Chapter 21
Her phone buzzed again, but Zoe didn’t even look at it. Ignoring Hector’s curiosity, she downed her rum. The burn was soothing somehow. In the background, a man yelped, and chairs fell. When she turned, Zoe saw Hector’s man dragging a small blond guy, wire-thin, and dressed in oversized pants, to the bar. Surprisingly, nobody, apart from herself, seemed even remotely interested in what was happening. The girls wiggled, the men drooled. A normal night at the El Diablo from what she could see.
The whimpering man’s knees buckled when he reached the bar. Hector didn’t even turn. Zoe was unsure how to react, so she waited for a cue. Was he the Hellhound? How could she be sure of it?
Without a word, Hector got to his feet, and he seemed to expand and grow taller before her eyes. As tall and imposing as Archer. He looked at the messenger like he would a puny insect.
“You are the Hellhound.”
The man nodded so fast, snot flew in an arc from his nose to his trousers.
“Who are you supposed to meet?”
The poor man looked very briefly to Zoe before reverting his attention back to the bigger threat.
Hector nodded at her, a silent assent. She reached for the Flash drive in her pocket and gave it to the man. Before being allowed to flee, Hector’s man shook him for good measure and the messenger scurried away. As he disappeared, Zoe felt both relieved and crushed. For a second time, she had trampled on the trust of both Archer and Beatrice, and another small part of her soul had died. Everything blurred around her. From a distance she felt her phone vibrating in her pocket. The music was starting to give her a headache, and if she didn’t need to return Mrs. Lupe’s car, she would probably order a lot more shots to drown the incoming sorrow.
Hector touched her hand and it was like something cracked inside her. She wasn’t a cry-baby, not by a long shot, but his concern, the setting, her pain, the stress, all mixed with the inevitable ending, opened the waterworks. Trapped and probably out of his mind with discomfort, Hector nonetheless patted her on the back. The phone rang again, and she just sobbed even harder.
And if not crying, she would be laughing. She was being comforted by a mobster, crying like a baby, in a strip club on the other side of town. Well, if she survived the whole ordeal, that would be an interesting story to tell her grandkids.
Calming down, Zoe noticed a change in the noise, it became louder, a definite ruckus from the door behind her, and by the way Hector tensed, it couldn’t be good.
The man shifted a little, as if to put his body between the noise and her, which allowed her to have a view of the door. A group of bikers had made their way in and were starting to sit in a couple of booths on the right side. Strippers started to flee. It seemed that it was a false alarm, until she returned her gaze to the door. It was now her time to tense. Archer. It took a few blinks to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. Wearing a black t-shirt and jeans with a dark brown leather coat, his hair windblown and that fierce look on his face, it was as if she saw him for the first time. The businessman was nowhere to be seen, even the way he moved, the intensity of his expression as he scanned the crowd was very unlike anything she had known of him so far.
Sensing a change in her, Hector followed her gaze, loosening his hold. Just then, Archer spotted her. Fierceness turned into fury as he saw her in Hector’s arms. Zoe knew there was no way to calm him down with words. The crowd around them reacted like a wave as men tightened the circle and several went to Hector’s side. Zoe tried her best to position herself in front of Hector, but the man held her back with amazing ease.
Archer snarled. “Get your hands off her.”
Hector crossed his arms and as Zoe attempted to intervene, Hector’s right-hand man brought her back even more, his grip unyielding.
“Hector! Let me go!” But it was as if she hadn’t yelled at all. Both men stood toe to toe, and the air sizzled with testosterone and impending violence. Zoe didn’t know what to do. “Hector, please, he’s a friend. The one who’s been calling me.” But even that admission didn’t appease the tension.
“She’s mine, don’t touch her.” Archer’s voice had taken a new tone. His accent was now thick and threatening, like a cracking whip.
Archer didn’t look at her now, and to be honest, Zoe wasn’t totally convinced it was the man she knew in bed and in the office. This beast was totally foreign to her. When Hector started circling, Zoe hoped this was just a bad dream, a horrible movie, that she would wake up from. Without looking away from his opponent, Archer removed his leather jacket and threw it away. When Hector whipped up a blade, a scream caught in Zoe’s throat. The scene was surreal.
