“Bastard,” one of them swore angrily.
Reaper chuckled. “I am, and don’t you forget it. Now get the hell out of here before I do you some serious damage.” He smiled tightly as the two men hotfooted it away without looking back.
“You did a good job there,” someone said from behind Reaper. “But you should have left it to us.”
Reaper turned to see who was speaking. A patrol car had pulled up to the curb, the motor still running. The officer riding shotgun looked him over, shaking his head. “We don’t condone vigilantes.” He held out his hand, saying, “Your ID, please.”
“Me, Officer”—Reaper peered at his nametag while digging his wallet out of his pocket—“Comstock? I was just defending myself from a couple of drunks.”
“Right. Looked more like you were trying to teach them a lesson from where we were standing Mister…” The officer looked the driver’s license when Reaper took it out of his wallet. “Mister Wallace.”
Reaper chuckled when he heard the other officer say, “Well, technically sitting, but who’s going to quibble about semantics?”
“Not me,” Reaper said. “And if you were so concerned, why didn’t you help me?”
“You seemed to have things well under control,” the officer who’d first spoken replied. He handed back the license. “I’m serious, though. Those three were not interested in you until you got in their faces.”
Reaper nodded. “They were after two women who left the bar just before they did. So I figured…” He shrugged.
“You’d play the hero. Like I said, next time, call us. That’s what
we
get paid to do.”
“Got it,” Reaper replied, giving them a mock salute before turning and walking off.
He continued on his self-appointed rounds after the cops had moved on. Sure, he’d dealt with those drunks, since they obviously had intentions of doing something to the two women. But Reaper was much more interested in protecting street kids and the homeless from the creeps who preyed on them. He’d lived on the streets himself twenty years ago and knew what it was like and what the dangers were. If it hadn’t been for the man who had rescued him and showed him there were better options, he figured he’d still be one of the people sleeping in alleys and selling drugs—or his body—to keep from starving to death.
Now he was paying it forward—championing those who were weak and unable to defend themselves—against the punks, pimps and dealers who seemed to make it their business to beat them down, literally as well as figuratively.
* * * *
“We should have arrested him,” Mike said, as he put the squad car in gear.
“For what?” Dallas asked. “Teaching a trio of drunks to behave themselves? No harm, no foul, and from what he said, he stopped them from potentially assaulting a couple of females.”
“If he was telling the truth.”
“Guess we’ll never know one way or the other.”
“One thing for sure, he probably wasn’t bar-hopping,” Mike said as he pulled the car out onto the street. “Not in leathers. There are no biker bars around here. Makes me wonder if what you said was the truth. Maybe he
is
playing vigilante.”
“With that build and the way he handled himself, could be. He wasn’t armed, though.”
“How do you know?”
Dallas snorted. “I checked him out? A knife? Yeah, he could have had one in his boot or the small of his back under the vest, I guess.”
“Maybe you should have frisked him,” Mike said with a knowing grin.
“If we run into him again, maybe I will,” Dallas replied, laughing.
* * * *
An hour later, Reaper walked along a street where he knew some of the teenaged girls hung out waiting for johns willing to pay for a quick blow job. A car pulled up beside one of them and the driver rolled down the window. The girl went over, shaking her head a moment later at something he said then nodding. She looked wary but went around to the other side of the car and opened the door. Seconds later, she was being dragged into the car.
The Reaper recognized the man for what he was—a local small-time pimp. So, without hesitation, he moved swiftly to stop the driver before he could take off, pulling his knife from its sheath at the back of his waist. The driver must have seen him coming in the side view mirror because he put the car in gear. Reaper grabbed the edge of the window frame with one hand, slashing the knife blade across the man’s arm. The man howled in pain. Feeling like a pirate for a moment, Reaper gripped the hilt of the knife in his teeth then reached down and opened the door. Before the man could react, Reaper pulled him out of the car.
“Step on the brake,” he ordered the terrified girl. It took her a moment to clamber over the console and stamp down, hard, bringing the car to a stop.
