Southern Poison by T. Lynn Ocean Page A

necessary.
    “You ought to be a little more respectful around a lady,” John said calmly, “before you get yourselves in trouble.”
    “Guess he wants to keep his piece of ass all to himself,” the first one said to the others.
    “Oooh, I’m scared,” another said. “I’m so scared I might just piss my pants.”
    The six men banded into a tight group and walked our way, slightly off-kilter. They were drunk enough to lose all sense of reasoning, but sober enough to connect fists with a target. And all were laden with the wiry type of hard muscle conditioned by a labor-intensive job.
    “Get in your car, Jill, and lock the doors,” John said. He carried an autoloader in a shoulder holster the times I’d fluoroscoped him from the roach coach, so I figured him to be carrying now. Still, there were six of them. And I wasn’t in a mood to dodge bullets. If John pulled his gun, one of the bullies might respond in kind.
    “No, thanks,” I replied. “Think I’ll just hang right here.”
    John moved in front of me, in a sweet, protective sort of way. “You boys have had too much to drink. Why don’t you head on home?”
    “Seems to me,” one said, “you ought to head home and leave her with us.” He shoved John, hard, in the chest.
    “Shouldn’t have done that,” John said and threw a punch to the fisherman’s jaw that put him on the ground. Thinking they were supposed to back up their buddy, the other five came at us.
    “Get in the car, Jill!” John repeated and ducked beneath a swinging fist.
    I threw a high roundhouse kick over John’s back and clipped a man in the face, spun around and placed a low kick into the knee of another drunk who’d picked up a tree limb and was preparing to swing it. Stunned, both men dropped out of the fight and one went down with a groan. John did a quick double-take before launching himself into the remaining drunks while I stood back to watch. No need to ruin a good manicure if I didn’t have to. There was a flurry of fists, grunts, and moans as he took the remaining three men down, one at a time, with practiced precision. The brawl was over in less than thirty seconds.
    “Nice moves, Jill,” he said, brushing himself off and smoothing his shirt. “Now I’m really curious who you work for.”
    “I told you, I lead a simple life selling biscuits. And, thanks for the compliment. You’ve got some great moves, yourself.”
    He rubbed his knuckles. “I could have handled them all, you know.”
    “I’m sure. But why should you have all the fun?”
    Either too stupid or too stubborn to stay down, one man lumbered upright. “Try an’ take me now, you son of a bitch.” He held a long-bladed fishing knife with a curved tip. Confident of John’s hand-to-hand abilities, I moved out of the way.
    John waited for the attack and when it came, he used the man’s momentum to disarm him by sidestepping the weapon and pressure-twisting the wrist. In the next instant, John held his attacker by the throat, one-handed, his thumb and fingers squeezing from opposite sides. The fact that it was his left hand, the one with the damaged finger, didn’t affect his strength and I became alarmed when John didn’t let go, even after the man’s knees buckled from a lack of oxygen. He was going to choke him to death. I started to intervene when John snapped out of it and released his grip. The man melted into the asphalt, coughed once, and started wheezing. At least he still breathed. Being around a dead person completely creeps me out.
    “Let’s get out of here,” John said.
    “No argument from me.”
    We walked the rest of the way to my car and once there, he gave me a strange look that I couldn’t quite read. “Feel like a drink or a cup of coffee somewhere? Might catch some live music.”
    Anything to keep me from envisioning Ox and Louise together, and feeling sorry for myself. I’d never been jealous of a woman with Ox before. Not ever. But that was before I’d given in to my