Blood Sport

By JD Nixon

Book 2 in the Little Town series. At first glance, the small mountain settlement of Mount Big Town, or ‘Little Town’ as the locals call it, seems to be a pleasant and peaceful rural haven. Senior Constable Tess Fuller and Sergeant Finn Maguire know better though, kept fully occupied trying to maintain some law and order in a town dominated by the huge feral Bycraft family. Can they recapture fugitive Red Bycraft before he makes good on his threat to hunt down Tess? And what is it exactly that those bikies are up to at their secret retreat and can Tess convince the Sarge that the only way to find out is to throw away the rule book?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JD Nixon
• Release date: Nov 20, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466180741

JD Nixon

I live in beautiful Queensland in Australia. I started writing in 2009 because I wanted to do something creative and haven't stopped since! I have two series of books:The Heller series (first book Heller - free!) features the frequently outlandish adventures of security officer, Tilly Chalmers, and her complicated relationship with her beautiful, mysterious and intense boss, Heller.The Little Town series (first book Blood Ties - free!) features police officer, Tess Fuller, and her struggle to survive a long-standing vendetta with the feral Bycraft family and at the same time manage the tense relationship between her new Sergeant, Finn Maguire, and her boyfriend, Jake Bycraft.I took a very long break from writing, but am now back!Heller 7: Heller's Family out in 2023.Hope you enjoy reading my books as much as I enjoyed writing them! I'd love to hear your feedback, so why not email me at: [e-mail]

Book preview

Prologue

As I sleep, my mind forces me to relive that terrible evening three years ago. During the day I ruthlessly quash any thought of it, but at night every detail returns with awful clarity.

In my dream, I’m as flustered again as I was on that fateful evening. Snatching the keys to my little silver hatchback from the hall table, I yell out goodbye to Dad over my shoulder. I carelessly fling open the front door and hurtle through the doorway. I jump down the five steps leading from the front verandah, landing on our patchy lawn with a slight jarring of my left ankle.

"Slow down, love, or you’ll do yourself an injury," scolds Dad fondly, walking to the stairs to wave me off. I’m running late, held up by a phone call from my best friend, Marianne. She called me from the city to tell me that she’s pregnant again, after a recent miscarriage. Overjoyed for her, I chatted for far too long, losing track of the time.

I throw myself into the driver’s seat and switch on the ignition, jamming the car into reverse, a horrible crunch of gears my reward for my haste. I hope that Dad hasn’t heard, but the grimace on his face and slow shake of his head as I speed down the driveway suggest otherwise.

I screech left at my gate without braking and with only a cursory check for oncoming traffic, even though I’m pulling out on to the Coastal Range Highway. I plant my foot on the accelerator and push my little car as fast as it will go, disregarding the sixty kilometre speed limit. Doesn’t matter, I decide, because I know the town’s two cops very well. And Ryan, the young constable, is notoriously easy to sway with a pretty smile. Being a cop as well doesn’t hurt either, I remind myself wryly.

It’s almost fifteen minutes past the time that Marcelle and I agreed to meet for our evening jog and I hate being late. Especially as it was my idea to postpone our jog until tonight, using the day to catch up with old friends. I’m on one of my irregular weekend returns from the city to visit Dad in the small town in which I’d been born and raised.

It’s the middle of winter and the night air is particularly freezing – something about a cold front sweeping in from Antarctica, I’d heard on the TV weather forecast. I’d lent Marcelle my new sheepskin jacket earlier in the day after she complained that her young sister-in-law, Romi, had borrowed her warmest jacket and taken it to a friend’s place for a sleepover. I have a spare, but it’s not as cute as the deep purple jacket I’d recently bought in the city and proudly worn as I flitted here and there in town today.

I turn off the highway into the side street that bounds the small corner park we’ve agreed to meet in. The park has an unbreakable security light over the entrance to its public facilities, making it one of the safest places to meet in town at night. I step out of my car, careful to lock it behind me.

There’s no sign of Marcelle. That’s strange, I think. She’s usually as careful about timekeeping as I am. I settle myself on the low log fence that surrounds the park and pull my jacket around me more tightly. But it’s so cold that after a few minutes I’m forced to stand up and jog on the spot to keep myself warm. Where is she?