Meanwhile, Reaper dragged the man to his feet then knocked him out with a hard uppercut to his jaw. Ignoring the cheers from the girls watching, he threw the man over his shoulder, strode down to a dumpster and tossed him into it. Then, with a bow to his audience, he continued on his way.
* * * *
“We have an interesting one,” Dallas said after answering the dispatcher’s call. “Looks like our vigilante might have struck again.” He told Mike where, and within five minutes, they were pulling up to an alley. An ambulance was already there, and when they joined the EMTs, they found them ministering to a man who had a deep cut across his left forearm. He had also, quite obviously, been pulled out of the dumpster at the end of the alley.
“How is he?” Dallas asked one of the EMTs.
“He lost a fair amount of blood and has a fractured jaw, but he’ll live.”
“Any witnesses to what happened?” Dallas asked, looking at a small group of teenaged girls huddled together at the edge of the alley.
They seemed hesitant to talk, not too surprising in Dallas’ opinion, given the location. It was a known spot for girls trying to sell themselves to make enough money to stay alive.
Finally, one of them stepped forward. “That bastard tried to grab Jinx. Then this dude comes out of nowhere and stops him. Tossed him in there”—she pointed to the dumpster—“like the trash he is then vanished.”
“Describe him, please,” Dallas said, taking notes.
“Tall. Way tall. Like six foot, maybe.”
Dallas tried not to smile. Given that the girl was probably five-four at best, he could see why she’d said that.
“He was all in black. Leather pants, turtleneck, a vest, I think, although it could have been a jacket. Hard to tell ‘cause it was dark. His hair was sorta long and…shaggy? He had a knife for sure.”
“Which one is Jinx?” Mike asked.
The girl shook her head. “Not telling.”
“Look, we’re not going to arrest her. I just want her side of the story.”
“Uh-huh. Heard that one before.”
A skinny girl dressed in short shorts and a tight T-shirt stepped forward. “I’m Jinx.” She held out her arm. “He did this when he grabbed me.” There were deep bruises on her wrist and one on her forehead.
He pointed to her face, asking, “Did he hit you?”
“Naw. My head hit the edge of the door when he pulled me into the car.” Suddenly she started shaking. One of the other girls quickly wrapped an arm around her. “He…he was going to…” Jinx whispered. “If it wasn’t for that man…”
“You were lucky he showed up,” Dallas said.
“Yeah, ’cause for sure there weren’t no cops around,” another girl muttered.
Dallas cocked his head but refused to fall into a debate with her about what she’d said.
By then the EMTs had the man on a gurney and were putting him into the ambulance. Mike was with them, taking down the man’s particulars.
Dallas asked Jinx for her real name, knowing it was a fruitless question, even though he pointed out he’d need it and an address if they were going to file charges against the man for his attempted abduction. “I’ll also need you to come down to the station house to make a statement and sign it.”
“No way,” Jinx said with a hard shake of her head. Obviously having regained some of her confidence, she muttered, “I’m not stupid. I tell you who I am, you call my folks and the shit hits the fan again.”
“We’ll have to let him go if you don’t,” Dallas pointed out. “Then he might come looking for you.”
Jinx glanced at the other girls. The older one who had first told Dallas what had happened put her arm around Jinx’s shoulders. “He won’t try again, thanks to the dude in black.”
“Reaper,” the youngest-looking one whispered.
“What?” Dallas asked, turning to her.
“Reaper. There are stories going around about a man who…who takes care of us when something bad goes down. I bet that was him. He’s called Reaper.”
Arching an eyebrow at Mike, who had joined him now, Dallas said, “That’s a new one on me.”
“Yeah, me too. When we get back to the station, let’s see if anyone else has heard of him or filed any reports involving someone called The Reaper. At least we have his real name, if that was him earlier tonight.”
“And if his ID was legit.” Dallas returned his attention to the girls. “Is there anything else you can tell us about The Reaper?”
“Not
The
Reaper. Just Reaper,” the one who’d mentioned him said.
One of the others nodded. “I know a dude he saved from a beating about a week ago. According to him, Reaper told the bastard to remember his name, because if he tried anything like that again, he’d be hearing it in his nightmares after Reaper was done with him.”
“A bit melodramatic,” Mike muttered.
