Chapter 19 #2
After we make a few turns, the crowds thin and we hop on a bus.
We get off in a quieter area of the city, with a darker vibe.
The shadows are longer and there’s a feeling that unseemly things linger in them.
Callie and Noah have stopped their chattering, and she’s got her hands wrapped around her arms. I continue to walk behind them, always scanning and paying attention to each dim corner and alleyway.
“Calliope,” I say quietly. She slows and turns to fall into step next to me. “Stay close to me or Noah the entire time we’re in there, okay?”
“Have you been to one?” Callie asks, her voice a whisper.
“A fight club?”
“Yeah.” She nods.
“Yes,” Noah says for both of us.
“But it’s always felt unnecessary to go looking for trouble like that,” I say. “Neither of us gamble. Neither of us needs more involvement in a criminal lifestyle. We stay away.”
Noah gives me a sharp look over his shoulder.
“Or any involvement. It’s not like we’re criminals,” I add. Callie snorts next to me.
“Right. You don’t act like one at all.” She looks up at me and bites her lip.
“Define criminal.”
She chuckles, and Noah groans and gives me another dirty look. This is probably not the most appropriate place to be flirting with Callie, and especially about being a criminal, but I can’t help it when she looks at me like that. That smile. That mouth.
Fuck me, it’s going to be hard to do my job tonight and also look out for her.
“Do you think we’ll find Shane there?”
“No.”
“Me neither. I probably should’ve come here when he first disappeared, but I thought there’s no way he’d hide in such plain sight.” But the expression on her face hints that she’s not totally sure of that.
“It’s better that you waited to go with us. You have nothing to worry about tonight, Callie, I promise. Noah,” I call to my brother.
He’s leading the way, looking out for the side street that will lead to an alleyway with the hidden entrance to the fight club.
“If I step away, don’t let Callie out of your sight.”
“Obviously.” He turns and rolls his eyes, and I’m so thankful he insisted on coming.
We follow Noah down a side street, two dark buildings looming on either side, and then duck down a much narrower alleyway, not even wide enough for a vehicle.
There’s a single flickering light shining over a short staircase descending to a solid door.
Noah leads us down the steps and doesn’t hesitate to pull the door open.
Callie and I step through, immediately facing a giant, rough-looking bald dude with an earpiece and a gun tucked prominently into a holster.
There’s cheering and shouting and sounds of a crowd of people down a long hallway behind him.
Callie’s eyes widen, and I watch as her shoulders tense up. The bouncer glares at us suspiciously and ignores Callie altogether. Noah has a conversation with him that we can’t hear because of the background noise. He hands the guy a few large bills before waving us along.
I really, really don’t like Callie being here, especially as we walk down that hallway and she shrugs off her coat. Again with the bare shoulders and long gorgeous hair and plunging cleavage.
Fuck me.
So much for not drawing attention to ourselves.
It’s chaos once we push through the doors to the underground fight club.
We stop right inside the large open space.
No one pays us any mind because the attention is all on the two men in the raised ring in the center of the room.
One fighter is huge, with buzzed dark hair, bulging biceps and a wide, solid body, wearing tight shorts and nothing else.
Sweat drips off his forehead and his hands are raised by his face in a fighter’s stance.
The other guy is much smaller and has his hair pulled back in a low, wet ponytail.
Blood drips from his nose, and he looks much worse than the other guy, but he’s energetically bouncing from foot to foot.
The crowd is majority men, fifteen people deep around the fighters. A pair of women in jeans and very small tank tops with their tits hanging out linger on the edge of a wall, but they don’t spare us a look. There are a few more women sprinkled in among the crowd.
Callie presses up next to me and when I look down at her, she’s staring at the fight. I don’t think she realizes she’s slipped her hand around my elbow, her fingers gripping my arm tightly.
“You okay?” I lean down to ask. She’s taller with her heels so I don’t have to go as far to speak into her ear. Noah’s gone to prowl around the edges of the room.
Callie looks up, eyes wide, lips parted. Fuck, I want to kiss that mouth. I want to own it. I want to pull her in my arms and protect her from the world. I want to take her far away from this place, and I almost pull her back down that hallway right then and there, but someone says her name.
“Callie? What are you doing here?”
Her head whips around. “Jake?” She takes a few steps toward the man standing five feet from us.
Her brother. The one who referred Callie to me, even though I’ve never had direct contact with him. I’ve been wanting to meet the man who didn’t do nearly enough to protect his sister.
“Looking for Shane. Obviously.” Callie crosses her arms on her chest and glares at her brother.
“Shane’s not here.” Jake’s a big dude, and he’s the physical opposite of Callie with his light hair and blue eyes. The look on his face is exasperated, but there’s also a layer of fear, and a hint of concern.
I step up next to Callie. Jake glances over at me.
“My brother knows where Shane is and won’t tell me,” she says to me without taking her eyes off him.
“That’s shitty. I’m Wes.” I don’t hold my hand out, and I don’t offer other pleasantries.
Jake narrows his eyes at me.
“Wes is helping me find Shane. You’re the one who connected us.” Callie throws her hands up at Jake, who is staring at me. “Hello?”
“You’re Hawk?” Jake finally says.
