Chương 3
I parked the Ford directly in front of the glass doors, in the slot reserved for the gym owner, cutting the engine and leaving the headlights burning into the lobby.
I took off my watch—a plain, battered Casio G-Shock—and dropped it into the center console. I checked my jacket pockets. No weapons. No tactical gear. No brass knuckles. I had carried a sidearm in four different countries, but tonight, bringing steel into this room would only give a corrupt district attorney an excuse to call it premeditated assault.
When I pushed through the front doors, the wall of sound hit me instantly.
Loud, bass-heavy rap echoed off the exposed corrugated steel roof. The air was thick with the foul, unmistakable stew of an old-school fight house: sweat, eucalyptus liniment, sour canvas, bleach, and hot testosterone.
In the center of the vast concrete floor was a regulation competition octagon, elevated on a three-foot steel platform. Surrounding it were half a dozen heavy bags, double-end bags, weight racks, and a sprawling black mat area where eight or nine young men in compression shorts and hand wraps were drilling takedowns.
On the far side of the cage, leaning against the chain-link with a water bottle in one taped hand, was Colt Lusk.
He was twenty-six years old, broad-shouldered, with a fighter's thick neck, heavy traps, and a stylized tattoo of a crown and a broadsword running down his right deltoid. He had his shirt off. His skin was slick with sweat, glowing under the overhead halogen rigs, his face flushed pink from sparring.
Standing next to him, clipboard in hand, was a thickset man of about fifty-eight with a cropped gray beard, a black polo bearing the gym's logo, and the posture of an old dog who still remembered how to bite. That was Marcus Vance. Former staff sergeant. Head trainer at Lusk Combat Club for the past six years.
My boots made a heavy, rhythmic thump against the industrial rubber flooring as I walked past the reception desk. The kid behind the counter—some high school wrestler with cauliflower ears—started to say something, but I walked straight past him without turning my head.
The music didn't stop, but the energy in the room began to curdle.
Fighters possess a sensory apparatus tuned entirely to predatory behavior. They know when someone walks into a room looking to spectate, they know when someone walks in looking to challenge, and they know when someone walks in carrying an absolute vacuum.
I stopped six feet from the edge of the sparring mat, directly beneath the glare of the track lights.
Colt turned his head first. He took a long swig from his water bottle, wiped his chin with his forearm, and squinted through the low-hanging chalk dust.
"Well, look here," he said, loud enough to carry across the mats. The drilling fighters paused. Two young men near the heavy bags stopped mid-combination, letting the leather cylinders swing slowly on their chains. "Somebody left the pasture gate open. Mommy came to pick up the laundry."
Marcus Vance didn't turn around immediately; he was writing something down on his legal pad. "Colt, get your head back in the session. We got three rounds left on the clock."
"Hold on a second, Coach," Colt laughed, stepping down from the low platform with an easy, rolling swagger. His black-and-camo shorts rustled as he moved. He was six-foot-two, two hundred and ten pounds of dense athletic pride, completely unaccustomed to anyone failing to yield the sidewalk to him. "Lainey's old lady decided to drop by. Look at her. Still got sawdust on her jacket."
He walked right up to me, stopping just outside arm's reach, his chest puffed, looking down with a sneering, wolfish grin.
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"You lost, ma'am?" he asked, dragging out the title with heavy, insolent sarcasm. "The senior citizen craft fair is two blocks down. Unless you came to apologize for your daughter's bad attitude."
I looked into his eyes. There was no alcohol on his breath, which meant what he had done to Lainey that afternoon was done with a completely clear, sober mind. It was done because he enjoyed the sound of small bones giving way under leather.