“Probably effective, though. Okay, ladies, unless there’s something you forgot to tell us, we’re finished here.” Dallas stared at them one by one, focusing finally on Jinx. “I know it’s rough out here and you’re doing the only thing you think you can to survive. But remember…next time you might not be so lucky.” He smiled wryly. “I shouldn’t be saying this, but find a couple of guys to hang with you when you’re out here. It’ll make the johns think twice about trying to pull what that asshole did tonight.”
One of the girls giggled. “Cops aren’t supposed to talk like that.”
“Hey, we’re human too,” Mike said, smiling. “We call it as we see it and that SOB was an asshole.”
“He was, so please think about what I said.” Dallas told them before going back to the squad car with Mike.
As they drove away, Dallas sighed. “They won’t, of course.”
“Probably not,” Mike agreed. “And now they’ll be trusting that this Reaper guy will show up to save them if they run into trouble again.”
“Which he probably won’t. Even if he’s doing what they think—protecting street kids—he can’t be everywhere all the time any more than we can.”
“Too true. Too true.”
* * * *
It was seven-thirty in the morning. Zack smiled when he heard footsteps on the stairs to the second floor. He finished drying his hair, wrapped a towel around his waist and stepped out of the bathroom just as Dallas came into the bedroom.
“You look beat,” Zack told him, crossing the room to kiss his lover.
“Thanks to you,” Dallas replied with a chuckle. “You did a number on the SOB who tried to abduct that girl. I especially liked the fact he ended up in a dumpster.”
“I figured it was fitting, given that he’s the kind of bastard who preys on girls. Well, all the kids who are in her position.”
“I know,” Dallas replied with a sigh of frustration. “It’s finding proof against them that’s a problem. The girls, and the guys, are too afraid to talk.”
“Tell me about it,” Zack said angrily as he started to unbutton Dallas’ shirt. “Did Mike buy that you don’t know me?”
“He did. It was just dumb luck we were there when you took on those drunks. And what was with that anyway?”
Zack smiled ruefully. “I was only doing my usual thing—keeping an eye out for anyone who thought they’d like to hassle the kids who crash in the alleys around the bars in the area. There’s been a rash of them being beaten up, as you well know.”
With his shirt now unbuttoned, Dallas nodded as he took it off and folded it to put with the other uniforms he had to take to the cleaners before going in to work that evening. “We do the best we can to keep it from happening, but when the kids won’t say anything unless they end up in the hospital…” He shrugged then kicked off his shoes and stripped off his pants, adding them to the pile.
“Thus Reaper was born.” Zack wrapped his arms around Dallas, kissing him quite thoroughly. “Go shower, and hurry if you want to play around before I have to leave for work.”
“Play around?” Dallas grinned. “I call it making love.”
Zack hugged him then swatted his butt to get him moving. “There’s definitely love involved. However…”
“I know. I’m going.” He raked his gaze over Zack. “You couldn’t have waited twenty minutes so we could have showered together?”
“Considered it, but the bed is much more comfortable.”
“Men,” Dallas grumbled before going into the bathroom and closing the door behind him.
Zack laughed. “I know. Can’t live with them. Can’t live without them.”
The fact that Dallas lived with him was a detail known to only four people—Zack, Dallas, Mrs. Cook and one other. Mrs. Cook kept it to herself because she adored both men and understood that Dallas could lose his job if anyone found out he didn’t live within the confines of the city. A requirement, he’d explained, for all of the city’s police officers. Dallas did have a small apartment downtown that was his official address. However, he rarely used it unless something kept him working overtime. Then, with Zack already on his way to or at his office, Dallas would crash there instead of making the half-hour drive home.
When Dallas came out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later, he hadn’t even bothered with the towel, so Zack was able to admire his lover’s well-muscled body as Dallas came over to the bed. Zack held out his arms, and Dallas immediately crawled onto the bed and into them.
They kissed for a few moments while using their hands to explore well-known parts of each other’s body. Then, since Zack had to leave—way too soon, in his estimation—and Dallas needed to sleep after his twelve-hour shift, they got down to business, minus condoms since they had been together long enough that they didn’t need them.