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  Instead, he said quietly, “That was very nice.”

  “It was, wasn’t it?” Natalie agreed. “But maybe we should do it again, just to be certain?”

  “It never hurts to be sure,” Jake said. He lowered his mouth to hers again.

  That was when the rush of footsteps came from the darkness behind them, and Jake knew that hell was about to break loose, yet again.

  CHAPTER 14

  Natalie let out a startled “Oh!” as Jake gave her a push that sent her staggering back away from him. He didn’t see or hear any attackers coming from that direction, so his instincts told him that was the safest place for her. As soon as he had done that, he whirled to face the shadowy figures charging toward him. No more than a shaved instant of time had passed since his keen ears picked up the first warning sounds of danger.

  It was too dark here under the trees to tell how many of them were coming at him. All he knew for sure was that he was damned tired of being jumped like this . . . and especially at such a pleasurable moment as the one he’d just been sharing with Dr. Natalie Burke.

  He heard the faint swish of something coming at his head and ducked. Unfortunately, one of the attackers had lunged in from the side and brought a weapon of some sort around at a lower trajectory, and Jake ducked right into its path. The blow didn’t strike him full force, just clipped him on the side of the head, but it was enough to make stars explode behind his eyes for a second and sent him stumbling to the side.

  One of the men caught him around the waist with a flying tackle, and since he was already off-balance, the collision was enough to jolt him off his feet.

  He landed hard on his right hip. Pain shot through him from the impact with the unrelenting concrete sidewalk. He ignored it as he grappled with the man who had driven him down. Reaching out blindly, Jake felt his hand close over what felt like a cloth-shrouded jaw.

  Those damn black-hooded Antifa fanatics! They were after him again, even though he had put the last four in the hospital. At least he supposed he had. There had never been any official word about them, as far as he knew.

  With the heel of his hand under the man’s chin, he shoved up as hard as he could. The man had to let go of him and jerk away, or else Jake might well have broken his neck with that thrust. Jake rolled to put some distance between them, but as he did, another of the attackers stepped up and launched a kick that slammed into Jake’s ribs. They still ached from the previous fracases, and this vicious blow was enough to make agony roll through him like a flood tide.

  In order to kick Jake, though, the man had to get close to him, and Jake shoved the pain aside so he could take advantage of that. He reached out swiftly and closed his left hand around an ankle. A hard yank and twist threw the man to the ground. He yelped in alarm as he went down.

  Feet scuffed on the sidewalk as more of the indistinct, black-clad, black-hooded figures closed in around Jake. He knew he couldn’t allow them to keep him on the ground. If they did, they could kick and stomp him into submission. They might even do enough damage to seriously injure or even kill him.

  His hand dipped into a jacket pocket and came out with the folding knife. His thumb found the opening in the top of the blade and flicked the knife open. He came up on one knee and brought that hand around in a long, sweeping, curving stroke. The blade met resistance more than once, and each time the razor-sharp edge cut through whatever it encountered. A couple of screams sounded from the men who had been looming over Jake, only to encounter more trouble than they evidently expected.

  Jake powered to his feet, still slashing back and forth with the knife. The attackers gave ground. They had to, if they didn’t want to get sliced to ribbons. Jake sensed as much as heard one of them coming at him from behind and bent sideways at the waist. He had his balance now, so he was able to snap a side kick that sunk the heel of his work boot into the man’s belly. The man folded up and collapsed, and a second later Jake heard him retching.

  As Jake returned to an upright position and stood there, braced for more trouble with his chest heaving, not from exertion as much as from emotion, he tried to calm the rage that had burst into white-hot fire inside him. All the resentment and disgust that had been building up since he had come here to Kelton College had broken free. He knew he could have killed somebody if one of those knife strokes had opened up a throat, but right at the moment, he didn’t care.They had attacked him . . . again! . . . and whatever happened to them was on their own heads.

