And then, as caution was mixed with the reasonable knowledge that he had no complaint against Ruttman, he turned his head, a gesture of submittal. In that instant he saw Loretta smiling at him, a mocking smile.
He let the camera fall way from his fingers, and the back of his hand cracked across her mouth.
It was a hard blow and it sent her head twisting all the way to the side. But he didn’t have time to see what damage he had done, because Ruttman was already hitting him.
Ruttman was smashing him with a straight right that caught him under the eye. He fell back with his arms wide, his feet off the ground. He collided with a crate, bounced away, started to fall, made up his mind he wouldn’t fall, and lunged at Ruttman with his fists flailing.
He found Ruttman’s head with his right hand, staggered Ruttman with another blow to the temple, then came in close and ripped both hands to the body. He heard Ruttman grunting and again he punched to the body, and Ruttman started to double up, falling forward, trying to clinch.
Kerrigan stepped back and hooked a short left to Ruttman’s jaw, followed it with another left to the side of the head, stepping back again and chopping with the right and missing, and then taking a terrible, thundering blow from Ruttman’s right hand. It was a roundhouse smash, a punch that started wide, came in short, exploded on his jaw, and knocked him down.
“That winds it up,” someone said.
Kerrigan’s eyes were closed and he was flat on his back. There was no pain, only the feeling of wanting to stay here and keep sinking into the darkness.
But then he heard a voice saying, “Finished?”
He opened his eyes and looked up and saw Ruttman. He grinned and said, “Not yet.”