Until the Sparks Fly (The Midnight Men #4)

Chapter 1

Dominic

My father used to say the day belongs to whoever claims it first. He’d be at Midnight Boxing by four every morning, lights on before the sun came up, coffee brewing in the back office while the rest of Dark River slept.

I never understood it when I was a kid, used to groan and pull the covers over my head when I heard him moving around the house in the dark.

Now I’m the one who can’t sleep past four.

I’ve kept the tradition for over fifteen years now, driving past the same marina where the fishing boats are starting to stir, their lights bobbing in the gray water like fireflies that forgot to go to bed.

Past the coffee shop that won’t open for another hour, its windows dark, the OPEN sign turned inward.

The sports podcast I’ve got playing is background noise more than anything, two guys out of LA whose names I can never remember breaking down the weekend’s UFC fights.

I half-listen while I think about Roman’s training schedule, the adjustments we need to make to his footwork, whether he’s ready for the kind of pressure he’s going to face in New York.

Roman Kincaid. The best fighter I’ve ever coached. Three weeks out from a UFC match that could change both our lives, and I keep running scenarios in my head like I can control the outcome through sheer force of will.

“What do you think about Roman Kincaid?” one of the hosts is saying, and my attention snaps back. “Kid’s training with Dominic Midnight out of some small-town gym in Washington.”

I turn up the volume. The buzz around Roman has been building for months, exactly what we want, but hearing strangers dissect your life never sits right. You’re just a story they’re telling to fill airtime between ads for protein powder and gambling apps.

“Kincaid’s got real potential,” the other one says.

“Explosive power, good instincts. But training out of some small-town gym? Even if his trainer is Dominic Midnight, I don’t know, man.

You need to be in a real camp to compete at this level.

You need the sparring partners, the resources. It’s a bit of a controversy right now.”

Some small-town gym. Midnight Boxing, the gym my father built from nothing forty years ago. The gym I’ve spent most of my adult life turning into something he’d be proud of. But sure. Some small-town gym.

“Speaking of controversy in combat sports,” the first host jumps in. “Did you see that Brooke Bennett piece in The Sporting Standard? The one about the doping protocols in regional promotions?”

My hand tightens on the steering wheel.

Brooke fucking Bennett.

“Oh yeah, that was thorough. She always is. Best long-form sports writer working right now, in my opinion. When she does a profile on someone, you feel like you actually know them by the end.”

I stab the power button and the car goes silent.

There was a time when I was set to be one of the best coaches in the sport. A real prospect, a once-in-a-generation talent, and we were six months out from a title shot when everything fell apart because of Brooke Bennett.

I’ve trained fighters since then, sure. Regional guys, local talent, people who wanted to compete at the amateur level and needed someone who knew what they were doing. But nothing like what I had before. Until Roman. Roman is the first fighter who’s made me think maybe I could have that again.

It’s been fifteen years since Brooke published the article that destroyed my coaching career. The one that painted me as complicit in my fighter’s doping scandal even though I had no idea Miles was dirty until the test results came back.

I’ve made the best of it. The dreams of training champions went out the window, but I run the most successful gym in the region now. I’ve kept my father’s legacy alive. I’ve built something real, something that helps people every single day.

But that’s all despite her, and that’s not where it started between us. That’s not even close to where it started.

I round the curve toward the gym, my headlights cutting through the last of the morning fog, and that’s when I see it: two cars crumpled together.

One wrapped around a Douglas fir, smoke pouring from underneath the hood, flames already licking at the engine block.

The other spun out across both lanes, driver’s side door hanging open like a broken jaw.

There’s no ambulance or flashing lights in sight, and no one else stopped.

This crash just happened. It’s minutes old at most.

I yank the wheel and pull onto the shoulder, throwing the car into park and killing the engine in one motion. I’m out the door before I’ve fully processed what I’m doing, already running toward the wreck and pulling my phone from my pocket.

The heat hits me first and I smell gasoline, burning rubber, and something chemical that makes my eyes water. I dial 911 with one hand and keep running, shouting into the phone as soon as the operator picks up.