Reluctantly, I yank my phone from my pocket and ring the town’s only pub, which Marcelle and her husband, Abe, own. When Abe answers, I enquire after Marcelle, wondering if she’s been held up, keeping my voice deliberately casual. But he’s anxious straight away, telling me that he dropped her off at the park twenty minutes ago. He’d wanted to wait with her until I turned up, but she’d waved him away, laughing in her delightfully throaty way that I’d be there in a second because I was never late. I hang up on him without another word and cram my phone back into my pocket.

Stomach tense with fear, I start looking for Marcelle, wishing I had a torch on me. I unsheathe the cruelly sharp hunting knife I always have strapped to my thigh and grip it tightly in my right hand. I search quickly behind the toilet block, nervous in its dark shadows. There’s nothing there. Frantic, I run wildly around the rest of the small park, searching everywhere, calling her name.

Nothing.

Frustrated, I move over to the beautiful fig tree that is the centrepiece of the park. It was planted back in the early 1920s to commemorate a brave local boy who died a hero at Pozieres during World War I. I walk cautiously around its huge girth, the breath forced from my lungs when I spot one of Marcelle’s running shoes carelessly lying on the ground. I can’t breathe for a minute. Creeping around the tree, I see her other shoe and her legs bare in the freezing weather, her tracksuit pants bunched down around her ankles.

That’s not sensible, I think to myself in shock. What is she doing lying on the chilly dewed grass like that? She’ll catch a cold.

Moving further around the trunk, I find the rest of her. She is sprawled indecently, exposed for everyone to see, my sheepskin jacket torn open, the zip ripped apart. Her running top is pulled up high, her sports bra in two pieces, breasts uncovered. Her arms are flung wide apart, as if she was preparing to embrace her awful fate.

Her face is still, her large brown eyes staring up to the heavens sightlessly, frozen open with fear. Her long, black hair is a mess, sticky and matted, pulled from its ponytail. Something white and bony protrudes through her hair. I know what it is, but my brain won’t process the information. She is like a sister to me. She is married to one of my oldest friends. She is mother to a darling little girl.

This is not happening, I tell myself, eyes clamped shut in horror. My stomach rolls with nausea and I’m afraid I’m going to throw up everywhere.

I open my eyes to look down at her violated body again. Suddenly, her beautiful eyes blink and she turns her shattered head to look up at me, staring at me accusingly. Slowly and awkwardly, as if she’s lost her muscular coordination, she pushes herself up to a sitting position. Her bared breasts undulate as she moves, full and round and stark white, riddled with vicious bite marks. Her head is a strange shape, and I realise with a jolt that the left side is caved in. Coagulating blood oozes down her neck to her chest and breasts.

Involuntarily, I step backwards, breathing rapidly in ragged gasps, cloudy mists of air vapour escaping from my mouth.

Her lips snarl back, revealing bloodied smashed teeth. Her voice is thick as if there is something clogging her throat.

"It should have been you, Tessie. Not me," she spits out bitterly in her accented English, her bloodstained hand rising so she can point a finger at me. I notice that her nail has been torn off.

"I’m sorry. I’m sorry," I whisper to her, over and over, until my throat closes up and all I can manage is an inarticulate gurgle. Bile fills my mouth and I fight the strong urge to vomit.

She jabs her finger in my direction angrily. It should have been you!

I stumble backwards, shaking hands up in front of me and trip over her discarded shoe, falling heavily on my butt.

She moves clumsily on to her hands and knees and crawls towards me, her eyes fixed on mine. It should have been you!

I scrabble backwards on my butt, propelling myself with my hands and feet, crying and terrified.

Her hand reaches out and grasps my ankle.

And I wake up, screaming and screaming.

Chapter 1

The note had been pushed under my front door sometime during the night while I slept, dreaming of Marcelle. I knew who it was from and what it would say even before I opened it, because it wasn’t the first one I’d received. He was taunting me, letting me know he was in town, moving about freely, creeping around my house at night, unafraid of being caught.

I picked up the note and unfolded it. His handwriting was scrawled – he’d written it in a hurry this time. He always left me the same message, which only emphasised its simple threat.

Lovely Tessie

I’m coming for you.

Red

Impassively, I read the familiar words and added the note to the other five I’d stored in an envelope that I kept in my underwear drawer. I’d tell the Sarge about it when I saw him later, even though there was nothing he could do.

