I don’t know where the stranger had been hiding. In between the parked cars, maybe. But all of a sudden he was barreling toward me. He was thin, but tall, wearing a baggy T-shirt, chinos, and a faded baseball cap pulled down low.
In an instant, Ziggy was there, quickly side stepping. He placed himself between us.
“I just…” the man started.
“Step back,” said Ziggy, hands out in front, ready to hold this guy back. “Move away.”
“What’s your reaction to the gruesome parcels delivered to your apartment, Mae?” he pressed on, running straight into Ziggy’s hands. It didn’t seem to faze him at all. “Have the police got any suspects?”
Over at the gate, the paparazzi were going nuts taking pictures of the altercation. I tried to keep my face down, but the jerk just kept shouting questions at me. His voice was so loud and demanding it was jarring. And the colors on his cap were weirdly familiar. Faded, but familiar.
“You’re trespassing. You need to leave.” Ziggy walked the man back a step. Then he reached into his pocket and used the key fob to unlock the car. “Miss Cooper, get into the car, please.”
No wonder the colors were familiar, they were from my ex’s football team. Orange and blue. And the tissue paper in the boxes had been a kind of orange color too. Neither Ziggy nor the detective had wanted to commit given the bloody state of the paper, but I was certain. The man pushed forward, ramming Ziggy with his elbow. “I just want to talk to her.”
“Who are you?” I snapped. Plenty of journalists had wanted to talk to me over the years. But this level of animosity was something new. “Who do you work for?”
Lip curled, he sneered, “Come on, Mae, have a heart.”
All of a sudden, one hell of a bad feeling hit me. My stomach sunk through the ground. “You’re him. Oh my God. You sent those things. The hearts and…”
His face turned manic, the whites of his eyes huge.
“Ziggy, be careful,” I yelled. “It’s him.”
Immediately, the man upped his attempts to get at me. He and Ziggy tussled and fought. Then Ziggy grunted as there was a flash of metal. A blade was held aloft, clasped in the maniac’s hand, Ziggy’s fingers hard around his wrist. The whole scene was horrible and scary and happening so fast. With great force, Ziggy slammed his forehead into the other man’s face. Bone crunched and the man howled in pain. So much damn blood. It gushed out of his nose, covering his lips and chin. Next Ziggy smashed his knee into the man’s groin and he dropped toward the ground in an almighty rush.
Through it all, Ziggy had kept a stranglehold on the arm holding the knife. As the guy dropped, Ziggy grabbed his wrist with both hands, spun around and snapped the arm downwards. There was a crack as the man’s elbow met Ziggy’s shoulder and was forced into bending in the wrong direction. The knife clattered to the ground. Within a flash, Ziggy was on him. Now the guy’s wrist was bent in another way again, locked in between Ziggy’s legs and twisted around and down in an ugly manner. Ziggy pulled the hand inward and upward, making the guy’s full weight all hang from the back of his wrist. He screamed.
Ziggy nodded and relaxed his grip. “Sit,” he growled. “And if you ever want to use this wrist again in your lifetime, do not move so much as an inch.”
The man just moaned, curling on himself, his free hand trying to reach down to his damaged balls. It was over. Holy cow.
Meanwhile, I felt cold and weird for some reason. My heart hammered inside my chest and my knees turned to water. From the violence, maybe? Whatever. I didn’t have time for this. I had to do something to help. Paparazzi over at the gates shouted out questions and pushed and strained to get the best shot, but we all just ignored them. The whole situation seemed surreal. Like something out of a bad movie.
“Mae,” said Ziggy, looking up at me from his weird position atop the stalker. He actually looked weirdly relaxed, like he could sit there all day like that. “You did good, figuring it out. It’s okay now. Situation’s under control. Can you hear me?”
“Ah. Y-yes.”
“I need you.”
“You do? All right. What do I do?”
“You have to make some phone calls, okay? Can you do that for me, please, while I keep an eye on this piece of shit?”
“Sure.” I set my handbag on the ground, kneeling beside it. So much stuff. But my cell was definitely in here somewhere. “Right.”
Ziggy scowled. He took one hand off the wrist lock he had the guy in, and wiped it on his jacket in annoyance. It was slick with blood. Dripping with it. No sooner had he wiped his fingers off than thick red streams of blood coursed back down it.
My jaw fell open. “You’re bleeding. He cut you.”
“First rule of a knife fight. Someone’s gonna bleed.” Resigning himself to the fact that the hand wasn’t going to miraculously stop with the blood, he raised the arm up and pinned it between his neck and shoulder. Compression and elevation, I guess. His gaze returned to the moaning man beneath him. “I’m fine. Find your cell. Knowing your bag, if you start looking now it should only take an hour or two.”
“That’s not funny,” I snapped. “I’ll call an ambulance after I make whatever call you want me to make. The police first, right?”
“Police first. And I don’t need an ambulance. I can get myself to the hospital once this is dealt with.”
I pulled the cell out my handbag, bringing up Detective Ortega’s number. “Detective? This is Miss Mae Cooper. We were just attacked by a man with a knife. I think he’s the person who’s been sending the boxes, and Ziggy, my bodyguard, has him detained. Let me give you the address.”