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  She looked at him, keeping the disgust she felt off her face. No need to antagonize him any more than he’d antagonized himself already. But she couldn’t believe she’d ever seen anything but a repulsive waste of human life in the man who now stood in front of her, swaying slightly, his clammy fingers clutching at the baseball bat in his hand. What was he going to do? Smash her belongings? Try to smash her? Her phone was a few inches away, and she itched to pick it up, to take a photo of him as the final evidence she’d need to put him away.

  “Are you trying to go back to prison, Billy?” she asked levelly, injecting her voice with a mixture of assertiveness and kindness. It was false kindness, of course, but she was hoping she could get out of this situation without having any of her possessions smashed. She liked her things, and she hated cleaning glass out of the carpet. Plus, there was always paperwork when you beat the shit out of a civilian, even a civilian who had it coming a hundred times.

  Back to prison. He deserved it. It was a joke that he’d only gotten the short sentence he had — rich parents and fancy lawyers, plain and simple. If the woman he’d been dating had been anyone other than Anna — a woman without military training, a woman like the women she worked with every day now — then he might have killed her. It had been at the last dying gasp of their relationship. She’d already made it clear that she was moving on — but in an attempt to be kind, she’d invited him over for one last dinner together in her apartment so that he could collect his things and they could part ways as friends. Of course, that hadn’t worked. Billy had turned up drunk and full of resentment, and though she’d tried to control the situation, he’d swung a fist right at her jaw. When she’d blocked it, he’d just kept on swinging. Even with her training, she’d been taken aback, and he’d landed a few solid blows on her face and head before she’d seized his arm and wrenched it behind his back, dislocating his shoulder and breaking the arm in two places for good measure. Then he’d lumbered around her apartment like a wounded bull, bellowing and screaming and breaking all her things, until the police had been called. Her bleeding nose and black eye told the story eloquently, and he’d been jailed for assault and battery. Six months. Better than nothing.

  But it clearly hadn’t taught him his lesson. She moved away from the couch, walking backwards — and he followed her, a lopsided grin on his face. He was a pale guy who burned easily, with light blond hair, and his complexion got ruddy like that when he had too much to drink. He was ignoring her attempts to calm him down, to reason with him, and she heaved a sigh. There was only one move here. In one fluid motion, she knelt by the couch, flipped open a display case she kept there, and withdrew what was inside it.

  “Nice toy,” she said, nodding to the bat in his hand. “Do you like mine?”

  It had been expensive — more expensive than she was willing to let on to her parents, who had always taught her to be careful with her money. But when she’d seen it online, she’d been exultant from signing three new clients in a row after a free session of self-defense training she’d done at a local women-only gym. She’d deserved a treat, she’d told herself — and besides, she needed a decoration for the blank space just above her couch. It would look great there. But she hadn’t had a chance to put up the display case yet. Thankfully, it had arrived just on time, earlier that week.

  Anna Clarke lifted the antique broadsword in both hands, taking a warrior’s stance. Billy’s eyes widened comically, and he actually staggered at the sight of the sword, as though it had taken the wind out of his sails. Suddenly he didn’t look so menacing with his baseball bat. All the swagger in his gait disappeared, leaving a slightly lopsided-looking man stammering insults with a lot less energy than he’d possessed earlier.

  “Bullshit,” he spat, a sudden burst of confidence seeming to pour back into his body. She raised the sword a little, cautioning him — he at least had the good sense to keep his distance from her. But he raised his baseball bat. “You don’t know how to use a sword. Dumb grunt like you probably doesn’t even have a gun around.”

  Calling her a grunt wasn’t the insult he thought it was. Some of the finest people she’d ever met were grunts. And he was wrong about guns. She had a modest but deadly weapon in her bedroom. But the truth was that Billy wasn’t a big enough threat to bring that out for — not that she’d be telling him that. No sense aggravating him unduly. She knew him well enough to know that he’d be easily scared off with a broadsword. Besides, she knew from unpleasant and regrettable experience that he tended to get turned on by women with guns, and she was absolutely done being his sexual fantasy. No jerk-off material here. Only an angry woman with a sword that was nearly as long as her body.

