The First Lock - 7. Chapter 7

- VII -

“So how did you manage to kick Kenny’s ass?” he asked when they were in the car.

Katrena shrugged lightly.

“Oh, man...” Paul laughed softly. “Kenny got sloppy, didn’t he? Overconfident numbnut...”

“No,” Katrena said seriously. “He was all right, actually... Had a knife to my throat and all... I know how to take care of myself,” she added when she met his doubtful eyes.

“So you took martial arts classes or something?”

“You could say that,” she agreed solemnly.

Paul hemmed.

“The problem with those is that people feel they are invincible after they learn a couple of techniques,” he said without taking his eyes off the road. “They take a couple of years of karate classes and they think they are Bruce Lee in the making... Some actually start looking for troubles... Which brings me more work,” he sighed. “With someone like Kenny, yeah, sure... The guy is a moron... But when you come across someone who is actually well-trained...” he shook his head.

Katrena shot him a dirty look.

“I could kick your ass,” she said, and he started to laugh.

“Uh huh,” he said finally. “Sure you could...”

She just looked at him without saying anything. He glanced at her and blinked.

“Are you daring me?” he asked incredulously.

“I didn’t say anything,” she said with a small smile.

“Sorry,” he shook his head again. “I don’t take on pregnant girls... Call me crazy...”

Katrena realized that this whole thing was actually quite entertaining. She knew that she looked like someone who’d be having troubles shoving a bag of potatoes into a shopping cart, and she would always use that as an advantage.

“I bet,” she started saying in a low voice. “I bet that I can disarm you and get you down on your knees in less than five minutes... Without endangering my pregnancy,” she added when he gave her another incredulous look.

“You bet, huh,” he muttered and returned his gaze towards the road again. “What are you willing to bet?”

“When I win, you’ll buy me a bagful of lollipops,” she said seriously.

“Lollipops,” he repeated.

“I crave cigarettes like no other,” she sighed. “And I can’t have any...” she glanced at her stomach with disgust. “So yeah, a lollipop is a lesser evil...”

“You mean if you win,” he hemmed.

“No,” she said as seriously as before. “When I win.”

“This is crazy...” he laughed softly. “Fine,” he said after a few minutes. “If you lose, however...”

“That’s not going to happen,” she said with a small smile.

“Just for the sake of argument...” he sounded like he was trying to control his laughter. “In highly improbable case of you losing...” he glanced at her. “You are going to give me your phone number.”

“Deal,” she agreed calmly.

“Jesus...” he muttered and shook his head. “I can’t believe I am doing this...”

“Just pull over somewhere,” she said. “Somewhere nobody will see us... Don’t want some idiot to call someone when they witness me assaulting a police officer, you know... Plus, it won’t be good for your reputation...” she added slyly.

“Right,” he muttered in a strained from laughter voice.

He pulled to the side of the road and glanced around.

“Good enough,” he said finally. “It’s dark and there is nobody in sight.”

Katrena climbed out of the car and shut the door.

“All right,” Paul said with disbelieving smile. “You are seriously going to do it, huh?”

“Yup,” she said melancholically.

“You are insane,” he muttered. “You are the very type of people I was talking about... All right, I guess I am going to do you a favor... At least, you won’t be hanging out in a dark alley, trying to go Wonder Woman on some criminals...”

“Right,” she smiled without baring her teeth. “A favor... Come on, I want my lollipops!”

He shook his head one last time and took a very quick step towards her; she was actually impressed. The guy was pretty good, she thought with amusement. She knew that he was trying to get her into a bear hug thus twisting her arms behind her back and calling it quits. When he was close enough for her to smell his chewing gum, she moved aside in an almost liquid motion, and then her arm shot forward. Two of her slightly bent fingers darted towards the hollow of his throat, and the minute they made an impact, Paul made a sound that reminded her of a popped air balloon when all the air escapes from it. While he was trying to gasp for a breath (a very difficult task after such a maneuver, she knew that), she landed a hefty kick on the back of his knees, and he collapsed on the ground, smacking his head on the door of his own car. Katrena quickly unholstered the gun that was on his hip, and took a small step back. She glanced at her watch.

“A minute and a half,” she said. “Now, my math is not brilliant, but it’s less than five minutes, right?”

He finally managed to sit up and look at her.

“Holy shit...” he said when he could speak again. “Jesus Christ...”

“I want my lollipops,” she said seriously and handed him the gun.

He slowly took his gun and coughed.

“Jesus Christ...” he repeated. “That was...” he coughed again. “That was a good move,” he finished finally.

“Sorry if I hurt you,” she said seriously. “I tried not to hit you too hard... If you push harder on that spot,” she nodded at the hollow of his throat. “You can actually kill someone.”

“That wasn’t martial art,” he muttered and got up, his gun attached to his hip again.

“I never said it would be,” she shrugged, and he shook his head again.

“Let’s go get your lollipops,” he grumbled, and she laughed.