  At the same time, the still-logical part of his brain knew how heavily stacked the odds against him were. Not in terms of battling these attackers. He would take on however many of them wanted to come at him, one at a time or all at once, and trust to his own abilities to keep him alive.

  But would his abilities enable him to triumph in what came afterward? If he killed any of them, he would be arrested and probably charged with murder. The survivors would claim he had attacked them for no reason at all, and they would all back up each other’s stories. The college administration would make no effort to defend him. Indeed, President Pelletier and the other members of the administration would be glad to see him convicted, imprisoned, and out of their hair. The news media would try him in the court of public opinion and find him guilty, guilty, guilty . . . of being a conservative, and oh, yeah, of murder, as well. Jake knew his grandfather would provide him with the best lawyers money can buy, but it might not be enough.

  The unfairness of it grated at Jake. These Antifa lunatics could try to kill him—the blow that had clipped his skull could have fractured it just as easily, if it had struck him with full force behind it—but he couldn’t defend himself without risking life imprisonment. The system was broken and had been for a long time. The axis had tilted toward the monsters for so long that most people now regarded the situation as normal.

  Jake knew all that . . . but he also knew that in life, you had to deal with things as they were, not how you wished they could be.

  So when the waves of rage inside him had subsided a little, he said hoarsely, “Back off. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

  “Too late,” one of the men said. The hood muffled and disguised his voice, but Jake could tell that it was drawn thin with pain, probably from a knife slash. “You’ve already cut us up, you son of a bitch. You have to pay for that.”

  Jake hoped that Natalie had run away when she realized he was being attacked again. He thought he vaguely remembered hearing the swift rataplan of her footsteps on the sidewalk just as the fight was getting started. As long as he didn’t have to worry about keeping her safe . . .

  Slanting beams of light suddenly pierced the shadows and darted over Jake and the black-clad figures around him. Rapid footsteps sounded again. A strong, familiar voice called, “Hold it right there! Drop any weapons you have and get on the ground!”

  “Let’s go!” the man who seemed to be the leader of the Antifa thugs ordered. Some of them were limping heavily from the damage Jake had done with the knife, but they all managed to run away from the campus police officers charging toward the scene from the far end of Nafziger Plaza.

  Jake had recognized Frank McRainey’s voice. He stayed where he was and allowed the flashlight beams to roam over him. The way he was turned, the campus cops couldn’t see what he was doing as he closed the knife and slipped it back into his pocket. Violating the prohibition against carrying weapons on campus was only a misdemeanor, and otherwise, the knife was perfectly legal. Jake was willing to pay a fine if it meant having the means to save his life or the life of some other innocent person.

  If he got busted for carrying the knife on campus, though, and word of it got out, the media would use that ammunition to make him look like even more of an alt-right, neo-Nazi lunatic. And the college might decide to use it as justification for expelling him.

  Jake wasn’t giving up the knife, though. He would wait and see how this played out.

  He recognized McRainey in the vanguard of the officers who rushed up t
o him. Keeping his hands in plain sight now, in a nonthreatening manner, he said, “It’s me, Chief McRainey. I’m not going to give you any trouble.”

  The chief was the only person on the force who carried a firearm, but the others were armed with stun guns and batons. Jake didn’t want Cal Granderson getting carried away and hitting him with a stun gun again. That was no fun.

  Granderson was one of the officers who had responded. He looked like he was almost hopping up and down with excitement as he yelled at Jake, “Get on the ground!”

  “I think we can dispense with that, Cal,” McRainey said, always the voice of reason. “Jake doesn’t appear to be armed, and he’s not resisting.”

  “He’s been fighting again!” Granderson said. “Look at him! That’s disturbing the peace, Chief. Maybe assault! Who did he attack this time?”

  “I didn’t attack anybody,” Jake said calmly. “I was walking back to Olmsted Hall when some of those Antifa goons jumped me again.”

