Divorced, Desperate, and Delicious

Chapter 27

Chapter Twenty-seven

Everything happened so fast, all Lacy could do was grip her toilet plunger and try to keep up. Guns were drawn, pointed. Words were spoken, then Chase yelled out and she saw him lunge forward.

A loud pop sounded at the same time she heard the familiar metallic bing of the White Elephant taking another bullet. Then came the grunt of two bodies colliding. Chase and Zeke fell to the street, their legs and arms swinging.

They rolled right, then left. Chase ended on top. Zeke held his arm up in the air, gun clasped tight. Chase gripped his wrist with one hand while his other hand pounded Zeke’s face. Zeke punched back.

The two men rolled. Zeke ended on top this time. His gun hand was extended, held there by Chase’s strong grip.

Lacy’s gaze zipped to Jason, who was standing only five feet away, scowling. His gun was aimed, but it moved a half-inch this way, then a half-inch that way.

“Do something!” Lacy screamed, but even as she said it, she knew why he didn’t fire. The risk of hitting Chase was too great.

Her gaze flew back to Zeke and Chase. As if in slow motion, Zeke’s arm lowered, the barrel slowly moving down. Down. Down toward Chase.

Lacy rushed forward. Her first swing brought the plunger down across Zeke’s head; the second hit smack dab on his balding forehead. That blow must have momentarily stunned him, because Chase gained control and twisted on top.

Too bad Lacy couldn’t stop mid-swing. The plunger’s third strike bounced off Chase’s face.

Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, Jason Dodd was in the middle of the scuffle. Lacy danced from one foot to the other, plunger held up like a bat, trying to find her target, the snake-eyed Zeke, in the middle of the three-man scuffle.

She swung, heard a grunt. She wasn’t sure who she’d hit, but Jason Dodd cursed. She swung again and got Zeke on the ear.

The clink sounded of a gun being dropped onto the pavement just as more sirens and screeching tires echoed around them.

Chase, blood oozing from his lip, lunged up and grabbed Lacy by the shoulders. He gripped her tightly as his gaze flew up and down her body. “You weren’t hit. You weren’t hit,” he repeated, as if talking to himself.

Lacy waited for him to pull her against him; instead he let her go, held out his hands, and clutched his fist in front of her. “Do you fucking see why I told you to stay in the van? He could have killed you.”

“He didn’t,” Lacy said, and swallowed her need to cry.

Jason Dodd’s voice rang out. “We’ve got him,” he yelled to the officers getting out their patrol cars.

* * *

Chase watched Lacy pull the plunger to her chest and hug it as if it were a damn teddy bear. Then he swung around and watched Jason handcuff Zeke. Chase’s hands shook as he fought the need to crush his fists into Zeke’s face.

Jason, his knee pressed into Zeke’s back, looked up at Chase. “Stokes regained consciousness,” he said. “He gave this asshole up.”

Zeke jerked his head back. “He must be in on it, too! He—” Zeke spluttered to a stop when Jason gave his face a shove into the pavement.

Only when Jason stood up and two officers hauled the red-faced and furious Zeke off to their patrol car, did Chase really believe. He drew in a shaky breath and wiped the blood from his mouth. Remembering what had brought on the injury, he spat the taste of blood, rubber and toilet water from his tongue.