Red Bycraft was coming for me. I only hoped that I’d be ready for him when it happened. I only hoped that I found him first.

*****

Unsettled and tired from my awful nightmare, I moved on autopilot. Half-asleep still, I drowsily dressed in my running gear and strapped my hunting knife around my thigh as I always did. I made my way down the stairs to the front gate, surprised to find it was raining lightly. I hadn’t heard it from inside, although normally the tin roof on my old timber house amplified the sound of rain. Yawning hugely and stretching my sleep-cramped muscles, I pulled the hood of my jacket over my head and waited patiently for my usual running companions, jogging on the spot and rubbing my arms to keep warm in the cold air. I wished I’d added an extra layer of warmth, even though I knew I’d regret it about fifteen minutes into my run.

Nobody turned up.

I checked my watch, flicking on its light. It was bang on six o’clock, but still totally dark in the early winter morning. I tutted self-righteously to myself, thinking about Romi and the Sarge tucked up cosily in their beds, giving our regular early morning exercise a miss.

Pikers, I thought derisively as I headed off slowly through the light rain down the Coastal Range Highway, which led past my house into Little Town. I’d give the Sarge a right serve for being so damn lazy when he turned up at the station later this morning.

Beach or mountain? I argued to myself, trying to decide between Beach Road and Mountain Road for my jog. Beach Road led east from town in a gentle decline past the secret bikie retreat and the nudist community. It terminated with a carpark and a set of stone steps leading down to the town’s beautiful cove beach with its small expanse of cruel calf-killing soft sand. Mountain Road, on the other hand, led west up to Lake Big and Mount Big and had a cruelly steep calf-killing incline. Decisions, decisions. In the end I took the easier option and turned into Beach Road, much preferring the pain of the soft sand to that of the seemingly unending mountain trek. Mount Big wasn’t called that for nothing.

It was very dark. There were no street lights on Beach Road and I was totally dependent on my headlight torch to stop me running off the road into the surrounding coastal scrubland. The one advantage of the darkness was that I could see vehicles coming from miles away by their headlights. The disadvantage was that I could easily be ambushed by someone waiting patiently in the dark for me.

A frisson of fear tickled my spine at that thought, and I wondered if I was too predictable. I ran at the same time every morning, always on one of two routes, and I’d become accustomed to the safety of companions when I ran. It had been ages since I’d had to run on my own. I fleetingly worried that I’d forgotten how to look after myself, relying too much on the Sarge’s constant supportive presence.

A loud slithering noise in the grassland nearby made me yelp in fear. I suddenly realised how tense I was, verging on the edge of an uncharacteristic panic spin. I shook my head sharply and took a deep breath, relaxing my tight muscles. Calm, Tess Fuller, calm. Those golden words repeated in a mantra seeped into my nervous system and soothed my jangling nerves. I guess those regular notes from Red Bycraft were beginning to psych me out, just as he’d planned.

Why on earth would something happen to me this morning, out of all the mornings that I’d been running since he’d escaped from custody? It was laughable. I even made myself laugh out loud to prove the point. But my forced jollity jarred in the silence and only made me more uneasy.

I had spent the last four months looking over my shoulder for Red. I knew only too well that he would kill me the first opportunity he had. It was barely two months since he’d shot at the Sarge and me that night we’d cautiously approached his mother’s house.

We’d been tipped-off that he was the guest of honour at his sister Larissa’s eighteenth birthday party. Their mother, Lola Bycraft, hosted the rowdy party at the Bycraft family lair in Jarrah Street, located in the rough side of town. Despite her pathetic attempts to disguise it, I’d immediately recognised the shaking, terrified voice of our ‘anonymous’ tipster as Red’s downtrodden and much beaten girlfriend, Sharnee Lebutt. She’d finally found some spine to dish it back up to Red, desperately wanting him recaptured and returned to jail. It was only then that he wouldn’t be in her life, smashing his fist into her face on a regular basis, and spending all her welfare money on booze, cigarettes, and other women.

Unfortunately for the Sarge and me though, we’d been noticed as we crept towards the house, guns out, wrongly assuming that the loud music would cover our approach. Before we even reached the door, we’d been fired at from inside the house, the bullets smashing against the screened security door and showering us in shrapnel. We’d looked as though we’d been wrestling echidnas afterwards, we were so full of holes. It was only through sheer luck that we hadn’t been more seriously injured. Neither of us had been wearing any bulletproof gear, for the simple reason that we didn’t have any.