  He was also wrong about swords, funnily enough. It was true that the US Military didn’t exactly spend much time training their soldiers in the use of antique weapons. But it just so happened that Anna Clarke didn’t just spend her Saturday nights moping about, wishing she had a date. She spent them at a local chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronisms, where there was a thriving fencing scene. Dozens of nerds met once a week to discuss historical re-enactments, everything from medieval cooking to clothing to (and this was a rather popular one) sword fighting. She’d been a member since she was fourteen-years-old. Her father’s doing, actually. She’d been struggling at school in History class, which she hated, and he thought it might be a good way to show her that it wasn’t all boring old dates and dusty books — that history was still alive and well. And it had worked better than he’d imagined. Not only had young Anna aced History for the rest of her schooling, she’d also never wanted to leave the SCA. She’d rejoined when she left active duty, and it was a bright point in her week.

  She couldn’t wait to catch up with her friends there at the meeting tomorrow, actually, she thought with a grin. God, wouldn’t she have a story to tell them. She’d already been looking forward to filling them in about her new toy — now she had a thrilling tale of home invasion to add to the mix.

  She took a few steps toward Billy now, raising the sword. It wasn’t sharp — it would’ve been far too dangerous to ship it like that for a start — but honestly, it didn’t need to be. Broadswords weren’t about a sharp cutting edge, not really — they were about hitting your opponent as hard as you could, and hopefully opening a hole in their body. If she swung this hard enough at Billy, with all the force in her wiry little body, he’d be lucky if the worst he got was a broken rib. And he knew it, too. He was looking at the sword with unease, now, and she knew she’d cracked his confidence.

  “Why don’t we just talk about this like grown-ups,” he appealed to her, suddenly reasonable.

  She felt a savage burst of anger flare in her chest. Just like him, to threaten her with a weapon and then behave as though they were both equally at fault when she defended him.

  “Leave my property immediately, you gaslighting piece of shit,” Anna hissed through her teeth, keeping a friendly smile fixed on her face as she said it. “Never contact me again. Never look at me again. Forget I exist. Move on with your pathetic life, you piece of human garbage. I’d rather be eaten by wolves than ever see you again, let alone talk to you. I can’t believe you’re stupid enough to think you’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of getting back together with me. Now go, before I laugh so hard, I throw up.”

  It felt good to unleash on him in person — to actually see the bursts of anger and resentment in his eyes as she laid into him. Carried away a little, she made a little feint toward him — just a quick jab with the sword. But he clearly didn’t realize it was a feint. With a shriek of fear, he dropped the baseball bat and ran backwards out of the apartment, almost falling over the railing as he sprinted away toward the elevator. She was glad he hadn’t fallen, she reflected, amused, as she followed him out on to the walkway to make sure he was gone. It was a two-story drop, and it would probably have killed him, and though she didn’t think she’d grieve for him, there’d be cops all night and she’d definitely get a shit
ty night’s sleep.

  Her neighbor poked her head out of her door. Yasmin was a sweet old woman in her forties with a couple of extremely overweight Persian cats who was always willing to share a cup of tea and a good chat about whatever was happening on the news. Anna had always liked her and took it as a great compliment to have been entrusted with the duty of feeding Percy and Peter the last time Yasmin had gone to visit her sister interstate.

  “You alright, Anna?”

  “Just fine, Yasmin, thanks.” Yasmin knew the full story of Billy — he’d made more than a few phone calls during one of their little catchups, and Anna had wound up telling her all about him. It had felt good to get it all off her chest. And Yasmin, surprisingly, had a lot of her own stories about nasty ex-partners. She’d been instrumental in encouraging Anna to start teaching self-defense to women, actually. Empowering them to stick up for themselves against abusive partners, giving them the weapons they needed to feel confident in their ability to defend themselves. It was only one piece of the puzzle, of course — stronger sentencing for convicted abusers would be a good start — but it was something Anna could teach.

