Burn (30 page)

Gian and Karl battled on, slipping and sliding on the
remains of hissing cans bleeding their contents. In a
white button-down, jeans, and athletic shoes, Gian had a
little less of the mobility his
gi
allowed, but he moved
well enough to counter Karl’s ferocious strikes.

In their sparring matches, Karl had always let frustra
tion and temper get the better of him, and this contest was no different. He picked himself up from the col
lapsed pyramid of ginger ale cases Gian had thrown him
into and took a running start to launch himself into a
whirling crescent kick. Underestimating the width of the
aisle, he cleared a dozen eight-packs of flavored water
from their home on an eye-level shelf before he crashed
to the floor.

Gian straddled him, using his legs to render Karl’s
useless. His right fist poised to strike, he clenched his
teeth and drew his right elbow back farther, to get as
much power as possible behind the impending blow.

“That’s enough!”

Chip’s bellowing voice couldn’t stop the descent of
Gian’s fist, but Chip’s hand did. He caught Gian’s wrist
and, with a neat twist, deflected the shattering blow
meant for Karl’s face.

“What the hell is the matter with you two?” Chip
positioned himself to back Gian away from Karl. “If you want to brawl, do it in the dojo or in the alley. You don’t
bring it out in the open. You’re scaring folks.”

“And embarrassing others.” Zae spoke low between her teeth, glaring from Gian to Karl. “Idiots.”

“Oh, my God,” moaned the day manager, who had
emerged from the safety of an endcap loaded with the week’s special, 3 for $11 cases of generic diet cola. He
clutched his balding head as he entered the soda aisle, the
soles of his leather uppers giving him no purchase on the
wet and sticky floor. “Who’s going to pay for this? Lange,
what the hell happened? Mr. Grogan isn’t going to like
this, not at all!”

“Just a disagreement between old friends,” Chip said
and smiled. “Gian and Karl had some things to work out, and, well . . .” Chip tightened his grip on Gian, who con
tinued to glower at Karl. “They’re all out now. Right, boss?”

“
This isn’t over by a long shot!” Karl swore. Like the
biggest bull in Pamplona, Karl got to his feet and
snorted, squaring his shoulders. His head down, he
sneered and charged toward Gian.

“Yes, it is, Karl.” The manager, hands raised, stepped
into Karl’s path.

Karl clipped the manager’s shoulder as he lunged at
Gian, spinning the man in a complete circle. His feet
twisted, and he hit the floor. A rainbow of soda instantly
tie-dyed his white shirt. He landed on his big belly,
instantly flipping onto his back like a beetle. His skinny
arms and legs flailed until he rocked himself onto his side
and struggled to his feet in a puddle of soda.

“It’s time to cool it, Karl.” Zae caught him, easily stopping him with an arm hold. “You can’t take on all
three of us.”

Despite her high-heeled T-straps, tight tweed skirt,
pale silk blouse, and heavy tortoiseshell-framed glasses,
Zae looked perfectly capable of throwing down if Karl
forced her. Gian enjoyed a fleeting second of pride
knowing that the sexy schoolmarm had his back.

One last angry snort, and Karl jerked out of Zae’s
grip. “This ain’t the last, Gian. Not by a stretch.”

“Get your things and go home, Karl,” the manager panted. “You’ll be lucky if Mr. Grogan doesn’t fire you.”
He shook soda from his hands. “Dear God, this mess is
gonna cost a fortune to clean up, never mind what this
will do to my waste account for the day . . .”

“Mr. Piasanti will pay for the damages and your
losses,” Zae assured the manager. “He’s a business owner
r
ight across the street. Sean Grogan knows where to find
him.”

The manager, his saturated polyester trousers hanging
off him, worked his mouth, capable of no sound other
than a soft whimper. Chip helpfully used the toe of his
sneaker to push a spinning, spraying two-liter to one side of the aisle.

“We’re gonna get Mr. Piasanti back across the street,”
Chip said, offering an awkward smile.

“And back on his meds,” Zae snapped. Her voice
cleared a path through the stunned gawkers. “Don’t you
people have jobs to get back to? The matinee is over. Get
on with your business. Folks act like they’ve never seen a throw down in a grocery store before.” She turned back to
the manager, who had been following them. “This is what
happens when you overprice your boneless chicken breast.
It’s a dollar and a half cheaper everywhere else in town. ”

Chip grabbed Zae by her arm and pulled her out of
the store. “I’ve got my hands full with Gian,” he chided her. “Can you save your comparison shoppin’ for later?”

* * *

“If I’d heard it from anyone other than Jalesa, I never
would have believed it,” Natasha said. She met Gian and
his entourage outside Sheng Li and followed them into
the office. Gian kicked out his chair and dropped into it,
giving his desk an extra kick out of frustration.

“Look at your hands,” Natasha admonished. “You
tore the skin right off your knuckles.”

“
More like scraped it off against Karl’s face,” Chip noted. He offered Karl’s old swivel chair to Zae, who
refused it.

