Chapter 18 #2
“For our first bout,” he said, “we have a soldier who served in Europe, a man who’s come here from Alabama to show you what he’s made of. Give it up for Tyler.”
The crowd’s response was polite but not ecstatic. Tyler ducked through the cage door, shoulders tight, doing his best to look bigger than he was. More confident. It wasn’t working.
“And his opponent,” Maurice went on, “from right here in our own backyard. Two desert tours. A man who eats pain for breakfast. Make some noise for Kobi.”
The man who stepped in opposite Tyler was about the same height, same weight class. That’s where the similarity ended.
Kobi moved like he belonged there. Loose and relaxed, shoulders down, a little bounce in his step. His body was cut, but not in a cartoonish gym-bro way. Solid. Efficient. He gave the cage a quick glance, a predator checking terrain.
You knew, looking at him, that he’d done this many times before.
Maurice cleared out, the gate clanged shut, and some guy with a whistle and a stopwatch shuffled in to give them the world’s shortest safety speech.
“No hits to the back of the head. No eye gouges. No groin. Protect yourselves at all times,” he droned.
The whistle shrieked.
Round one, Tyler tried to be aggressive. He moved forward, lead hand jabbing, doing what somebody had told him to do in some gym somewhere. But his feet were off—crossing, stumbling, never fully underneath him. His head stayed on the center line too long.
Kobi read him in about ten seconds.
He started slipping Tyler’s jabs just enough to make him miss, making him pay with clean counters. A hook to the body here, a straight right there. Nothing that dropped Tyler immediately, but enough to rattle his brain around a little more.
Tyler’s guard started drifting down as he chased Kobi around the cage, frustration mounting. He was burning gas fast. I could see it from thirty feet away.
“Breathe, kid,” I muttered under my breath. “Hands up. Stop chasing.”
Kobi’s expression never changed. Calm. Focused. There was no malice there—just a man doing a job.
He waited.
When Tyler lunged in sloppily with a wide right hook, Kobi slipped inside it and answered with a short, tight uppercut that snapped Tyler’s head back. Tyler stumbled, hit the cage, bounced.
The crowd roared. A couple of the women near the bar leaned forward, eyes bright.
Tyler didn’t go down. Credit where it was due—he stayed on his feet, shaking it off. He threw a few wild shots, most of which hit air.
The whistle blew, ending the round.
Tyler staggered back to his corner—if you could call a strip of chain-link and a folding chair a corner—and sank down, chest heaving.
No coach stepped in. No cutman. No water man.
Just Tyler, alone, trying to remember how to breathe.
Kobi stayed standing between rounds, pacing a slow circle, eyes on his opponent like a shark waiting for the next taste of blood.
Round two started worse.
Tyler went out there like he had something to prove to the people who’d never see this—his wife, that unborn baby, the bank that wanted rent. He swung like his money and manhood and future were all riding on this one night.
Which, in his head, they probably were.
He overextended on nearly every punch.
Kobi picked him apart.
A low kick to Tyler’s lead leg buckled his balance. A jab split his guard. Another straight right slammed into the same spot on his cheekbone as last time. I could almost hear Cappy’s disapproving voice in my head, counting all the ways this should never have been sanctioned.
By the midpoint of the round, Tyler’s movements had gone slow and rubbery. His arms were dropping just a little slower each time. There was a foggy, faraway look in his eyes that I did not like.
“One more,” I whispered. “Just one clean clinch, ride it out, let them call it.”
He tried to oblige. He staggered forward, arms reaching to clinch, to tie Kobi up.
Kobi swam under and around, created space, and fired a short hook to the temple.
Tyler’s legs gave out.
He didn’t crumple gracefully. He went down like somebody had unplugged him—straight to the concrete under that thin layer of canvas. He hit hard enough that I felt it in my teeth.
The crowd lost their minds. People surged to their feet. Cash waved, phones lit up, the air full of shouts and laughter and curses in equal measure.
The ref did a cursory check, waved it off. End of fight. Kobi’s hand was raised to mild applause.
Tyler lay there blinking, chest pumping in uneven bursts.
Then he tried to roll and failed.
“Get him out of there!” someone shouted, annoyed, not concerned.
Two big guys in black shirts and earpieces appeared at the cage door like they’d been waiting in the wings. They hauled Tyler up under the armpits, his feet dragging, head lolling.
His mouth opened. I couldn’t hear him from where I was, but I saw it—the sluggish shape of the words.
Em. Sorry. Missed.
My heart stuttered. He was talking about the ultrasound.
It hurt. I looked away. Then I looked back.