  “Antifa,” Granderson said with a sneer obvious in his voice. “You blame everything on Antifa, Rivers. You scared of them or something?”

  “That’s enough,” McRainey said before Jake could answer. “What happened to the men who attacked you, Jake?”

  “You mean you believe him?” Granderson asked.

  The chief made a curt gesture for him to shut up, then turned back to Jake, who said, “They took off when they saw you coming.”

  “How many of them were there?”

  “I’m not sure. I never got a good look, and anyway, I didn’t have time to count them. Five or six, I’d say as a guess.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  Jake’s head and ribs hurt from the blows they had absorbed, but he said, “Nah, I’m fine. It didn’t amount to anything more than a scuffle, thanks to you coming along when you did.”

  He wanted to get out of here and back to the dorm before this blew up into more trouble than it was worth.

  “Well, you can thank Dr. Burke for calling us. She said she was with you when those guys showed up.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Jake looked around. “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know. The dispatcher just talked to her on the phone.” McRainey gave Jake a shrewd look. “Is there something going on I ought to know about?”

  “I don’t know what it would be. You’re not the morality police now, are you, Chief?”

  “On a college campus?” McRainey snorted. “We’d sure as hell be overworked if we were.”

  Jake could tell that Granderson was just busting at the seams to get a comment in. He couldn’t resist poking the campus cop.

  “Something you want to say, Cal?”

  Granderson opened his mouth, then shut it after McRainey gave him a stern look. He settled for shaking his head and glaring at Jake.

  McRainey told Granderson and the other officers, “You guys go on back to the office. I’ll escort Mr. Rivers to his dorm to make sure he gets there all right and there isn’t any more trouble.”

  “Thanks, Chief,” Jake said, even though he was pretty sure the hooded thugs wouldn’t be back tonight.

  “Aren’t you going to search him?” Granderson protested.

  “Why? The incident turned out not to be serious. There’s no need to search Mr. Rivers or to detain him any further.”

  Granderson didn’t look happy about that at all, but he turned around and left with the other officers as they headed back to the campus police building.

  McRainey fell in step beside Jake as they walked toward Olmsted Hall. After a couple of seconds, he said quietly, “Son, you are just asking for trouble.”

  “How?” Jake wanted to know.

  “The ice under you is already about as thin as it can get after those earlier incidents. The administration will throw you under the bus before you can blink, if you give them the slightest excuse . . . like carrying a weapon on campus.”

  “Nobody said I was carrying a weapon.”

  “You want to deny it?”

  “Is that an official question?”

  McRainey blew out a breath.

  “I know you, Jake,” he said. “You play by your own rules and figure you can take care of yourself, and ninety-nine percent of the time, you’re right. But getting on the wrong side of ninety-nine point nine percent of the student body and about that many of the faculty the way you have, you’re bucking heavy odds. Messing around with a professor is just going to make it worse for you.”

  “Who said anything about me messing around with a professor?”

  “Dr. Burke sounded mighty worried about you when she called. You’re not in any of her classes. I’m not sure how the two of you even know each other. But where were you before you started back to Olmsted Hall this evening?”

  Jake shrugged.

  “The Shamrock.”

  “Were you alone?”

  Jake knew it wouldn’t take much effort on the chief ’s part to find out the answer to that, so he told the truth.

  “No. As a matter of fact, I was having a few beers with a friend. Dr. Burke.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Look, Jake, I’m not trying to give you trouble. I’m just saying that you can only break so many rules in life before it starts to catch up with you. Just be careful, that’s all.”

  They had reached the steps of Olmsted Hall. Jake said, “I always am, Chief.”

  McRainey just made a scoffing sound, shook his head, and turned to walk off.