Hector threw his arm back and the blade flew to the floor, stuck between the two fighters. At that exact moment, the two opponents charged each other. Frozen in place, Zoe couldn’t help but stare. It was frighteningly surreal. A lethal dance between them. The blows made horrible sounds as they hit flesh and the thuds of bone against bone made her whimper. Archer grabbed Hector, twisting him in a deadly grip, but Hector started pounding Archer’s ribs with his elbow repeatedly. It must have hurt like hell, because Archer lessened his hold and Hector grabbed the knife. Zoe dashed forward, but a pair of arms prevented her from intervening. Archer was back on his feet, circling again, as Hector was contemplating an opening, an opportunity to strike.
The fight had taken another level of intensity, when Hector attacked, and Archer evaded within the circle of bodies. At one point, Archer fell back on a man standing in front of Zoe, trying to dodge Hector, and the man punched him viciously in the ribs before pushing him forward back to Hector. Zoe only reacted and kicked the man hard between the legs. She didn’t have direct access to his little brain but hoped her pointed toes would do the job. And as she expected, the man doubled with pain before falling to his knees. Men around either smiled or started cursing at her. One helped Zoe’s victim out and another took his place, but not before telling her off.
When Zoe returned her attention to the two combatants, both were heaving hard. Hector sported a nasty bruise on his cheek and chin and blood trickled from Archer’s eyebrow. Soaking wet, the brutality of the attack didn’t lessen, but they were a little less quick to react. Hector lunged forward, and Zoe saw the knife plunging into Archer’s t-shirt. The movement was swift, and Hector now blocked her view. Zoe was scared that Archer had been stabbed when instead she heard a tearing sound, and Archer stepping sideways, before kicking Hector square in the chest. Hector fell back, the knife skidding on the floor, lost in the crowd.
Zoe inhaled sharply when she noticed Archer’s t-shirt was now almost in shreds and hanging from him. But at least, blood was minimal. The two men started again, and she knew she had to act before one of them got killed. There was enough trouble in her life as it was without a dead body to top it off. Twisting around, her captor let her go as she clearly wasn’t heading for the fighting men. The rest of the crowd was more interested in the twirling bodies on stage than the battle. The bikers were a rowdy crowd and now, most of the strippers were buzzing around them like a swarm of honey bees. Obviously, all the men present had weapons, but she wasn’t stupid enough to ask them to lend her one. Then she saw an old extinguisher on the other wall.That could work.
Zoe dashed and unhooked it from the wall when someone grabbed her from behind. “If it isn’t Little Red Riding Hood!”
One of the bikers must be too drunk or too stupid to see that she wasn’t part of the entertainment and put his slimy paws on her breasts.
“Hey! Let me go, you caveman!” And obviously, it didn’t do anything, apart from making his horde of Neanderthals laugh and he tightened his hold on her waist.
It was when he started pulling her back among his gang that she started to panic. It was impossible to swing the extinguisher from that angle, so she fired it. Laughter was quickly replaced by shouts as white foam sprayed the men with more force than she expected. Just as she was getting the hang of it, her captor pulled her ponytail viciously.
“Drop that, bitch!” Zoe wasn’t going to, but with his fingers twisting her arm, and him pulling her hair, she screamed before he brusquely dropped her to the floor. The hit shook her bones and made her head spin for a moment, but it was imperative that she moved and got away.
When another guy got his hands on her, she kicked and tried to crawl again. A body fell in front of her, well two bodies in fact, two men fighting like crazy. Barely evading random punches, she rolled, at last getting to her knees, before someone pulled her up. Zoe turned to punch him when she recognized Archer. Bare-chested and bloody, he was standing beside Hector who was in the same state, this time with a gun in his hand.
“So now you’re friends?” Archer didn’t answer and was pulling her back toward the bar. The entire biker gang was now busy fighting off the rest of Hector’s men. The dancers were nowhere to be found. No money, no candy.
