Chapter 7 - Trial by Fire and Iron
The two flunkies scrambled inside the house through the smashed patio door. Vance stepped forward, swinging the crowbar into his left palm with rhythmic, sickening thuds.
"You think because you humiliated Victor in front of a bunch of PTA moms you're a tough guy?" Vance snarled, closing the gap. "Victor was soft. He cared about his social club and his golf handicap. I don't give a damn about any of that. I built this company with my bare hands, and I’m not letting an old mechanic with a high school dropout badge take my life away."
He lunged with the crowbar, swinging it high toward my temple.
He was twenty years younger and fifty pounds heavier, but street fighting in gravel pits teaches you something bar bouncers forget: momentum is a trap. I stepped inside the swing, letting the cold steel whistle past my ear, and drove the heavy butt of my steel flashlight directly into his solar plexus.
Vance wheezed, stumbling back into the dirt, the wind knocked completely out of him. But he was tough. He swung his boot up, catching my left knee. Pain flared through my old joint, forcing me down onto one knee.
Before I could recover, Vance was on me, tackling me into the frozen dirt just inches from the roaring burn barrel. The heat blistered the side of my face. Vance’s heavy forearm pressed down across my windpipe, his bloodshot eyes bulging with manic fury.
"You're done, old man," he hissed, spittle landing on my cheek. "You're just another piece of trash that got in the way."
My vision started to darken around the edges. I couldn't reach the flashlight. But my hand clawed into the dirt and found a rough, jagged hunk of unburnt firewood. With everything left in my forty-year-old bones, I brought the jagged log up and smashed it against the side of his skull.
Vance grunted, his grip slacking as blood trickled from his hairline. I rolled him off me, gasping for the frigid air, coughing until my chest burned.
Behind me, the sound of glass shattering echoed from the second floor. One of the workers stumbled out onto the balcony, holding a black server tower, shouting down into the dark.
"Marcus! Police! There's sirens at the county turnoff!"
Far down the valley, blue and red strobes painted the low clouds. It wasn't my bluff; someone had actually called them.
Vance pulled himself up on his hands and knees, glaring at me through a curtain of red. "This isn't over, Reed," he choked out, staggering toward his truck. "You won't survive the hearing."
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The two workers scrambled into the truck bed, and Vance slammed the pickup in reverse, tearing through the gate posts and vanishing down the logging road just as three state patrol cruisers tore up the main driveway, gravel spraying like buckshot.
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