  “Course you are. If you want to press charges, let me know. I heard most of that. Paper-thin, these walls.”

  “Thanks, Yas,” Anna said gratefully. “Hope you weren’t asleep already.”

  “Nah, I’m a night owl. Glad you’re alright. Neat sword,” she added with a grin, then clicked her door shut. Anna took another deep breath in through her nose, then out through her mouth. This had been a much more eventful Friday evening than she’d been ready for.

  Chapter 3

  Adrenaline was still surging through her body as she padded back into her living room. The whole altercation had taken place while she was wearing enormous fluffy pink socks — a gift from her brother, who seemed to delight in giving her extravagantly soft or otherwise gentle gifts to contrast with her stern, tough exterior. She’d never admit to him how often she wore the socks, but they always made her feel warm and happy when she put them on.

  She restored her sword to its rightful place, quietly thankful for its presence. There was just something so primal about pointing an enormous piece of metal at your problems until they sorted themselves. Guns had their own appeal, of course, but for Anna, a sword was always going to be the first port of call. She was definitely going to put the broadsword up on the wall tonight — it had more than earned its spot in pride of place above her sofa.

  First things first, though. Police report. Anna looked at her phone for a minute before she dialed, noticing with some amusement that the dozens of messages from Billy seemed to have stopped since she sent him away with a broadsword and a wave. Then she dialed the non-emergency number for the police. She was pretty certain Billy had stumbled off — the distant sound of a car’s engine revving confirmed it, though she felt a pang of concern that he was driving on the road in his state of inebriation. At least he wasn’t a threat to her or her neighbors anymore. But it would be good to give the cops a heads-up that a drunken idiot was on the loose, and to file a report.

  She’d wanted to handle it over the phone, but the officer insisted on coming down to have a look around. Heard a woman’s voice and wanted to play hero, she assumed, gritting her teeth a little as it became clear she was going to have a visitor. Ah, well. It wasn’t like she had anywhere to be in the morning. The freelance life was tough, and work tended to creep in around the edges of her weekend, but she had a hard and fast rule that Saturdays were completely hers. A sleep-in, a lazy breakfast, an afternoon of reading or whatever she fancied, and then her regular SCA meeting in the evening. The ritual kept her sane. So, she could afford to stay up a little. Worst case scenario, she’d just sleep in a little longer the following morning.

  The guy showed up a half-hour later as she was putting the finishing touches on her new sword display. She’d ordered the case long before she’d ordered the sword itself — she’d known she was going to get a broadsword of some descript, she’d just been waiting to find the right one. It looked great above her couch, and the fond memory of chasing her ex away with it just made the sight of it all the sweeter. When the cop stepped in, he gave it a cursory look, then turned back to her. Though he towered over her like most men did, he wasn’t a very tall guy. That was a shame. Short men tended to get real condescending with her.

  “Anything broken?”

  “Like I said, he left pretty quickly.”

  “So, you won’t be pressing charges.”

  “On the contrary,” she said smoothly, cutting the cop off — and she saw his expression sink. What had he expected, coming all the way down here? An easy job? Maybe he had paperwork at the precinct he was putting off. Well, she was about to make more for him. “I’m very interested in pressing charges. The guy’s been harassing me for nearly two years now. It needs to stop.”

  “Two years, huh? What a romantic.”

  Her spine stiffened. “You think stalking is romantic?”

  “Well, obviously he shouldn’t be comin’ at you with a baseball bat, but you gotta admire the guy’s persistence.”

  “I don’t, actually,” she said, low and deadly, and some of her military training must have come through with her carefully controlled anger, because the officer sat up a little straighter. “Who’s your superior officer? I think your precinct might be in need of a refresher on how to treat victims of domestic violence.”