“Two-car accident on Harbor Road, mile marker seven. One vehicle on fire, at least two people involved. I need fire and EMS now.”

The operator starts asking questions but I’m not listening anymore because I’ve reached the first car, the one spun out across the road, and the guy inside is conscious.

Sort of. He’s slumped against the steering wheel, mumbling something I can’t make out, and the smell of whiskey hits me before I even get close.

Fantastic. A drunk driver at four in the morning. What a treat.

He’s got blood on his face but he’s moving, fumbling with his seatbelt, and when I grab his arm to help him out he slurs something that might be “thanks” or might be “fuck off.” Hard to tell.

I don’t particularly care either way. I haul him out of the car and half-drag, half-carry him to the grass on the side of the road, depositing him far enough from the wreck that he won’t catch fire if things go sideways.

“Stay here,” I tell him, though I doubt he understands. “Don’t move.”

He mumbles something and slumps over. He’ll live. He reeks like a distillery and he just caused a major accident, but he’ll live. The other car is the problem.

The flames are spreading fast now, eating through the crumpled hood, smoke pouring thick and black into the morning air. Through the cracked windshield I see someone slumped over the steering wheel, not moving.

I sprint toward the car.

The door is crumpled where the car wrapped around the tree, metal folded in on itself. I grab the handle and pull. Nothing. I brace my foot against the frame and get my whole body into it, every muscle straining, and the metal screams as it gives way inch by inch.

The man inside is unconscious, with dark hair and tan skin, and there’s blood running from a gash on his forehead. He looks young, maybe mid-twenties. His seatbelt is jammed.

Of course it’s jammed.

My fingers are slick with his blood and the release won’t catch and the fire is right there, close enough that I can feel the heat pressing against my back like a physical weight. Sweat is dripping into my eyes and my lungs are burning from the smoke and the belt won’t fucking budge.

Come on. Come on.

It clicks.

I hook my arms under his shoulders and drag him out, backward across the wet grass. Ten feet. Twenty. Thirty. The heat is intensifying behind us and I can hear the fire roaring, hungry and getting hungrier, but I keep going, keep dragging, keep putting distance between us and that car.

The car goes up just as I throw myself over him, shielding his body with mine.

The explosion of heat slams into my back and for a second I can’t breathe, can’t think, can only press myself flat and wait for it to pass.

The roar fills my ears and the light fills my vision even through closed eyelids and I think, in a distant kind of way, that this is a hell of a way to start a Tuesday.

When I look up, the car is a fireball. And this stranger is alive beneath me, breathing, his chest rising and falling in a shallow but steady rhythm.

Then his eyes flutter open. Unfocused, confused. And I’m looking at my brother’s face.

Not exactly. But close enough that my stomach drops straight through the ground.

The jaw is Calvin’s, the dark eyes, a bone structure that’s unmistakably familiar in a way I can’t explain and don’t want to examine too closely.

But this guy is younger, with darker skin and higher cheekbones and a bigger build than my brother.

Still, the resemblance is strong enough to make me feel like I’m losing my mind. Like maybe I hit my head somewhere and I’m hallucinating, or dreaming, or having some kind of stress-induced breakdown in the middle of Harbor Road while a car burns behind me.

The man tries to say something. His lips move but nothing comes out, and then his eyes roll back and he’s unconscious again.

His head is heavy against my arm. I keep pressure on the wound and wait, the car burning behind us, the drunk driver groaning somewhere in the grass, sirens finally wailing in the distance.

Who the hell is this guy?

I’ve told the story three times now, once to the paramedics, once to the intake nurse, and now to the cop who showed up about an hour after I got here. Each time I tell it, it feels a little less real, like something that happened to someone else in a movie I half-remember watching.

The cop scribbles in his notebook and my eyes drift to the painting on the wall behind him.

A clown holding a bouquet of wilting flowers, its smile just slightly too wide.

What kind of psychopath puts clown art in a hospital waiting room?

You’d think they’d want something calming, not nightmare fuel.