Marcus had come alone and he had timed it. "Get her out here." Marcus was saying calm, almost conversational. "Tell her to come out and the boy is fine." Elena was at the screen door.
She had the kitchen phone in one hand and her other hand was pressed flat against the glass. Her face was white. Darius saw all of this in 1 second the way a man sees a battlefield and then he was crossing the yard. "Let go of my son." His voice was lower than he had ever heard it.
Marcus turned and the smile flickered. He had not expected Darius from that direction. He had expected him from the house. But Marcus was not a man who backed up easily and his free hand went to his belt and a folding knife came open in it with a small clean sound. "Stay where you are, brother."
Marcus said. "I'll walk out of here with her and the boy goes home with you. Easy day. Don't make it a hard one." Darius did not stop walking.
He did not raise his hands. He did not shout. He walked straight at Marcus and 3 ft out when the knife came up he moved the way he had been trained to move a long time ago in another life in a uniform. He stepped inside the arc of the blade, took the wrist, turned it and brought Marcus down across his own hip and onto the dirt with a sound that knocked the air out of the man. The knife went into the grass.
Darius put a knee in the small of Marcus's back and his full weight on it and he pinned the wrist behind the shoulder blade in a hold that did not break bone but made breaking bone the next available option. "Noah." Darius did not look up. "You all right, son?" Noah was on the ground 3 ft away where Marcus had let him fall.
He was crying but he was nodding. "Yes, sir." "Go inside. Go to Elena. Stay there."
The boy got up and ran. The screen door banged. Darius felt his own hand and saw almost without interest that the palm was bleeding where the blade had caught it on the way past. He kept his weight where it was. Marcus was swearing into the grass, the kind of low ugly cursing a man does when he has just realized that his evening is going to end differently than he planned.