More prepared than any Boy Scout, Natasha whipped
her keys from the pocket of her full peasant skirt. She
rounded the desk and took Gian’s right hand. She sorted
through the policeman’s whistle, store cards, and mini
Swiss Army knife attached to her keychain and selected a
tiny yellow and green canister of antibacterial spray. Each
of Gian’s knuckles got a blast while Chip retrieved the first aid kit from the top of a tall filing cabinet.

“Jesus!” Gian exclaimed. “That stuff stings.”

Natasha pursed her lips with an impatient sigh. “You
just finished tearing up a man’s head with your bare
hands, and you’re going to bellyache about a squirt of
antiseptic?” She gave his knuckles another spray and
grinned when he winced.

“You should be ashamed of yourself, Gian,” Natasha
said. She ripped open a half dozen bandages. “What will
Cinder think when she finds out that you went over there
to beat up Karl?”

“I did it for her. I don’t want Karl thinking he can
scare her and get away with it.”

“Women don’t need to be saved,” Natasha insisted.
“Men just want to be heroes.”

“That sounds familiar,” Gian said, remembering
something Cinder had once told him.

“That’s a good way of putting it,” Zae told her.

“It’s not mine,” Natasha said. “I read it in a book. But
the lesson applies here.”

“Amen, sister,” Chip agreed.

Gian narrowed his eyes at him. “Whose side are you
on?”

“I don’t know what the hell is going on,” Chip admit
ted. “One minute I’m scoopin’ the best lasagna in town into
my paper hot box for our lunch, the next I’m in the middle of Mortal Kombat. I don’t know what to think, boss.”

“You said my mother’s lasagna was the best,” Gian
reminded him.

“Your mom’s is the best
ever
,” Chip clarified.
“Grogan’s is the best in the Groves.”

“Are we seriously having a debate about lasagna right
now?” Zae snapped.

“Karl dressed up as a ninja on Halloween and stood
outside Grogan’s, staring at Cinder while she and
Natasha treated the kids,” Gian explained. “He had the
black mask, the sword, the whole nine yards.”

“If he was in a mask, how’d you know it was Karl?”
Zae asked.

“I told you that it
could have
been Karl,” Natasha
argued. “It could have been anybody.”

“Who else would be out there deliberately trying to
scare Cinder? She’s been through so much. This is the last
thing she needs, another crazy bastard torturing her.”

Zae’s gaze flickered toward Natasha before she said,
“Cinder told you? About . . . ?”

Gian spread the fingers of his right hand wide,
allowing Natasha to wrap bandages around each of his
knuckles. “I got a lot of it from the internet, but she told me the rest.”

“
Have I missed something?” Chip asked. “I thought
we were talking about Karl.”

Natasha shared a look with Chip. Zae broke the
silence. “Remember when I left town for a few days? It’s
been almost two years now.”

“You were gone ten days,” Chip recalled. “You upped
and left without telling anybody.”

Zae’s elegant eyebrows arched in surprise.

“Those were the most peaceful ten days we ever had
at Sheng Li,” Chip remarked, a sardonic grin aimed at
Zae. “How could I forget them?”

“I went up north, to Massachusetts. For Cinder. She was recovering from a serious . . . accident.”

“Accident?” Gian blurted. “Her ex-husband deliber
ately tried to kill her.”

Chip was taken aback. “Hold on . . . What?”

Gian started to explain, but Zae stopped him with a raised hand. “Cinder married a man who knew how to
charm. He was beautiful—”

“So was Lucifer,” Gian interjected.

“—and smart. But he was a fraud. After she married
him, his true colors came out. He picked her clothes,
picked her friends. Picked ’em off, is more like it. Every
time I talked to her, more and more of her conversation centered around her life with Sumchai Wyatt. Work and
Sumchai. She never talked about her parents or her
friends. It got to the point where I didn’t hear from her
unless I called her. She even stopped sending me
Christmas cards. When she called me and told me that
she left him, I was so happy, I did cartwheels. But when
s
he told me why she’d left, I wanted to shoot Sumchai
Wyatt in the head.”

“I thought Cinder looked familiar when I met her,”
Natasha said, pensive. “I think I saw her on a television news
show a couple of years ago. That story broke my heart.”

“Well, I didn’t see it, so I’m the only one in the dark
here,” Chip broke in. “What did he do to her?”

Gian answered. “He raped her, for starters.”

Zae continued the tale. “That’s what finally forced
her to see what that man really was. She left him after
that, but it still took her about a year to decide to divorce
him. She was moving out of their farmhouse when he
came in. Cinder said she never even saw him, that one
minute she was sealing a box, and the next, she was
waking up in the hospital two weeks later.”

“Jesus Harold,” Chip gasped.

Gian closed his eyes and flexed his sore knuckles
against the images conjured by Zae’s account.

“He beat her. He stabbed her two dozen times. He
cut off her hair. He would have killed her if one of the
moving men hadn’t stopped him.”

“What happened to her ex?”

“He was arrested and got a domestic abuse assault
charge instead of attempted murder or manslaughter
because he and Cinder were still married when it hap
pened. His attorney argued some horsecrap about
extreme emotional distress contributing to his state of
mind at the time of the attack. The prosecutor tacked on
as many charges as he could—assault, battery, conspiracy
to commit premeditated murder—”

“
How did they argue that last charge?” Natasha
asked.