****

“Okay,” he said when he pulled to the curb next to Mandy’s house. “You are good, all right... But please, don’t go out looking for troubles!”

“I wasn’t going to,” she said. “Not yet,” she added silently in her head. After the monkey is born, things might change.

She opened his glove compartment and dug in there for a few seconds. Finally, she found a pen and grabbed his hand.

“Here,” she said after she wrote something on his palm. He looked at his hand and blinked.

“It’s a phone number,” he said slowly.

“Yup,” she nodded seriously and pulled a lollipop out of the bag.

“You won the bet,” he glanced at her, and she shrugged.

“I am going to run out of these eventually, you know,” she said and shoved a lollipop in her mouth. “And I’ll need more...”

He hemmed and sat there silent for a full minute.

“Katrena...” he finally said slowly. “I am twenty-nine...”

“Okay,” she nodded. “And...?”

“Well,” now he looked uncomfortable. “I didn’t know if the age difference was going to... I don’t know...” he shrugged.

Katrena bit onto her lollipop hard. “I have quite a few years on you, sweetheart,” she thought, managing to keep herself from laughing. When you are almost the same age as Claudia herself, it says something, all right...

“If you were sixty,” she said seriously. “Then I guess I would have a slight problem with this...”

That made him laugh. For some reason, Katrena liked that laughter. “Jett...” someone whispered in the back of her head and she bit her lollipop again. Jett is gone, she thought. She will never see him again; she will never be able to go back there; she burned every single bridge when she told the wizard to Lock her. Plus, this might not even grow into anything serious anyway. Let’s face it, she is pregnant, and Paul is young, single, and attractive. Why on earth would he tie himself to someone who has a kid? In addition to that, there was also a fact that she wasn’t going to bed him until after the monkey was born. Now, this world might have its differences (some of them quite major), but when it came to human nature, it was pretty much the same. A young healthy male is not going to go sex-free for almost half of the year, unless he develops some mighty strong feelings for her, which she was positive would not happen. “Hell,” she thought. “He probably won’t even call me!” And that was fine with her.

“Well,” she sighed and opened the door of the car. “I’m gonna go... Thanks for the ride and the lollipops!” she grinned at him.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Thanks for Kenny!” he added when she almost got out of the car.

She laughed at that.

“You are welcome,” she nodded finally. “Good night, Paul.”

“Night, Katrena...” he said softly.

He watched her get inside the house, and only then he re-started the car and drove away.

****

“How was your ride?” Mandy asked her the minute Katrena got inside the house.

“Got my lollipops,” Katrena said seriously, waving a plastic bag full of colored candy.

“Good God,” Mandy winced. “That’s a lot of lollipops!”

“I have cigarette cravings,” Katrena sighed.

“Ah,” Mandy nodded with understanding. “Wait... I thought you left your purse at home...” she frowned thoughtfully.

“I did,” Katrena nodded, and shrugged when she saw Mandy’s laughing eyes. “I won a bet,” she said.

“A bet?” Mandy blinked. “You made a bet with him? What kind of a bet?”

“I said that I’d be able to kick his ass,” Katrena said seriously. “And I won.”

“You are kidding, right?” Mandy asked after a minute of stunned silence.

“Nope,” Katrena shook her head. “I am going to bed... I am tired.”

“Jesus...” Mandy muttered. “Oh, hey!” she said when Katrena was by the spiral staircase. “Could you do me a favor tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Katrena shoved another lollipop into her mouth.

“Those things will ruin your teeth...” Mandy muttered.

“Meh,” was the response she got.

“Anyway, speaking of teeth... I completely forgot that I have a dentist appointment at two-thirty tomorrow... Could you pick up Dawnie and Danny from school?”

Mandy wasn’t worrying about this girl’s driving anymore; she knew that Katrena could handle more than a simple traffic jam. Well, now it seemed like Katrena could handle random muggers who put the knives to her throat, and she could also kick a cop’s ass. “Is she a female version of Superman or something?” Mandy thought. “God, she is strange...”

“Sure,” Katrena nodded indifferently. “What time?”

“The school gets out at two-forty-five,” Mandy said.

“I’ll be there,” Katrena nodded again. “Night!”

“Good night...” Mandy called after her, thinking that this girl wasn’t just strange; she was mysterious. The fact that she appeared almost out of thin air three months ago, her very bizarre amnesia, her lack of every imaginable and unimaginable I.D., her strange slips of the tongue (Mandy remembered how she called a police station ‘militia house’ once, and she almost did the same thing tonight), and her very interesting fighting abilities... Mandy shook her head. “It’s like she is from a different planet or something,” she thought. She suspected more and more often lately that the whole amnesia thing wasn’t true. Finally, she shrugged and headed upstairs herself. It was obvious that Katrena wasn’t about to rob their house or pull some other con; the girl wants to protect her privacy, nothing wrong with that. She couldn’t help but think that she would be extremely interested finding out about her secret, however, while she was making her way to her bedroom.