“The Missile?” Melanie replied.

“Yeah.”

Melanie shook her head. “That bitch’s name is Amy. No one calls her the Missile except herself.”

“She said to say the message was from the Missile.”

“Okay, who are you?”

“The person she asked to send the message.”

“And you know Amy Cruise how?”

“I don’t. What does it matter?”

“You with the cops? Is this some kind of sting?”

The short woman laughed. “I ain’t with the cops.”

“Sure you’re not. What’s the message?”

The woman dove for Melanie’s legs. It was a good move; the woman had a low center of gravity, which was good for taking people down.

Melanie, however, knew a little about fighting. Not as much as her sister, who loved it when their dad enrolled them in martial arts, but enough to counter this attack. Melanie’s legs went wide as she stepped back, and she leaned into the attack. She put her hands on the woman’s back and pushed down as her attacker tried and failed to get a grip on her legs.

The woman ended up on her face with Melanie on top of her. If Melanie had a shank on her, she could have ended the fight with a stab to the woman’s wide-open neck. She had to settle for grabbing her by the hair and slamming her face into the cement.

She got in one good slam before she heard the footsteps.

A big biker woman they called Valkyrie was headed her way. Melanie cursed herself silently for not realizing the short woman wouldn’t be coming for her alone. She could hear someone coming from the other direction as well, but she couldn’t look right now. Melanie got her hands up and took the kick Valkyrie threw on her arms. She did nothing to stop the sharp object jammed into her back by the third assailant. An arm wrapped around her throat, but Melanie spun and threw a blind elbow that connected to her attacker’s face.

She grabbed the arm, planning to flip the assailant with the shank over her shoulder, but Valkyrie’s second kick attempt caught her in the face. When she was about to black out, she felt the shank go into her back again. She threw her head back and connected with the face of the person stabbing her. Melanie tried to get up, but the big woman landed another kick sending her to the ground.

Melanie tried to roll away while keeping her head covered, but there was nowhere to go.

The blows kept coming followed by more stabs from the shank. It seemed at least four people were taking turns beating and stabbing her.

She wanted to ask for a timeout, not to save her life but to ask why they were killing her. The short woman had said it was a message from the Missile, but that didn’t do much to clear it up. While Melanie and Amy Cruise ‘Missile’ weren’t friends, they were members of a very exclusive club. If circumstances were different, perhaps they would butt heads over who got to be the leader, but Melanie was in prison and the Missile wasn’t. They might as well have been on different planets.

Melanie hadn’t done anything to the woman she could think of.