The police station at Mount Big Town (or Little Town as we locals all called it) was probably the most neglected and worst-resourced in the entire state. But three days after that incident, two complete sets of brand new riot gear, including bulletproof vests and helmets, were delivered to the station. And the Sarge’s enigmatic smile when I questioned the sudden appearance of the much-needed equipment only confirmed that he was responsible. I didn’t know how he did it, but I was determined to find out. It was driving me crazy. It was almost as if he had a direct line to the Police Commissioner himself.

Your fiancee is the Commissioner’s daughter, isn’t she? I’d accused him. He’d merely continued to smile silently at me. You’re his nephew? His love child? You have footage of him snorting coke off an underage rent boy’s naked butt? He had laughed then but hadn’t told me anything. He was an inscrutable clam.

Poor Sharnee had paid for her courage in tipping us off about Red though. A few days after our ill-fated raid, she walked past me in the dairy aisle of the exorbitant local supermarket where I’d ducked in to grab some milk (and Tim Tams). She kept her head down, sunglasses on inside the shop, fresh ugly bruising visible on her cheeks and neck, colouring up like a rainbow. I’d touched her gently on the arm to get her attention, but she’d reared back in terror as if I was a deadly brown snake. She span around and fled, almost running away from me, abandoning her groceries in the middle of the aisle. Sadly, I realised that it would be the last time she would ever try to help us.

Although Red Bycraft on the loose was a current threat for me, I’d been a target for the Bycraft family my entire life. Bycraft men were obsessive by nature and for some unknown reason, they were murderously obsessive about Fuller women and had been since the first Bycraft man killed the first Fuller woman way back in 1888. I’d escaped from Little Town and the ever-present danger to my life when I’d moved to the city to go to university, followed by the police academy and three years duty in the city’s toughest suburb. But my father’s life-threatening cancer had prompted the return back to my home town a couple of years ago and once again, I was living back in my old family house, sleeping in my childhood bedroom. I looked after Dad, who was now wheelchair-bound, as much as he would let me. They say that absence makes the heart grows fonder, but the Bycraft family certainly hadn’t grown fonder of me in my absence. I’d been the subject of constant abuse, threats and various attempts on my life since I’d returned. That had all eased somewhat since the Sarge had arrived four months ago, the same week that Red Bycraft turned fugitive, but hadn’t completely ceased.

So I was right to be wary as I ran and I patted my knife handle reassuringly. A set of headlights in the distance also provided a sense of not being totally alone in the darkness. I jogged towards them as a goal, thinking they’d grow bigger as we approached each other, confident it would be someone I knew, because I knew everyone who lived in Little Town. But the lights didn’t appear to move and as I jogged closer and closer, I realised they belonged to a car that was parked by the side of the road. I assured myself that there was nothing to worry about. There were a few residences on Beach Road, squeezed between the nudist community and the bikie retreat, and obviously someone was waiting outside a house to give a friend a lift to work that morning, or something like that. There was nothing sinister going on – it was all perfectly normal.

I kept jogging, but my heart pounded harder than it should have been at my easy pace. A cold sweat broke out down my spine, making me shiver even as I was heating up from the exercise. Compulsively, I patted my knife again, regretting that it had been a few months since I’d done any solid self-defence training. I’d taken up the Sarge’s invitation to use his expensive home gym equipment, and had spent a lot of time honing my muscles instead of practising my moves. I sure hoped I wasn’t going to die this morning because my butt was tight but I couldn’t manage a flying kick any more.

I kept jogging. I wanted to turn off my headlight because it made me a huge target in the darkness, but I might break an ankle if I did, it was that dark. Besides, I could see the very faint signs of dawn breaking over the horizon of the ocean in the far distance. Soon it would be daytime and all the scary things would run away, I thought with sheepish amusement as my feet continued to pound the road.

Or maybe they wouldn’t, because sometimes the scary things lived amongst us, with human faces and black hearts.

The car with the lights started up and glided slowly towards me. I hadn’t heard a door slam as someone entered the car, but I’d drifted off into my own thoughts for a while, so perhaps I’d missed it?