  Jake walked up the steps to the dorm’s front porch, wondering what had become of Natalie. He knew she probably was all right, since she had called the campus police, but he would have liked to be sure. He couldn’t call her, though, because he didn’t have her number. He’d meant to ask for it but had never gotten around to it. That was another way he was out of step with his own generation. Most people his age, if they had any interest in someone else, would have gotten their number right away.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket before he could go inside. He pulled it out, checked the display, and saw that he’d gotten a text message from a number he didn’t recognize. When he read it, he saw it said, Are you all right? N.

  That was her, he thought. He wasn’t sure how she had gotten his number, but she had already proven to be resourceful. He tapped out, Fine. You?

  All good. I’m glad you weren’t hurt. And now you have my number, so I’ll be expecting you to call me.

  Jake sent her back a thumbs-up, not knowing what else to say, then put the phone in his pocket and went on into the dorm.

  A thumbs-up, he thought, shaking his head at his own ineptitude.

  CHAPTER 15

  Matthias Foster walked out of the apartment’s kitchen carrying three beer bottles in one hand and two in the other. He distributed the bottles among the four people waiting for him in the living room. Jimmy, Hank, and Carlos were in armchairs. Lucy sat at one end of the sofa with her legs pulled up under her. Foster kept one of the beers and sat down beside her. “Rivers is going to be a problem,” he said.

  “We need to take that son of a bitch out,” Jimmy said. He held up his left arm, which sported a bandage around the forearm. “He cut me pretty bad. I had to get a dozen stitches, man. If we didn’t have a doctor of our own, we’d have guys in the ER right now and the cops asking questions. And we were lucky it wasn’t worse. Somebody could’ve gotten killed. As it was, we’ve got men laid up again.”

  “He’s just one man,” Lucy said. “I don’t see how he can do any real damage to the plan.”

  “One dangerous man,” Foster said. “We’ve seen that demonstrated twice now, close up. He could’ve killed Jimmy or one of the boys with him.” Foster paused. “Of course, if Rivers had killed somebody, he’d be in jail now, and we wouldn’t have to worry about him.”

  The others frowned at him but didn’t say anything. After a moment, Foster laughed.

  “Hey, I’m just screwin’ with you. I don’t want any of our group getting killed.” Foster’s expression
grew more solemn. “Listen, though. We knew going into this that it was serious business. Dangerous business. There’s a very good chance not everybody will come out alive on the other end. But the reward will be worth the risk. We’re all agreed on that, right?”

  Carlos said, “We know the deal, Matthias. And we’re in.”

  “Yeah, we’re in,” Hank added.

  “All the way,” Jimmy said. “But if somebody’s gotta die, I want to make sure it’s that bastard Rivers. I still think we ought to do something about him before the time comes.”

  “We’ve gone after him twice, just to test him and find out how much of a badass he really is,” Foster pointed out. “Now we know. He’s not going to take us by surprise and Die Hard us. If he tries, we’ll be ready for him. That’s why we have to make sure where he is and keep track of him.”

  “Still think we should just go ahead and kill him right off the bat,” Jimmy muttered sullenly.

  “What about the rest of the students?” Hank asked. “There could be somebody else who might take us by surprise.”

  Foster made a face and shook his head.

  “The chances of that are so small I’m not really worried about it. You know what they’re like. They’re not violent. They abhor violence. Just ask them, they’ll tell you. Oh, they can form a mob quickly enough, if anybody offends them and violates their safe spaces, but as long as we keep them spread out, they won’t do that. They won’t do anything unless the odds are on their side. They think they’re noble, but they’re just cowards.” He laughed again. “They’re about to learn a valuable lesson, though.”

  “What’s that?” Lucy asked.

  “In a world full of wolves, there are no safe spaces.”

  * * *

  The next day, Jake had a break of several hours in the middle of the day without classes, so he got in his pickup and drove out into the country east of Greenleaf to visit his friend Keith Randall.

  Randall owned an outdoor gun range and firearms and self-defense training school, and Jake tried to get out there at least once every couple of weeks to put some rounds through his guns. He had his 1911 with him today, along with a hammerless .32 S&W wheel gun.