Double Cross

Chapter 121

THE PLACE DCAK HAD ENTERED was a hole-in-the-wall restaurant for Mexican takeout. There were no tables in the front, just one very shaken old woman splayed on the floor and a skinny cashier still pressed to the wall like he was his own shadow.

I ran around the counter, pushing through a swinging door back into the kitchen.

The temperature instantly went up about twenty degrees. Two cooks shouted at me in Spanish.

Too late-I saw Anthony come at me from the right. What the hell? A cast-iron pan burned through my shirt and sent searing pain up my arm and right into my brain.

I countered reflexively with my other hand, an uppercut to his temple, a second punch to his throat.

He let go of the frying pan, and I grabbed it myself. I pushed it into Anthony’s face, then let it go before it fried the skin off my hand. He howled and stumbled back, blackened prosthetic skin sagging around one ear. Both of the cooks screamed as if they were the ones who’d just gotten burned.

Anthony steadied himself on the edge of an industrial range. He grabbed another cooking pan and hurled sizzling oil and vegetables in my direction. I avoided the flying grease, but Anthony was headed toward the back door.

He pulled down a set of baker’s shelves as he went. Dishes and equipment crashed everywhere. Lots of noise and chaos and shattering pottery.

“My sister’s dead!” he screamed back at me. Meaning what-that now he was really mad?

I grabbed a kitchen knife and went after him.