I kept jogging and soon the car neared me, its lights on high beam, blinding me as it grew closer, illuminating the gentle rainfall. I couldn’t see who was inside the car or what make it was, but it didn’t swerve towards me or try to run me off the road. We passed each other peacefully and I patted my knife once more. I took my hunting knife with me everywhere when I wasn’t in uniform with access to my gun – even to bed. It had saved my life on more than one occasion.

The car drove away from me, the engine noise receding and I relaxed again, laughing at myself for my irrational fear. I was like a kid around a camp fire, telling creepy stories to frighten my friends, but scaring myself more than anybody. I breathed out and thought about something much more pleasant – my upcoming weekend with my boyfriend, Jake. It was his birthday next Saturday and as a surprise, I had booked a room for us at one of Big Town’s flashest hotels, as well as a table at one of its leading restaurants. We were going to celebrate him turning twenty-nine in style. I couldn’t wait.

But even with that happy thought in my mind, I couldn’t shake the quiver of uneasiness that snaked down my spine. I berated myself. What the hell was the matter with me this morning? I was jumpier than a bigamist at a family gathering.

A stunning moment of clarity swept over me. I was ignoring my instincts. Something was hinky, but I wasn’t listening to myself. That’s how people got themselves killed. I stopped running immediately and turned around. I was going home.

As I did, I noticed a glint from something ahead of me in the darkness. I realised that it was a car with its lights off at exactly the same moment that its high beams flicked on. Its engine gunned and it drove straight at me.

I froze. It was my worst nightmare, but my brain simply would not communicate with my legs. No doubt about it, I’d grown soft since my over-protective sergeant had come to Little Town. I screamed to myself to move and finally neurons connected with neurons again and I began to run. Not away from the car, but towards it, reaching up to turn off my headlight.

The car drove towards me and I ran towards its harsh light. I was quite good at judging distances, being a reasonable shot. When I thought it was the best time, at the last second I veered to the right into the darkness of the wild scrubby coastal vegetation that flanked the road. I kept running. The car tried to swerve after me, but its momentum carried it one hundred metres further down the road before it shuddered to a screeching halt, reversing with squealing tyres and recklessly ploughing into the vegetation after me.

I was a sitting duck in that high beam, the gentle rain misting in the dazzling light surrounding me. On the positive side though, it did provide me with much needed illumination as I stumbled over the prickly, low-lying, salt-tolerant plants that grew profusely in the sandy soil. The plants scratched my legs through my tracksuit pants as I thrashed through the vegetation, my breathing stertorous, my heart hammering. Without any warning, I made a ninety-degree turn right, away from the lights, running sideways for ten metres before turning again and doubling back towards the road, hoping the driver hadn’t noticed my u-turn.

He had. The car also spun in a u-turn, chasing after me relentlessly, high beam pinning me in its glare again. I sped up, self-preservation lending wings to my feet. I desperately ran as fast as I could, arms and legs pumping, tripping over plants, lungs bursting, until I hit the road. I threw my head left and then right, trying to decide which direction to head. In the end I went where a car couldn’t travel and that was straight ahead. I sprinted towards the giant old mango tree on the other side of the road that grew next to the high fence surrounding the nudist community. Local boys had been climbing up its branches for decades, peeping over the fence, and learning a lot about female anatomy in the process.

The car sped straight ahead, following me, wildly flying across the road and screeching to a stop, mere centimetres from the trunk of the mango tree. The driver’s door flung open and a tall, well-built man stepped out into the rain.

Tessie Fuller! he shouted loudly in the silence. Come and play with me, lovely.

It was Red Bycraft.

My heart doubled up on its already thumping beat. I struggled to calm down and control my emotions, needing to think and plan clearly. I was standing a bare two metres away from him on the other side of the huge trunk, pressed up against its reassuring girth, holding my breath. I thought my lungs would explode.

Tessie! he shouted out again. I’m waiting for you.

As quietly as possibly, I climbed the tree, grabbing low lying branches and using the knobbly trunk for footholds, memories flooding back as I did. I was very familiar with this tree myself, and I’m embarrassed to admit that my girlfriends and I had climbed it a number of times as teenagers, despite our condescending comments to the boys in town for doing the same. We’d been just as curious about men’s bodies as they were about women’s, although the middle-aged paunches and wrinkly appendages we’d spied in the nudist community had almost turned us all into committed lifelong virgins.

