The Perfect Husband - Lisa Gardner [74]
The man pulled back his arm. He slapped the woman hard, snapping her head around. She crashed against the machine, falling bonelessly to the ground.
“For God’s sake, no!” Marion cried. She lunged for J.T.’s arm, but she was too late. J.T. lunged into the thick of it.
Like a massive tidal wave, the crowd of people surged, some eddying out the door to escape and others moving in closely. More people—muscle-bound, testosterone-pumped men—flooded in, looking for action. Tess saw the woman try to rise, then flounder and fall back. Something dark and wet matted the woman’s hair. Blood.
“Damn,” Marion said. She shook her head, then seemed to lose the war with herself and stepped forward.
Tess looked at J.T. He was raising his left arm to block one blow and pulling back his right arm to deliver another. She looked at Marion, striding purposefully ahead.
She took a deep breath.
She set her sights on the fallen woman and stepped into the whirlpool.
IT WAS HOT. Sweat-soaked flesh pressed against sweat-soaked flesh until the air seemed to steam. It was loud. She couldn’t distinguish any single voice or cry, she just heard the dull roar building to a crescendo. It was thick. She was too short to see over and too small to shoulder her way through. So she pushed and pawed, as if hacking her way through a dense undergrowth, trying to remember where she’d last seen the woman and head in that direction.
She burst into a small clearing and drew in a huge gulp of air. Then, like a swimmer, she held it in her lungs and plunged back in.
An arm caught her in the shoulder and she stumbled. Another arm caught her and tossed her back onto her feet. She lurched forward, her hands fisted at her sides, her jaw clenched. Someone jostled her, and in a spurt of terror she used some of her newly developed muscle to push back. The body gave way instantly. She was amazed.
She pushed herself through and found the fallen woman, who was moaning and clutching her head. Tess hunched down, eyeing the woman anxiously.
A crash resounded above them. Tess and the woman swiveled their heads simultaneously to find the new threat. A man stood beside then, looking not at them but at another charging man. The first man wielded the jagged half of a broken beer bottle in front of him.
“Damn,” Tess swore. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Marion bursting from the crush, her hair disheveled, her blouse ripped. She didn’t even glance at Tess or the fallen woman. She went straight after the man with the broken bottle. He tried to bring up his arm to fend her off.
He didn’t have a chance. Two smartly delivered chops, and Marion had him writhing on the ground, holding his twisted arm and screaming curses. The charging man hesitated, not sure what to do with a woman. Marion decided the matter for him. Her foot hooked him neatly behind the ankles, and with a fierce yank she toppled him to the ground. A new cry rose up from the crowd.
Tess stopped thinking. She offered her hand to the fallen woman and helped her to her feet. The woman clutched her bloody head.
“Look out!” Marion cried.
Tess froze. The man who’d started it all was there, towering above them, his eyes bright with rage. He carried a chair leg in one hand.
Tess stared at the rounded wood. And she thought, It’s not nearly so sturdy as a baseball bat.
The chair leg was raised up into the air.
Then Tess shivered, her gaze locked onto the images suddenly in her head. The baseball bat swinging down. The crack of her thigh. The burning pain. The scent of blood. The knowledge of all the other times the bat had whistled down and connected with human flesh and bone.
How did a head sound when hit by a bat? Like wood cracking? Or more like a melon going splat?
A dull roaring filled her ears.
Dimly she heard the chair leg whistle down. Dimly she saw the man tossed forward and J.T. standing in his spot. Then, as