She reached around her office door, picked up the baseball bat behind it, hefted it and strode across the kitchen.

“Ah, hell. Marguerite.” Chloe dropped a tray to the counter and dashed after her boss, colliding with Komal. Both women recovered, hurrying after the fluttering blonde strands of Marguerite’s hair as she slapped her hand against the side screen door and strode down the path toward her community garden and playground.

The man in expensive gangster wear—gold chains, tennis shoes worth three figures and an oversized football jersey—had his back to her. Marguerite assumed he sensed danger in the way that the worst scum of the earth did, for he spun when she was still over two yards away. A tiny strip of children’s stickers were in his hand, still half extended to ten-year-old Aleksia, one of the neighbor children who watched her brother while their mother worked two jobs.

“This is private property,” Marguerite snapped. “You get your ass out of here.”

“You get out of my face, bitch, if you don’t want it messed up.” The sticker fluttered toward the ground as he reached under his shirt.

Marguerite heard Chloe’s scream, but as the gun flashed out, she was already swinging the bat, connecting with his hand hard, sending the firearm clattering into the monkey bars.

“What the fuck—”

She moved in, slammed another stroke on his raised forearm. He howled, she swung again, beating him to his knees, fast, brutal, repeated strikes, no room for mercy or hesitation. He was crawling away, scrambling, stumbling. She got him in the ribs, the kidney. She hoped she was killing the son of a bitch, making his internal organs bleed, giving him a slow death.

“Get the hell off my property. You will never get these children here. Never.” It thundered out of her, her scream like the fury of a storm.

He rolled into the street bleeding, struggling to his feet to move as fast as he could away from her park. His eyes were stark white with terror, the knowledge in them that he was staring at death. Marguerite stopped at the fence entrance by a picket gate where she’d planted spring flowers several days ago. There was even a lovely welcome sign that Chloe had stenciled with a teacup and an orchid curling over it. Watching him stagger down the street, she didn’t move until he disappeared, until the rage receded and she could feel the eyes of those in the neighborhood who’d come out on their porches to see what was going on.

She turned back to the park. No parents present, not in a neighborhood where the responsible adults often had to work multiple jobs at all hours to make ends meet, trusting their children’s street savvy to keep them safe. Tomorrow she’d call a security agency and have a camera installed so she could watch the park area at all times.

Shifting her gaze, she registered a white-faced Chloe and a stunned-looking Komal.

She clasped both hands around the bat’s fat top and struggled to center herself as Komal took a tentative step toward her.

“Miss M?”

She became cognizant of Aleksia touching her forearm. The child’s short brown fingers, the pink skin beneath her nails. In her other hand she held a fistful of the stickers. “I told him I’d give them out to my friends, so’s he gave me a bunch. That way he can’t give these to nobody. And I picked up the ones he dropped, too.” Her brother, the boy who had come to warn her, was now at her side. “Stupid ass.

He shoulda knowed who he’s messing with. You don’t mess with Miss M’s place.”

“Jerome.” Marguerite reached out to touch his head. “Remember I don’t allow cursing in the park. And you need to work a little harder on proper English. ‘He should have known with whom he was messing.’” She frowned, going over the grammar herself.

“My way sounds better.” He grinned, confirming her discontent with the correction, his twinkling eyes unrepentant. “But sorry about the cussin’, Miss M. We did good, though, didn’t we?”

“You did very well. So well.” She took the stickers, pocketed them and managed a smile for them both. “You were so brave.”

He shrugged. “He was hittin’ on my sister with his junk. Don’t nobody mess with my sister long as I’m around.”

His older sibling rolled her eyes but Marguerite saw her elbow his side with affection. “You’s all talk. I can kick your butt. We have to get home.”

“First, run in and tell Gen you each get a piece of lemon cake. And have her wrap up one for your mother.”

“Alll riiight!” The two children ran for the side path entrance to the kitchen, an access Marguerite had always made clear was a door that would open for any of the children or neighbors, the entrance for friends coming through the park. She suspected Jerome had used the front so the drug dealer wouldn’t realize he’d gone for help.

She peered into her pocket as Komal approached her with Chloe. “Chloe, remind me I have these when our officers come by this afternoon for their green tea. I’m sure they can use them for training. Or at least dispose of them properly.”

