Chapter Eight of A Reporters Nightmare

Smoky stared at Aragon; finally he broke out of his stupor and pointed at Aragon. “Get him!”  Baxter ignored the command but Tate charged Aragon.

     Aragon played the pitiful part he had done in the pickup. He scrambled backwards and tripped over an unseen rock. He pushed himself up against a unit and raised his hands to protect himself.

     “Please don’t hit me.” He cried. “I never used to be a model and I don’t want to ruin my non existent reputation of never getting hit.”

     It didn’t help, Tate continued to charge him.

     Aragon began to shake. “Please!” he wailed loudly. “I don’t have kids that’ll never know or care what happened to me!”

     Just as Tate was in range and getting ready to throw a kick his way, Aragon leapt up and kicked the man in his shin. The kick didn’t slow Tate down but did make him stumble. Aragon jabbed two fingers stiffly into Tate’s throat.

     Tate’s eyes bulged and he wheezed. Smoky ran up to help him out but was to slow.

     A police car tore into the parking lot and two officers jumped out, running to overtake the three men.

     Smoky saw the officers and veered away from Aragon, running to a gap between the units. Aragon fell to the side, landing hard on the ground, but his plan worked. Smoky tripped over him and fell down.

     Aragon scrambled over to him and held him down. The officers caught Baxter, which wasn’t hard with his injured foot, they tased Tate and cuffed both of them.

     An officer came over to where Aragon was holding Smoky down and slapped cuffs on Smoky. Once all three men were in the police car one of the officers came over to Aragon.

     “Good job with the shouting.” He said. “If you hadn’t been making all that noise we would’ve locked you up to.”

     Aragon shrugged. “Do you have warrants out for their arrest?” he asked.

     The officer shrugged. “Not really, just some grounds that might be something in court.”

     Aragon stuffed his hands into his pocket. “Are you looking for any stolen diamonds?”

     The officer rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Now that it’s been mentioned again, yes. A man broke into several houses and stole a lot of jewels, later the same man robbed four banks, but we never caught him or recovered the money and jewels.”

     Aragon pointed at the unit behind him. “Those three men were burying a bunch of crates and one of them had diamonds in it.”

     The officer looked interested and walked over to the unit. He jiggled the lock, the rust that Aragon had thought been fake crumbled and fell off, taking the lock with it.