Climbing with cautious silence, I made only slow progress up the trunk, catching glimpses of Red through the branches. I was thankful that his continued taunting helped cover any noise I made as I moved.

He grew angry, cursed with an impatient nature and a short fuse. "Where the fuck are you? I know you’re close by and I want to play. You’re making me wait. When I find you, I am going to make you pay for that, he threatened, waving his arm in the air, grasping something in his hand. And guess what, Tessie? I have a gun of my own now."

That wasn’t welcome news and although I strained my eyes in the gloom, I couldn’t see what type it was or even if it really was a handgun he was brandishing so dangerously. But I sure wasn’t waiting around to find out either.

Still climbing, I reached a branch that dangled over the fence to the nudist community. I slid myself along it slowly trying to be quiet, getting soaked in the process. I neared the fence, intending on dropping down into the grounds of the community and escaping from him that way. He noticed the movement of me scraping along the branch though, and turned his head up towards me. I peered down at his face with its mane of wavy golden hair, now longer than the last time I’d seen him and glistening with rain. He grinned in delight when he spotted me, his white teeth bright in the gloom of the rainy dawn.

Hello, Tessie lovely, he laughed, pointing his gun in my direction. Long time, no see. Have you missed me? Come on down, now. I want to play with you.

Go to hell, I replied instead. I swung myself over the fence into the nudist community, landing hard and slipping on the wet paving bricks that surrounded its ‘Come Together’ pool and spa, situated at the back of the complex. Everything in the community was named after a Beatles’ song. Its founder, ironically named George Harrison himself, was a huge fan who boasted that he’d gone to primary school with John Lennon back in Liverpool in the late forties. Or so he claimed.

George Harrison’s manhood had been severed in an horrific hedge-trimming accident early last year, which only goes to show how inadvisable it is to garden in the nude. With the nearest hospital a ninety minute drive away, it had fallen to me to calm down the hysterical pack of nudists, provide him with first aid to stem the blood flow, locate the lopped tip, pack it in ice, and speed him to meet the ambulance racing towards us from Big Town. After a delicate and lengthy operation at the hospital, it was successfully reattached. I’d given my hands a good wash after that incident, but I couldn’t scrub the memory from my brain.

Mr Harrison had been understandably grateful to me for ensuring that he hadn’t suffered a permanent penectomy and gifted me a lifetime membership of the nudist community. I was yet to take up the offer, being rather fussy about exactly who I allowed to see me naked. Currently, Jake was the only one on the list.

I lay on my back, stunned for a moment from my hard landing, gazing up at the heavens as the rain fell on my face. An angel appeared in my vision and I smiled up at it because it was watching over me. It smiled back. Suddenly coming to my senses, I realised with a horrified start that it was in fact Red, his beautiful face surrounded by his golden hair, leaning over the fence looking down at me, grinning. I scrambled hurriedly to my feet, flinging myself behind the pool filter shed, narrowly avoiding a bullet that thudded into the thatched straw. He wouldn’t shoot to kill, but he would shoot to disable so he could take his time with me afterwards. I wasn’t going to let that happen because he was a bloody terrible shot and he’d probably kill me. I took refuge behind the shed, hunched over, my breathing ragged. Water dripped off me everywhere.

With shaking hands, I pulled out my phone and pressed speed dial for the police house.

The Sarge took a while to answer, groaning sleepily when he realised it was me. I didn’t feel like running this morning, Tessie, he grumbled straight away, not bothering to greet me. It’s raining in case you hadn’t noticed.

Red Bycraft’s after me, I said, speaking quickly and keeping my voice low, my eyes constantly on Red. I’m in the pool area at the nudist community on Beach Road, but I’m going to have to move on to somewhere else. I’m not safe here. He’s about to climb the fence. He’s armed with some kind of handgun and I only have my knife. Hurry!

He hung up and I knew he was mobilising, stopping only long enough to gather his gear. But even though we lived in a small town, it would still be ten minutes at least before he turned up. I could count on him to take me seriously any time I rang him for help, night or day. When he’d first arrived in town, he’d thought I was crazy for carrying a knife with me everywhere, but it hadn’t taken him too long to realise that I wasn’t hysterical or paranoid – the Bycrafts really were out to get me.

