Chapter 31

I WAS UPand across the bar before I’d really taken stock of the situation. My sheer bewilderment at the fight, and my own fatigue, had me diving into danger without a plan. I ran over and grabbed at Tox, but one of the heavy man’s mates pulled me off him and threw me into the edge of the pool table. That hurt. My fists came up immediately, and I gave the guy a couple of warning punches to the jaw. But that only made him madder. He swung a heavy fist at my head. I ducked, surged up with an uppercut that crunched teeth and bone, and knocked him out on his feet. Before he could fall forward onto me, I shoved him back. He fell into a table full of glasses where two old men were seated. They hardly moved.

The room was suddenly full of people. I felt a hand on the back of my head, grabbed and twisted it, heard a man scream. I kicked his knee out and he flopped to the floor. I looked up just in time to see another fist swinging at me. It glanced off my brow. I ducked too late and shot the guy with a sucker punch to the gut that folded him in half.

Tox was holding his own against the guy he’d targeted originally. It looked as though it was all about to be over when five uniformed officers burst into the room, one of them leading a huge German shepherd on a leash.

“On the ground! On the ground!”

I flattened against the stinking carpet. The dog was standing right over me, barking in my face, slobbering in my hair. I realized I’d left my police-issue phone on the counter by the window when I’d run in to assist in the fight. As I lay being cuffed I saw a homeless man shuffle along to the window, pick up the phone, and continue shuffling.

We were dragged to a police van, which had been parked hastily on the street outside the pub. It was really raining now. Tox and I were shoved into the back of the van while the other fighters were herded up against the wall of the pub for a lecture about public brawls.

The lead patrol officer stood in the doorway and wrestled the keys into the lock on the van door.

“We’re cops,” I said. “We’re both cops.”

“We know,” he replied, and slammed the door.