“Are you okay?”

Marguerite raised a brow. “I’m fine.” She looked at Komal. “I’m sorry you had to see that. It happens occasionally.”

Though she’d never gone off on one like that, Chloe had told her. When Komal studied her, Marguerite shifted her glance. “Chloe, will you excuse us a moment?” Chloe looked between them both, nodded, headed back for the kitchen.

“If you’d hit his skull, you would have killed him.”

“If I’d jammed this up his ass, I would have perforated his bowel wall with splinters and he would have died in a couple hours from internal bleeding. Seemed too quick that way. This way I can imagine his kidneys giving him hours of torment just to manage a piss.”

Reaching out, Komal put her hands on the bat over Marguerite’s hands. “This is the side of you that worries me.”

“What? The side that says I won’t allow someone to harm the innocent?”

“There are laws.”

“Yes. And we both know how well they work to protect the innocent. I’m not afraid of death, imprisonment.” She laughed shortly, a harsh, angry sound. “I’m not afraid of having the blood of a drug dealer on my conscience.”

“You can lose your soul by making violence your instrument of justice.”

“My soul was lost a long time ago, Komal,” Marguerite responded bluntly. “And if I still had it, I’d rather lose it to that than have it obliterated by shades of gray.”

“A person’s actions are not black and white.”

“Wrong is wrong. There are extenuating circumstances, but this is a world that takes extenuating circumstances to such extremes that we’ve turning them into kindling for a sacrificial fire. And we’re feeding our innocents into it, one soul at a time. You think his extenuating circumstances make it acceptable to push drugs onto children, turn Aleksia into a crack whore that would perform a blowjob on her own brother for the next fix? You think I of all people have any sympathy for that scum’s extenuating circumstances?”

Komal nodded, closed her eyes. “I’m not here to engage in a moral argument with you. I just worry that you think you’re like the person standing in front of the tank at Tieneman Square. Except maybe you’re not there just for the cause, but for the hope that tank will roll forward and over you. That if people live up to your expectations and are savage, brutal, you have nothing of hope worth staying in the world for.” She took her hands away, touched Marguerite’s chin, amazed at how tall her girl had gotten over the years. “And maybe that’s why you’re so afraid of Tyler. Up until you met him, you could have lived or died any given day and it wouldn’t have bothered you. He’s made you want to live. You’re experiencing the same shock and disorientation as a newborn, only in the very self-aware mind of a strong, determined woman.”

“I don’t need psychoanalysis.” But there was little bite to the words. Marguerite let the bat swing to the ground, leaned on it as she obviously re-marshaled her courtesy.

“Let’s go in, let me get you a cup of tea.”

Komal nodded. “I’d like that. But let me say this, please. It’s your soul I care about.

You are probably one of the bravest children that came into my care.” At Marguerite’s startled look, she nodded. “It’s not a light compliment, nor a slur on the other children. I see what you’ve built of your life, what you’re giving to others. I also see you standing before the chance of love. You’re so very courageous. Believe me when I say that the love of a good man is the very last thing you should be running from. I’m afraid, not that he’ll hurt you, but that you won’t believe in yourself enough to take the leap.” Marguerite looked toward the ground, an obvious attempt to cover the emotions crossing her face, her beautiful pale hair shadowing her features. Unable to help herself, Komal framed that crown in her brown hands, rose on her toes and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Marguerite did not move. Komal held the kiss there through several breaths before she drew back, touching the woman’s hands. Hands now stained with blood from the portion of the bat she held.

“I’ve left my card on your desk. I’d love that cup of tea, but once I leave today please call me for anything. I would be delighted to have you visit me anytime. As a friend or if you need to talk to me professionally. For you I would hang out my shingle again.” She hesitated. “And just for your information, Tyler looked a bit shaken up after he left my house. I’m sure he’d appreciate hearing from you. We forget that sometimes there is something greater than our pain. That’s the pain of the person who loves us, who couldn’t protect us from that pain. After meeting Tyler Winterman I firmly believe he would sacrifice the world to go back in time and do just that for you.” She nodded at Marguerite’s stunned expression. “The gun is still underneath the monkey bars. Don’t forget to give that to the police as well.”