Lethal Rage by Brent Pilkey Page B

dismissed them, but Tank had insisted on calling an ambulance.
    â€œYou don’t know what type of filth or disease was on that door,” was his reasoning and the medics agreed. So Jack’s arm was wrapped in pristine white gauze from wrist to elbow. Karen was going to freak when she saw it.
    Have to remember to take it off before I get home. But it sure makes for a hell of a story. Another keeper, as Sy would say.
    Jack wandered through the tiny kitchen, as filthy as the rest of the apartment, looking for anything that should have gone to the station. The whole place had been thoroughly searched, so he gave the kitchen a simple visual inspection. In the living room, he saw discarded latex gloves on the floor, little patches of blue floating in a sea of old take-out and other garbage. In the smaller bedroom, he saw nothing but garbage and used condoms. The bathroom, thankfully, had also proved fruitless.
    Jack froze in the doorway to the master bedroom, at first thinking he was having some sort of post-traumatic flashback to the shooting. But the man standing in the bedroom was on this side of the bed and he wasn’t holding an assault rifle. True, he was black and bald, like the gunman, but he wore shorts, a Toronto Raptors jersey and a pair of black leather gloves.
    The man seemed as surprised as Jack to find someone else in the apartment. Their faces wore identical expressions of shock and their stances — knees slightly flexed, arms held motionless away from the body, shoulders rounded — were also comically similar. They both looked like a base runner getting ready to steal second.
    Jack was the first to break for second. “Okay, buddy. I don’t know where you were hiding, but right now you’re under arrest.”
    Jack stepped into the room and his movement shattered the stillness in the other man. He yanked up his shirt and Jack spotted the handgun an instant before the man grabbed it. Had the man been on the far side of the bed, Jack would have gone for his own gun, but he was so close that Jack’s first instinct was to tackle him. He lunged forward, driving hard with his legs to generate as much power as he could in the short rush.
    Jack was three strides from him when everything dropped into slow motion. He watched the man’s gloved fingers curl around the butt, the index finger slide over the trigger.
    Two strides away. Jack saw the muscles in the man’s forearm flex as he tightened his grip, noted the gun was a semi-automatic as it began to emerge from the waistband, its dull black finish in stark contrast to the vibrant red of the shorts.
    One stride. The gun pulled free with a final snap of the waistband —
Fuck me, it’s huge!
— and Jack was amazed to see the shorts ripple like scarlet water as the waistband slapped back against the man’s flat stomach. The gun rose.
    Time slammed back into full speed as Jack’s shoulder took the man in the gut and they both crashed back onto the box spring. The mattress lay on the floor where it had been tossed during the search like a drunk who had slid out of bed. The springs squealed in protest as they landed, Jack on top with both hands clamped around the gunman’s hand, trapping the pistol between them.
    The gunman’s free left hand was pummelling Jack in the side of his head, but lying on his back the gunman couldn’t generate any power. How long before he decided to go for Jack’s throat or shove a finger in his eye?
    The voice of a defensive tactics trainer from the college was suddenly in Jack’s head.
Do whatever you can during the fight to distract them. Knee, stomp, bite, whatever you have to do to win.
    Jack stared down at the man’s face and realized the man — boy, really — couldn’t have been older than eighteen.
Sorry, kid.
Jack butted him squarely on the nose and felt something snap. The kid howled in pain and Jack took the opportunity to shift his grip on