KICK ASS: A Boxed Set Read Online Free PDF Page A

her first.
    Or die trying.
    He was sloppy, overconfident. Just like a man.
    Through the curtain of her hair, she sighted him. Still bent low and whimpering for effect, she stamped his instep and butted her head hard against his stomach. She used his surprise and her full weight to smash him into the counter. She rose fast, smacking the back of her skull against his chin.
    Light exploded behind her eyes, but she latched onto his gun hand, twisting his wrist upward until she heard the snap of bone.
    His shriek echoed in her ear, adding another layer of pain to her aching body. She scrambled, retrieved his lost weapon and retreated, her back to the refrigerator, the gun aimed at her attacker. She took an instant to register the model of the gun. Cheap piece of shit. Six rounds. One spent on his partner. Two on her parents? God, no . But either way, she had at least three bullets left to put him down if he made one more move. If it had been fully loaded to begin with.
    Clutching his broken wrist to his stomach, the intruder had dropped to his knees. “You fucking cunt!”
    She bit back the urge to pump bullet number four into his thigh. Since she didn’t know who else was in the house, every round had to count.
    “Who the hell are you?”
    “Fuck you, bitch,” he grunted.
    She needed to remove his mask. She needed to get the hell out of the house. But she couldn’t leave until she knew her parents were safe. Maybe they were tied up, guarded by a third man, alive until the intruders had what they wanted. Only this attack wasn’t a robbery. She could see, the light from the DVD player blinking in the living room. The television hadn’t been touched and though her father owned a business, he kept no cash in the house.
    So many possibilities, she couldn’t discount any. But until she knew her family was safe, she wouldn’t abandon them.
    She pulled back the hammer on the gun, unnecessary on the semiautomatic weapon. Still, the sound was hugely influential in getting jerks to talk.
    “Take off your mask, or I’ll do it for you. After I shoot you.”
    Her fingers throbbed as she clutched the gun and her heart slammed against her chest. She broadened her stance, her vision swimming with colors and shapes that, thanks to the smack on her skull, didn’t really exist. Maybe she should just shoot him and take her chances that no one else would show.
    He pulled off the mask and looked her straight in the eyes, his gold teeth gleaming between lips permanently split thanks to a knife slash he’d earned in prison. Nestor Rocha. A three-strike junkie she’d once picked up for jumping bail, a creep who pushed his wares on the whores that walked Nebraska Avenue, when he wasn’t beating them to a bloody pulp.
    “Recognize me, puta ?” he said, the shakiness of his voice nearly covered by his bravado.
    “Yeah, from my nightmares, Rocha.”
    She buoyed her gun hand. If she had to make this shot, she wouldn’t miss. Rocha was a killer and she had no doubt he’d like to prove his evil right here, right now.
    “What do you want?”
    “I told you. I want to feel my cojones slapping against your culo , bitch.”
    One-track mind. What a pendejo .
    “Sorry to disappoint you, Rocha. Who’s your dead pal?”
    He shook his head and Marisela watched his uninjured arm drop limply to his side. For a weapon. Fuck.
    She shifted right and pulled the trigger. The sound of her bullet hitting his chest popped at the same moment he fired his hidden gun into the refrigerator. When his body fell, limp on the linoleum, the gun he had strapped to his ankle dropped from his hand and spun across the floor.
    She grabbed the gun and tucked it in her pocket. She leaped over him, then over his partner in the hall, a demented game of hopscotch. She ran down the hall and kicked open her parents’ bedroom door.
    Empty. The bed was still made. She glanced at the clock. It was nearly three in the morning, where in the hell were her parents? Even for weddings