I nod and watch a bunch of different emotions fly across his face. Regret, probably. Fear for his sister, maybe. Suspicion, definitely. And with good reason. He’s got no idea I’ve been in his apartment many times to set up cameras, leave an apple pie, watch his sister fucking sleep.
He’s got no clue how to protect Callie from the world.
“I’m Jake. And I don’t know where Shane is.”
He totally knows where Shane is. This man is not a good liar.
Callie steps forward and starts badgering him with questions.
About Shane, about the club, about their father, and interestingly, about an inheritance.
I’m assuming it has to do with her father.
An inheritance might make all this more interesting.
Divorce, siblings, and money will heighten emotions for sure.
Noah appears to my right, finished with his lap around the room.
“Any luck?” Noah and I pored over pictures of Shane so we’d recognize him, along with Jones, who Callie explained to me is her father’s replacement and Shane’s new boss. Jones is a tall, muscular man in his fifties. Both men are fairly good-looking, which says nothing about their character.
Noah shakes his head. “I didn’t see him, but they might know.” He nods to the far corner of the room, where a group of men linger, smoking and drinking around a tall table.
I nod once. “Stay with Callie?”
“Yup. Who the fuck is the guy?” Noah asks, looking at Jake, who is listening to his sister whisper angrily at him.
His cheeks are flushed, and he looks like he’s getting a serious lecture.
Callie is waving her finger, poking him in the chest every few seconds.
She’s furious, and it’s fucking hot. Her brother, to his credit, looks shamed and like he actually cares.
He could just walk away, but he’s standing there taking it.
“Her brother. Don’t fucking trust him.”
I step away. At least I can trust my brother to look after my girl.
Wait—my girl? She’s not my girl.
For fuck’s sake, I’ve already mentally claimed her?
I head to the corner just as there’s a huge uproar from the crowd. In the ring, one of the fighters goes down hard on his chest. It’s the bigger guy, but he’s immediately back up on his hands and knees, blood dripping from his nose onto the mat as the smaller dude dances around him.
I hate places like this. They’re not safe for us. We’re better flying under the radar and staying far from the underbelly of Boston.
The men look up from the table and stop talking as I approach, all watching me with deep suspicion.
“Too late to bet on this one, it’s almost over.” One man says, counting stacks of twenty-dollar bills on the table. He’s got rough hands and strong arms, a crooked nose, and a popped blood vessel in his right eye. He looks like he’s been in a good amount of fights in his life.
He’s also got a gun tucked into his jeans. Why are all these men so obsessed with guns? I fucking hate guns.
I hand him a fifty-dollar bill and randomly pick a guy for the next fight from the iPad screen without reading or looking at the pictures.
“Where’s Jones?” I ask once they tap my bet into the iPad under the name Hawk. I’d also be willing to bet they know where Shane is.
“Who’s fucking asking?” a little shit of a man with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of clear liquid in another pops into the conversation. He’s got a black eye and is missing a tooth.
Again, I fucking hate this place. The black eye, okay, but go to a fucking dentist once in a while.
“Hawk,” I spit out with clear annoyance. Black-eye guy turns and whispers something to the third man in the group, who looks like the twin of the bouncer at the front entrance.
There’s a louder cheer from the ring, and I turn to see the smaller fighter kicking the shit out of the bigger guy as he’s on the ground again, this time on his side. The crowd is chanting kill him, but eventually someone pulls the fighter off the man, who is no longer moving.
“Wait here,” black-eye guy says as the bouncer-looking dude disappears. The crowd around the ring spreads out. I don’t like it, because I no longer have a clear line of sight to Callie and Noah. I need another minute though.
“You got more of these places?”
“Why, you wanna fight?” Black-eye guy looks me up and down, like he’s assessing whether or not I’d make a good enough fighter. He gives a slight nod.
“Nah. I just like to watch.”
“There’s a new one in New York,” he says after a short pause.
“What a coincidence. I’ll be in New York next week.” At least now I will. “Got the address?”
He scribbles something on a scrap of paper. “Fights are on Thursdays.”
“Thanks.” I pocket the paper and turn to look around. I hate that I can’t see Callie. There’s a niggle in the back of my brain. Instead of waiting for someone to bring Jones to me, I head into the crowd. One of the guys calls to me, but I ignore him.
Before I get to the spot where I left Callie, I see Noah standing at the end of a dark hallway. “Where is she?” I ask when I get to him.
“In the bathroom,” he says with a forced shrug. But he looks worried, not nonchalant.
The niggle gets bigger.
Something’s off. Something feels wrong.
“Fuck,” Noah says. “She insisted on going alone.”
“Seriously? Stay here.” I jog down the hallway and try all the door handles. Three are locked, but I finally find one that opens into a dirty, dimly lit bathroom. “Callie?”
I step into the dingy room and see a man facing the wall. At first I think he must be pissing or getting a blowjob or something, and then I realize he’s got someone pressed up against the tiles.
He turns his head, and his eyes widen when he sees me. In fear or anger or what, I’m not exactly sure.
And it’s Callie trapped against the wall, his hand on her mouth, his other hand pressing against her abdomen, his lower body smashed on hers. A million things run through my mind within seconds, but the loudest voice says MINE and PROTECT.
Callie’s eyes meet mine, and they’re wide and scared and—
Rage courses through my veins, and I black out.