Red had shoved his gun into the waistband of his jeans to free up both hands as he climbed over the fence. I watched him carefully, thinking that I should take the opportunity to flee. But I badly wanted to see him banged up again and not roaming around free, mocking me. So instead, I made a snap decision and rushed out to ram him at the very moment he landed with a thump, unsteady on his feet on the wet pavers. The force of my impact made him slip to the ground heavily. As he fell, he grabbed out at me, clutching my arms and pulling me down on top of him.

I immediately reached towards his jeans to secure his gun, but he moved swiftly, capturing me by the wrists, clasping me cruelly.

No, you don’t, lovely, he warned. You don’t want me telling Jakey that you were trying to get your hands down my pants, do you?

He shouldn’t have mentioned Jake, because I didn’t need reminding at that moment that the despicable Red was my much-loved boyfriend’s older brother. How such a horrible family of demons as the Bycrafts had brought forth a gem of a man like my Jake was one of the world’s enduring mysteries.

I struggled furiously to free my arms, but he only held on tighter. While it meant that I wasn’t able to reach for his gun or my knife, neither was he, so we were at an impasse. Red’s hoodie and t-shirt had ridden up when he’d slipped over and I couldn’t escape the sight of the obscene tattoo he had inked on his taut honey-brown stomach of him raping, stabbing and strangling a woman who strongly resembled me. She was smiling in ecstasy as he did the sick deed. He told me once he’d had the tattoo done so that he could relive his favourite fantasy about me every day when he was in jail.

The Sarge is on his way, I warned him coldly.

He smiled up at me lazily, the ten-centimetre scar I’d given him on his neck when I was fifteen only enhancing his rakish attractiveness. I don’t care. We’re together again at last, Tessie. You’re a hard woman to get near. Especially with that lovesick copper hanging around you all the time.

I ignored the jibe – everybody knew the Sarge was engaged.

I’m going to sit on you until the Sarge gets here.

Good, because I can’t tell you much I’m loving it. Let me get you in a better position though, he said and wriggled his hips around, pushing me back a bit until I was astride his pelvis. Oh yeah, that’s real good for me.

He groaned with pleasure and moved against me suggestively.

Stop it! I insisted in disgust, attempting to get off him. He held me down, his hands fast around my wrists.

Not a chance, he laughed nastily, continuing to thrust himself against me. His growing excitement was evident through his jeans. You’re giving me a hard-on already.

You’re repulsive, I spat out. Let me go!

No way! Why should Jakey have all the fun with you? He’s not good at sharing his playthings.

He yanked on my wrists and pulled me down towards him, trying to kiss me. I twisted my head and his lips landed on my cheek instead of my mouth. He flicked out his tongue and licked my face with relish from my chin up to my eye. I jerked back in revulsion, but he pulled me towards him again, clamping his mouth on to mine and forcing his tongue inside.

Nauseous at the unwelcome intimacy, I bit down on his tongue, hard enough to taste blood. He gave a muffled scream, releasing one of my hands to crack me one across the chin, flinging my head sideways. Damn, that hurt!

I righted myself, moving my jaw around experimentally to check that it was okay, as I reached my free hand down to grab my knife from its sheath. Problem was that he simultaneously reached for his gun with his free hand. Not liking those odds, I fisted my fingers instead and punched him solidly in the stomach, the impact forcing him to free my other hand as well as dropping his gun to the ground.

I stumbled to my feet.

He leaned over to wrap his hand around the gun with one hand, reaching out for my ankle with the other. With brutal intent, I stamped my runner down on the hand reaching for me, paying no heed to his furious screech of pain. I kicked at his other hand as I took off, hoping to send the small pink-handled gun flying out of his control into the pool. I was just short of my target though, and it stopped right on the edge, the muzzle dangling over the chilly pristine blue water.

