Bone Rattle by Marc Cameron (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📕

He was closer to Lola. Cutter left him to her.

The female cyclist was engaged in a brutal tug-of-war with Corbin McGrone over her bike. Blood streamed from her nose and a gash over her left eye. Blond hair stuck out in all directions, giving her a crazed look. A wool hat lay on the gravel beside her bike tire. McGrone clutched the handlebars with one hand while he cuffed her hard across the temple with the other. He was a head taller, but the determined young woman dug in like she’d been hit before. She let loose another growl, chilling, like the one Cutter had heard as he came through the brush. The sound of it at once impressed and infuriated him.

McGrone hit her again.

The young woman reeled from the blow, momentarily letting go of the bike. McGrone put a foot on a pedal, believing he could now make his escape. The young woman wasn’t having it. She yowled, grabbing the bike and giving it a furious yank. It squirted out from between them in the process, putting it out of McGrone’s reach, but robbing her of that small amount of protection.

Still thirty feet away, Cutter sprang out of the brush and bounded across the creek. Geysers of water erupted around his boots with every step.

“US Marshals! On the ground!”

McGrone snaked an arm around the girl’s neck, drawing her to his heaving chest. He backpedaled on the slick ground, spinning, attempting to use her as a shield.

“I’ll break her neck!” he screamed, his voice climbing an octave. “Stay back. I swear, I’ll do it!”

The girl cowered, looking incredibly small and frail in the big man’s arms.

Sirens wailed in the distance. Cutter heard a dog bark upstream. The canine team was close, but not nearly close enough.

Cutter was vaguely aware that Lola had Bronco Gorman face-down in the slush and mud. He’d worked with her long enough now that he trusted her to stomp her own snakes.

McGrone tried to step back again when Cutter was still fifteen feet out. He was a tall man, wiry, cornered. Fighting like a coward, putting the girl out front, worked against him. Even now, he believed Cutter would stop and negotiate.

That wasn’t going to happen.

Cutter dropped his shoulder, juking as if he were going to the right.

McGrone roared. “I said stay back!” He dragged the girl across the muck, attempting to keep her between himself and Cutter.

Seeing help on the way, she began to kick and squirm, clawing at the man’s groin and raking her shoes against his shins. She’d gotten her bearings now, and sank her teeth into McGrone’s forearm as he turned. One leg jerked reflexively upward at the pain, and the momentum from the girl’s weight carried him in a stumbling, half pirouette.

Yowling curses, he continued to issue orders, believing he was in charge because he had a hostage.

Cutter crashed in just as the girl slid down to the middle of McGrone’s chest, presenting the side of the outlaw’s head as a clear target for a sickening elbow.

McGrone staggered but didn’t fall – and he kept a grip on his hostage. Cutter let his elbow slide by after it slammed against McGrone’s jaw, then reversed course to catch the outlaw again in almost the same spot on the backswing. The strike was less than textbook. It jarred the nerves in Cutter’s elbow like an electric shock, but he was rewarded with the crunch of breaking teeth.

The girl bit McGrone again, then threw her head backward to hit him square in the nose.

Stunned as he was, he gave her shoulders a stiff shake to try to intimidate her into calming down.

“I said st—”

Past talking, Cutter grabbed a handful of McGrone’s hair and used the outlaw’s own momentum to jerk him straight into a hard uppercut over an unprotected kidney. Cutter aimed through rather than at his target. The punch died there, expending all its sickening energy into the frazzled outlaw. Cutter held tight with his left hand and hit the man again and again with his right.

“Okay, okay, okay,” McGrone whimpered, growing heavy in Cutter’s grasp. He shoved the girl away as if she were the root of all his troubles. His voice was hollow, like he was about to throw up. “I gi—”

The girl stumbled, pitching forward, planting both hands on the ground to arrest her fall. She yelped from the shock and pain. The sadness of it made Cutter give McGrone another smack, driving the man to his knees.

“I said… I give… up…” The outlaw’s voice quavered, breaking into tears.

“On the ground!” Cutter barked. He released his grip so the man face-planted into the mud and snow. “Let’s see those hands.”

Lola had Bronco Gorman cuffed and sitting cross-legged against a birch tree at the water’s edge. The dark-blue uniforms of three Anchorage police officers ghosted through the birch trees.

Cutter stooped, ratcheting on the cuffs – none too gently.

“Why…?” McGrone whispered. “Why didn’t you just talk? I mighta really hurt her.”

“It’s a little harder to break somebody’s neck than you think,” Cutter said.

McGrone winced. “Well, you sure as shit make a good go of it.” He turned his head so his cheek pressed against the mud. Tears of pain and anger ran down his battered face. His eyes fluttered. “I… wasn’t really gonna break her neck. I thought you would negotiate.…”

Lola laughed so hard she snorted.

“He’s not much of a hostage negotiator,” she said. “More of a hostage liberator.”

The APD officers came through the trees and helped get the prisoners to their feet.

Lola adjusted the holster on her belt, head tilted to listen to the radio in her pocket. “They have Shiloh Watts in custody. Evidently the K9 got her. Stupid woman. Blitz is a hound from hell.”

One of the APD officers glanced at her.

She gave him a sheepish grin. “I mean, he’s a great dog – for an eater of souls.”

“Know what you mean,” the officer said.

Once she was sure the officers had eyes on the