Page 4 of Protected By the BRATVA Grump

It's parked in the far corner, tucked away under a massive oak tree that’s mostly lost its leaves. I noticed it when I arrivedbecause the plate is a city plate, and there’s a scrape down the driver’s side that needs some attention before rust sets in.

The driver's door opens as Delilah passes the boat sheds.

He gets out slowly and stands for a moment before looking down the path after her. Boots, not running shoes. I look for signs of a dog, and when he opens the back door I expect one to jump out. Instead he pulls out a messenger bag and slings it over his shoulder. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

He waits for the distance to open up between them. Then he starts walking, and his wide, quick pace catches up to her quickly.

I'm out of the car and inside the treeline where the ground is wet enough to take the sound within ten seconds. He's watching her. I've walked this park enough times to know the path bends left after the boat sheds and loses the lamps for about eleven yards.

I’ll bet he knows that too.

He picks up his pace, closing the distance between them, Delilah still oblivious to his presence at all. Then he steps into that stretch with his head down and his hands out of his pockets, and I step onto the path in front of him.

He stops so fast he almost falls backwards.

"Long way from home," I say.

Whatever he sees on my face is enough. He begins to step backwards, but I close the distance quickly and put my forearm across his chest, pushing him into the trunk of the nearest oak. Up ahead, her footsteps stop.

Shit.

I look over to her to find her looking right back at me. I wonder if perhaps it’s too dark by now, that maybe she can’t see me. Imove my head slowly from side to side, hoping if she can see me, she stays quiet.

The guy struggles beneath my arm.

"Why are you following her?" I ask.

He's twenty-five, maybe thirty, soft in the middle, in a gray coat that’s seen better, and cleaner days. His eyes go past me down the path back toward where he parked his car.

I take my phone out with my free hand and photograph his face at eight inches with the flash on. He flinches hard enough that the back of his head hits the bark.

"You can tell me who you are, or I can find out another way," I say to him, my jaw tight and my teeth clenched. "That way I get to hunt you down if I find out you’re the fucker from the newspapers."

"I’m nobody, man, I was just taking a walk." He is sweating.

I grab the front of his coat in both fists and jerk him against the tree hard enough to make his head rattle.

"I know you’re lying," I say. "But I’m a fair man." He visibly sags with relief when I say this. "So empty your pockets and your bag."

The relief is gone in an instant.

"You can't make me, you psycho," he says, his face twisting into lines of pure fury. That tells me more than he knows. This isn’t some sociopathic serial killer I’m dealing with. This is an opportunist, pissed that I got in his way.

I snatch his bag and let the contents tumble to the ground. A stained cloth and a pair of handcuffs fall out along with a small plastic bottle of clear liquid and syringes. One looks prepped with the hypodermic needle already attached and ready to go.

"You sick fuck."

Delilah is slowly inching her way towards us, close enough now to see I’ve got a man pinned against a tree.

Unfortunately, for him, I’m not an opportunist.

"You don’t know who I am. But from now on I’m going to be right behind you, watching you. If you go near any woman without her expressed consent again, I’ll make sure you disappear. Go anywhere near this woman again, and I’ll make sure it’s in the most painful way possible. Do you understand?" He nods hard enough that his teeth clatter. I let him go, and he runs back to his car like a rabbit.

Letting him go costs me something I feel in my back teeth. I could have him in the trunk of my car and be somewhere with a floor drain inside the hour, and part of me is already there, laying it out step by step.

That part gets overruled.

I need to know whether he's the man from the newspaper article or just a guy who liked the odds. I need him alive and findable and stupid enough to have driven his own car.