  He was quiet after that, and very well-behaved. Anna waved him off half an hour later, satisfied that she’d made a good amount of progress in the quest to rid her life of Billy once and for all. There had been some kind of order on him, a good behavior bond or something, that had said he shouldn’t bother her — upgrading that to a proper restraining order would carry some weight, she hoped. At the very least she wanted the messages to stop. She missed having an Instagram account. But it had been too exhausting going through and blocking all the fake profiles he kept trying to follow her on.

  As she tried to close her door behind the cop, she frowned. Something wrong with the mechanism — and sure enough, her suspicions were confirmed when she took a closer look at the lock. The asshole had actually picked the lock. That had been another one of his obsessions. He was always buying padlocks to practice his lockpicking skills with, bringing each one to her with a smug pride in his own pointless achievement.

  “Are you going to start robbing houses?” she’d asked once, irritated by yet another brag from him. He’d sulked for hours. But here they were, years down the track, and he was breaking and entering. She took a few photos on her cell phone, then shut the door, frowning a little. It wouldn’t lock, the mechanism was busted. But it was closed. And she could use the chain lock. It was a flimsy lock, but it’d do the job. She’d call a locksmith in the morning, and maybe drop by the station to advise them that she had some photos to confirm that the guy had broken into her house as well as harassing and assaulting her in her own home. That should strengthen the support for a restraining order.

  Anna yawned again, surprised by how tired she felt. That was often how it went with adrenaline — a big burst of very useful energy, then a crash. Definitely time for bed, even though her heart was still beating like she’d had too much coffee. Combination of adrenaline and lingering anger with Billy, about the whole stupid situation. Her life would be so infinitely better if she’d never met him, she knew. It was pointless to wish things like this, but every time the opportunity arose, she wished that Billy could be somehow removed from her life, or at least from her memories. Retroactively erased from existence. She’d honestly be doing better if she’d spent the entirety of their two-year relationship scrapbooking.

  With these thoughts churning through her mind, she ambled into her bedroom and pulled back the covers to her double bed. That had been a rather ambitious purchase, she thought to herself with a rueful grin. A bed for two people? It took up slightly too much space in the tiny little room. She’d bought it years ago, when she still t
hought that there might be a chance that some kind of romantic life partner might move in with her someday. Now, that was less of a feature in her planned future… and it was just too much hassle to get the stupid thing out of her room. Besides, it was nice to have some spare space to stretch out, for all that her petite frame didn’t really need much space. Perhaps one day she’d finally get a cat, and the little creature could have half the bed. That would be nice, a little cat. She certainly liked Yasmin’s.

  But did getting a cat mean giving up on love? For Yasmin, it did. She’d bought Percy and Peter as kittens on the day her divorce from her first husband had been finalized, and she’d never looked back. They were sweet boys, her cats, but Anna wasn’t sure if twenty-five was the right age to give up on the idea of finding someone she could spend the rest of her life with. After all, she may want kids someday, and single parenthood seemed impossibly hard. It was a miracle her parents had managed herself and her brother even with two of them working at it. And there were plenty of other benefits, too. Companionship, financial support and stability, chasing away stupid evil ex-boyfriends for her so she didn’t have to put her book down on a Friday evening…

  Anna sighed, turning over. The truth was, if she was honest with herself (and what other way was there to be?) she was a little bit frightened of the idea of taking a romantic relationship seriously. After all, the last time she’d done that, she’d almost wound up stuck with the idiot with the baseball bat that she’d just had to threaten with a sword to get rid of. And though looking back on it she could see how stupid and foolish she’d been, how many red flags he’d waved in her face, at the time, it had just been … normal. It had been so easy to just assume that it was natural to feel hunted and frightened in a relationship, distrustful and uneasy, constantly having to defend herself and her opinions from him like he was a circling predator, just lying in wait to pounce on any mistake she might make. You were meant to feel safe in a relationship, she knew that now. But love, or whatever it had been, had made her blind. What if it happened again? What if she started seeing someone and just wound up in an even worse situation, being tormented by some even more hideous man than Billy?