I ran away from him, slipping on the pavers and fumbling desperately with the pool’s childproof lock. I threw the gate back once I finally managed to work out how to open the bloody thing, and escaped towards the two sprawling pale green rendered brick buildings that housed the community’s residents. The nearest one to the pool was called the ‘Let it Be’ house; the other one, ‘All My Loving’. A neatly manicured row of lilly pillys grew down the side of the house along the boundary fence, hugging the winding brick path (known as ‘Penny Lane’) that led from the pool area to the two houses. I sheltered behind the slender trees, moving from one to the next, all the while keeping an eye on Red. He reclaimed his gun and held it in one hand as he struggled with the childproof lock himself. He didn’t look the slightest bit happy, favouring his injured left hand, blood trickling down the side of his mouth to his chin. He was going to make me pay for that, one way or another.

A side door to ‘Let it Be’ opened and George Harrison poked his head out, fortunately hiding the rest of his probably naked body from my view.

What the hell’s going on out there? Who are you people? This is private property! Piss off now before I call the police.

Mr Harrison, this is Senior Constable Tess Fuller, I yelled at him from the shelter of the lilly pillys. Please go back inside the house and lock all the doors and windows and don’t let anybody out. There’s an armed man on the loose in your grounds. Sergeant Maguire’s on his way.

"Bloody hell! Is that Red Bycraft?" he asked, his eyes popping out of his head when he noticed Red through the rain, swearing up a storm and still struggling with the pool gate.

Yes, it is. Get back inside, right now! I yelled.

He didn’t need to be told twice and ducked back inside, slamming the door and locking it behind him. I could have retreated inside the house and sheltered with him until the Sarge arrived, but I didn’t want to endanger innocent citizens with my presence. If Red had any sense, he’d cut his losses and escape now while he had the chance, before the Sarge arrived and it was two against one. But as I’ve said before, Bycraft men are very obsessive and not easily diverted once they’ve made up their minds that they want something. And unfortunately, I was Red’s ‘something’.

Tessie Fuller, I’m really pissed off now. I’ve waited for you for months and finally got you on your own. I had such plans for you and now it’s all gone to shit, he shouted out in frustration as he struggled with the lock.

I’m so sorry for you, Red, you have no idea, I yelled back sarcastically as I checked my watch. Seven minutes since I rang the Sarge. He’d be here soon.

His laugh was bitterly derisive. Nothing’s gone right in my whole fucking life since I was born.

I’m weeping genuine tears here. You better stop before I drown.

"Fuck you, Teresa Fuller! Think you’re too good for the Bycrafts, don’t you? You’ve always been a frigid stuck-up bitch." He was rabid with anger. If I could see him better through the misty rain, I’d bet his mouth was foaming white.

That’s not what Jakey said to me the other night, I taunted.

Fuck you!

In your dreams, but in my nightmares.

He didn’t bother to respond, but stood in the rain for a moment, head flipping between me and back over his shoulder at the fence,

Reviews for Blood Sport

[lara carter · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great book but where is book 3?

[Graham Downs · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I gave the first book in this series four stars. For this one, I'm dropping it to three. It's still a good story. It's just not as well written.

In the first story, there were lots of times when the protagonist would stop in mid-recollection, to explain or remember some obscure fact from her history, and these explanations often lasted several screens on my e-reader. That happened in the first one as well, but I kind of forgave that, because it was the first in the series, and I was still getting to know many of the characters and their backstories. By the second book, it starts becoming a little frustrating, especially since much of the backstory that was explained in book one is re-explained, almost verbatim, in the second. For this reason, I think the second book could've easily been MUCH shorter.

This book also uses a huge number of different speech attributions. I don't remember seeing a single "said"! Again, it was like this in the first book, and there I just thought it was quaint. By the second, it's becoming quote distracting.

As examples: "'That's great!' I enthused," or "'Tessie!' he reprimanded."

How do you enthuse or reprimand speech? Using the word "said" would've worked just fine for those of those examples, and there are plenty others.

Anyway, on to the actual meat of the story. Tessie and the Bycrafts. It's still a pretty cool premise, and Tessie arch-nemeses are still putting her through hell. Near the beginning of the book, I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of Tess and Red Bycraft (hey, it's in the beginning, so no spoilers) running around the nudist colony!

And just to mix things up, there's a new enemy on the horizon too.

Unlike the first book, there isn't really any mystery involved here. But it's still thrilling, and I was still pretty engrossed in the story.

I will probably pick up the third book in the series, just because I want to find out what our heroine gets up to next. And I guess that's a testament to the author - although her writing is beginning to get on my nerves, I will keep coming back for her stories!