This was not happening.

As the harassers got pounded in the corridor, he backtracked through the crowd and tore out of the front of the club in an urgent haze, having no idea what he was doing or where he was going. The chilly night air didn’t clear his head or his confusion, and he went around to the parking lot with no plan whatsoever. When he got into his nondescript car, he shut himself in and breathed hard.

That was when the anger hit. Great waves of fury poured through his body, making him sweat and shake.

He knew his temper had gotten him in trouble before. He knew this boiling rage was a problem, and he remembered what he’d been taught in prison. Count to ten. Try to calm down. Call to mind the safety image—

Movement by the back of the club brought his head around.

A door opened and the two kids who’d been stalking her were dropped like bags of garbage onto the pavement by the ones who’d come to her rescue. A black man stayed out in the cold and spoke to both of the offenders for a moment and then returned into the club.

From behind the wheel, he stared hard at the young guys.

The lightning strike hit him as it always did, wiping everything out of the way: His rage condensed and then crystallized, locking on the pair by the back door, all the anger and the sense of betrayal and the fury and the confusion that woman had created getting trained on those two.

Moving in a daze, he double-checked that the false mustache and the glasses were where they were supposed to be. Chances were very good there were security cameras on the back of the club, and having been caught by the likes of them before, even in his rage he knew enough not to do this in front of prying lenses even with a disguise.

So he waited.

Eventually, the college kids got stiffly to their feet, one of them spitting out blood, the other holding his arm as if he were afraid it was going to drop off his torso. Facing each other, they argued, whatever harsh words they shared nothing but mute theatrics because he was too far away to hear what they were saying. But the fight didn’t last long. They fell silent fairly quickly, as if they’d lost their collective will, and after some looking around, they lurched into the parking lot like drunks.

Probably because their heads were spinning from the beatings they’d taken.

When they passed by his car, he got a good look at them. Fair skinned, light eyed, both had an earring or two. Their faces were the kind you’d see in the newspaper, not in the criminal section, but under the header College Sports.

Healthy, young, with a lot of life ahead of them.