Payback Read Online Free

remained silent but for an occasional whimper.
    “Give me the dog!” Spence yelled from somewhere up ahead, and I wondered if he could see whom he was speaking to. I certainly couldn’t. But I did feel a body pass beside me from behind, and then another. They seemed to be converging on Spence. Then two hands came out of nowhere and pushed me hard. I landed on my hands and knees in a reeking toilet stall, my head colliding with the commode and making me see stars.
    There was a ring of metal. What sounded like a metal rod striking the concrete wall brought me my very first flash of true fear. I struggled to my feet.
    “Spence,” I cried out. “Run! Get out!”
    I heard a scuffle, Spence grunting, and again Franklin yelped, as if in the midst of the battle someone had trod on his foot.
    “Fucking mutt,” a sinister voice spat.
    Someone flicked a cigarette lighter, and the toilet exploded in light. For the briefest of moments before the lighter was knocked from the man’s hand, I saw the tableau in perfect clarity. The man holding the light looked Mexican. I could see Franklin’s leash wrapped around the hand holding the lighter. The flame was jerking around because Franklin was straining at the leash, trying to get away, jarring the man’s hand. The man wore a stocking cap on his head and his face was round and fat, with a horrific black mole on his cheek which I would have made my mission in life to have removed at the earliest opportunity. But maybe psychotic dogsnatchers aren’t subject to such aesthetic considerations.
    While the fat guy held the lighter aloft to illuminate the scene, three men, one of them Spence, wrestled against the far wall. A tall rangy dude with a straggly moustache clutched an iron bar in his hand like a baseball bat. He swung it with all his force at Spence, missing him completely but knocking a chip of concrete off the wall, which flew across the room and struck me in the cheek. I gasped in surprise and pain.
    Still dizzy from striking my head on the toilet, I stumbled into the fray and tried to grab Spence and drag him toward the door. Again a cruel pair of hands shoved me to the floor, and a boot with silver chains on the side of it came out of nowhere, kicking me in the chest.
    Gasping for air, I clutched my body as a second kick connected with my hip, making me cry out.
    “Leave him alone,” Spence screamed. “Goddammit, you’re hurting him!”
    A mocking, guttural voice came from behind the still-burning lighter. “Look what we got here, boy. A goddamn chink Chinaman and his goddamn faggot boyfriend.”
    “Leave him alone,” I bellowed, and at that precise moment, the flame from the lighter went out as it went flying through the air when Spence threw a roundhouse punch that caught the guy with the mole on the side of the head, knocking him backward into the toilet stall I had just vacated. The cigarette lighter clattered to the floor, sliding off into the darkness.
    “Fucker!” someone yelled as I dove forward, trying to reach Spence and drag him away, but I must have grabbed the wrong person. A fist came out of the darkness and slammed into my face, sending me whirling against the wall. My head exploded in pain.
    As I slid to the floor, I heard someone gasp, “Enough of this shit. Let’s kill these fuckers!”
    “No,” I bellowed through my haze. “Spence, run! G-get out!”
    And just as I tried to grip the wall and pull myself to my feet, I again saw a flash of light. This time it was reflected from the mirror on the bathroom wall as it caught the beam of headlights from a passing car stabbing through the bathroom door. A brief flash of hope it might be a cop was dashed when I heard the car travel on down the street, rap music thumping merrily in its wake.
    I flinched when again the metal bar crashed into the concrete wall. Once. Twice. But on the third strike, the sound was different. It was a softer sound. A more brutal, frightening sound. It was the sound of metal