They dragged him down the metal steps, toward the side corridor.
I stepped out of the shadows.
“Let me see him,” I said, moving to intercept.
Maurice materialized between us, hands out, palms casual. He wasn’t alone this time. The two door guys flanked him, bigger in here than they’d looked outside, muscles stacked under sleeves, eyes flat.
“Post,” Maurice said, smiling. “Enjoying the show?”
“He needs a hospital,” I snapped, ignoring the question. “Now. That was a bad knockout. He could have a brain bleed. He’s close to vomiting, he’s—”
As if on cue, Tyler’s body heaved. Vomit hit the concrete in a wet splash, barely missing one of the security guys’ boots. Tyler moaned, tried to wipe his mouth, missed.
Maurice’s smile didn’t move. “He knew the risks when he signed the waiver,” he said. “We have our own people. He’ll be taken care of.”
“Your own people?” I barked. “Where? You don’t have any medical staff here. You don’t even have a damn ice pack. Let me look at him. I’m not asking to take him home, I’m asking to keep him from dying in your hallway.”
The two security guys stepped forward, closing off the narrow space between me and Tyler’s limp form.
Maurice’s eyes cooled. “I said,” he repeated, “we have our own people. He’ll be taken care of.”
He turned his head slightly. “Get him out of here,” he told the men holding Tyler.
“Yes, sir.”
They dragged Tyler past me, out of the main hall, toward a darker portion of the building—a door I hadn’t noticed before, half-hidden behind stacked crates and an old industrial sign.
His mouth worked around sluggish words as they dragged him past me. I had to lean in to catch them.
“Em… sorry… missed… the ultrasound…”
The door opened. Swallowed him. Shut.
I was left staring at peeling paint and a metal handle.
“Post.” Maurice’s voice snapped my attention back. He stepped closer, invading my space just enough to make a point. “You here to work as some kind of social worker? Nanny? Or are you here to fight and earn some money?”
My fists clenched and unclenched at my sides. My ribs throbbed. My conscience screamed.
“I’m here to do what I said I’d do,” I bit out. “Fight. But my entire career revolves around saving people. That’s not a switch I can flip off.”
“Then you’d better learn,” he said softly. “Because around here, you keep your head down and focus on your own business. You want to babysit, go back to the firehouse.”
We stared at each other for a long beat.
Then he smiled again, all fake warmth. “You’re up after this next one,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”
He strode away, back toward the cage, already shedding the conversation like the snake he was.
I stood there for a second, breathing hard, the echo of Tyler’s mumbling stuck in my head.
Em. Ultrasound. Sorry.
The crowd noise spiked again as Maurice climbed back into the cage.
“For our second bout of the evening,” he announced, “we’ve got a familiar face—young gun, local talent. He’s been making waves in the regionals. Give it up for JJ Baumgartner.”
JJ.
The kid from Cappy’s gym.
It just got worse and worse.
He looked even younger under the harsh lights, stepping into the cage in black shorts with white stripes, jaw set. Last time I’d seen him, he’d been cracking my ribs with a body shot and apologizing afterward. Now he had his game face on.
“And in the opposite corner,” Maurice boomed, “a veteran of the underground circuit. You might have seen him in Atlanta, you might have seen him in Nashville. Tonight, he’s here to test our boy. Put your hands together for Razor.”
Razor was older—maybe late thirties—with a shaved head and tattoos crawling up his neck and down both arms. Not pretty ones, either. Prison ink, done in bad light with worse equipment. He rolled his shoulders as he stepped in, all casual menace.
The three rounds that followed were a blur of skill and stubbornness.
JJ had speed and heart. Razor had experience and a willingness to fight dirty without technically breaking the rules. He worked JJ’s body with short, punishing shots, swept his legs when he could, ground his forearm into JJ’s face in the clinch.
Every time JJ got clipped, he reset his stance, shook it off, and came back. By the third round, his left eye was swelling, his breathing ragged, but he refused to back down.
He caught Razor with a flying knee that staggered the older man. The crowd screamed. Razor tried to clinch, JJ shoved him off and swarmed, combinations flowing. A right-left-right slipped past Razor’s guard and snapped his head. The ref jumped in a half second before Razor hit the floor.
The place erupted. Money changed hands, fast and furious, some with bills, some with phones. JJ stumbled back to his corner, arms limp, chest heaving. Nobody climbed in to check him. No one seemed to care about anything but the betting results.
I took a step toward the cage, wanting to catch JJ’s eye, to at least tell him to put ice on his damn head and not sleep alone tonight.