How the fuck did he recognize them, Ava even by name, when Claire and Ava had obviously no idea who these three guys were? Aaron, finally realizing this wasn’t a friendly get-together between college friends, stepped forward.
“What do you want?” he asked them. It didn’t impress anyone, since his voice was pregnant with uncertainty and indecisiveness.
“Our money, as we already said. Your father isn’t the brightest fellow, is he?” Another one of them replied. Did he just guess that Aaron must’ve been Logan’s father, or did he recognize him too?
He took a step towards Aaron. Suddenly I understood why Claire was taking money out of my bank account.
“Paying for ‘college stuff’, huh?” I mused to myself, just loud enough for everyone to hear, causing the family and the three strangers to turn their attention to me.
This wouldn’t do. Aaron was useless even in this kind of situation, Logan was already incapacitated, and Claire was protectively holding onto Ava with both of them looking frightened. This was rapidly turning ugly.
I looked at the three strangers more closely, and noticed the suspicious bulges under their jackets and shirts. One of them was probably carrying a gun, while the other two had purely cylindrical objects attached to belt-pouches. Strangely, I was still feeling mostly nothing. Neither nervous nor afraid, and certainly not concerned for Logan. If I had to put a finger on it, I think I felt excited when I moved.
I cleared my throat to keep their attention away from the family, and stepped past the three to position myself in between them and Claire, who was still holding onto Ava.
“May I ask, how much money are we talking about?” I asked them, doing my best to sound mildly interested.
“Enough for us to chase that shithead down here. Of course, we could discuss alternatives to offset the interest at least.” he said, as he basically undressed Ava and Claire with his eyes and tried to step towards them.
I reached back, grabbed Claire’s wrist, and pulled her and Ava behind me, never taking my eyes off the guy. It wasn’t to shield either of them. It really wasn’t. It was just a matter of principle. I didn’t like his attitude. That was all.
The guy clearly didn’t like that gesture and sized me up. I knew the signals he gave off from the training sessions in the firm, and realized this would end very badly for someone. I slightly turned my head and spoke to the two behind me, without taking my eyes off the three in front of me.
“Maybe it’s for the best if you leave now.”
“What!?” Claire protested. “No!”
I waited for just a second, but when nothing happened I spoke again.
“Aaron! How about you do the smart thing and help them to the car, so I can have an undistracted talk with Logan’s friends?”
Counting on him to be overwhelmed and inexperienced with these situations worked. Sure, I personally never experienced anything like this either, but I did have training and was somehow eager to put it to the test. And for some damn reason, there was that little voice in the back of my head telling me something along the lines of ‘Without Tess, no one’s gonna miss me anyways’.
Aaron took his wife by the hand and pulled her and Ava to their car. The guy ogling them wasn’t happy about it, but I wasn’t expecting to actually talk with them in the first place.
“You gonna regret this you fucking...” he started, while simultaneously reaching for the metallic object on his belt. I decided to make my move before he could pull out his weapon.
As he talked, he kept nodding upwards, as if he was trying to look down on me despite us being the same height. I quickly flicked my lit cigarette into the face of the guy I suspected of carrying a gun to my left, and headbutted the one in front of me. Thanks to him nodding upwards, my forehead made perfect contact with his nasal bone, and I felt a satisfying crunching. Then I quickly turned to my left, facing the one I just surprised with my cigarette bud. He was still pressing his eyes shut but had drawn his gun and was now blindly pointing it in our general direction. I grabbed his wrist with my right, pulled it upwards and past me to straighten his arm, and placed a strong palm punch on the outside of his elbow.
Just as my left connected with his elbow, he pulled the trigger, but then his elbow bent inwards. It was then I realized that I couldn’t hear shit anymore after the gun went off so close to my head. That was NOT part of the training sessions. We did those with Blueguns. All I heard now was a long, drawn out, high-pitched beep.
I managed to keep the movement of my left hand going though, past his elbow, turning my upper body with it until I was almost with my back to him. Then I pulled my left arm back, ramming my elbow with everything I had into his chin. The Gun dropped and his body followed. I kicked the gun under my Jeep and turned back to the one I headbutted.
Too late, it turned out. As soon as my head was turned towards him, it snapped back when something hard hit me directly above my right eye. Surprised by the sudden pain, I instinctively raised both arms to protect my head, but then the same thing hit me hard in the left side of my chest. I took a step back, forced my eyes to open again, and saw him as he was just pulling his arm back to hit again.
He was holding a telescopic baton with a weighted head. The training kicked in again, and I moved in close to him so the thing wouldn’t have enough momentum to do real damage when it came back down on me. I managed to grab his arm, turned back around as I went to my knees, and pulled him down with me. Thanks to my body being in the way of his legs when I pulled him forward, he lost his balance and fell past me. I straightened back up and kicked his jaw hard. His hand let go of the baton and he went limp.
Then I realized the biggest mistake I had made, apart from engaging in this possibly unnecessary fight in the middle of a Walmart parking lot during business hours. After all, the training in the firm was not just about fighting. There were quite a few sessions in which we roleplayed how to de-escalate dangerous situations, but I simply didn’t think talking would do me any good with these guys.
I had assumed the third guy would be occupied by (or with) Logan. That assumption was quickly proven wrong, when the guy who had held Logan slammed his fist hard into my ribcage, right where I was hit with the baton before. I could actually feel my rib break and then move!
Getting beaten on a daily basis by football players almost twice my size provided me with a different perspective on pain. The training in the firm wasn’t exactly all cream puff either. But the pain I felt now was like nothing I had ever experienced before. I turned towards him, but he was suddenly close to me, so I panicked and put as much strength as I could into hitting him right in his orbit with my fist. He tumbled but had already managed to hit me again, in the outer area of my lower left stomach this time. I saw a glimpse of Logan’s back as the gutless fucker ran away. Then I looked down on myself, trying to figure out why my rib hurt so much, but instead noticed the handle of the knife that was sticking out of my stomach.
The sight stunned me for a moment. Long enough for the guy to recover and hit me in the face, causing me to fall backwards right next to my Jeep. When my eyes focused again, I saw the gun lying within reach underneath it. I grabbed it as fast as I could, pointed it upwards at the guy, and he froze.
“BACK!” I screamed and he complied, lifting his hands in the air.
“FACE DOWN ON THE GROUND!” I screamed again, and he complied again.