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station wagon to the right of his head, and it exploded satisfactorily into a puff of plastic. The human Jack had managed to drag himself into a seated position, but his arm hung at a sickening angle. Jack Smith wasn’t going to be any help. I guessed at least three broken ribs.
    I didn’t really believe I would shoot this guy, and by the look in his eye, he knew it. He would be on top of me in seconds. Grandaddy’s combat training raced through my brain while he advanced again, still smiling.
    When he was a yardstick length in front of me, I burst from beside the van and thrust an impressive high kick in the direction of his crotch. The ballet classes I still attended every Wednesday night paid off.
    “You little bitch!” he screeched. He grabbed his crotch with one hand and my hair with the other as I ran past. Yanking me violently to the ground, he pinned me beneath the weight of his boot. I saw long blond wisps in his fist.
    I don’t like to admit it, but I have a thing for my hair. As he leered above me, holding material from my scalp, I forgot to be scared.
    With both hands, I twisted the boot as hard as I could into the most unnatural and painful position possible. The steel toe made a ninety-degree turn, knocking him off balance. His phone clattered to the ground. He let out another howl. I flipped away from him as 250 pounds of hard fat and muscle hit the floor.
    My left cheek was now smack against the cold concrete, inches from the pointy toes of his boots and from his phone. The screen glowed with a picture of me from the staff bio section of the Halo Ranch website. There was no time to think about this. I scrambled up and ran toward Jack and his other attacker, fueled by frustration and anger and hellbent momentum, without a single thought of a plan.
    What was happening to me? I didn’t want to mess with these redneck freaks. I didn’t want the pink letter in my purse. I didn’t want my Daddy to be waiting for a headstone covered with a mound of fresh earth and a blanket of a hundred long-stem roses fried brown by the August heat.
    “GET ON YOUR KNEES,” I screamed at the other goon.
    I hadn’t even heard them coming, not until the two police cars screeched short behind me, and four uniformed officers, a bona fide battalion for a Sunday morning in Fort Worth, exited with guns raised. I braced, my own gun pointed at the head of bad guy No. 2.
    I was only inches from Jack, who peered up at me with a goofy expression.
    “Your hair. It’s so pretty,” he said dreamily. “Like an angel.”
    A cop gently pried the .45 from my hand.
    “Is this registered?” he asked me.
    I nodded, mute.
    “I’ll take your word for it. Let’s put it back where you got it.” Texas cops could be nice that way. His mouth was still moving, telling me how I should look into pepper spray or a more appropriately sized weapon. Texas cops could be sexist like that, too. Grandaddy’s advice was to never argue with them. Eighty percent of Texas law enforcement, he claimed, was the same kind of man, the kind on a lifetime power trip.
    The other cops were busy cuffing the two thugs, who turnedas docile as little sheep and no longer had a word to say. The guy in the black hat winked broadly in my direction, though. He held up a few strands of my hair and tucked them in his shirt pocket like a souvenir, before a cop pushed his head down and shoved him into the backseat of a patrol car.
    Smiling at me through the window, he mouthed:
You’re welcome, Tommie
.

    The cops insisted I take a short ride to the hospital with them so I could get “checked,” although I’m sure they were thinking there is not a pill for a 107-pound woman who tries to take down a 250-pound man with a ballet move.
    They reminded me about Texas’s concealed weapons law when they glimpsed the handle of Daddy’s pistol in my purse, and then proceeded with a barrage of questions about the events of the last twenty minutes. I told them the truth: that Jack