21. Champion
Chapter Twenty-One
CHAMPION
B ulldog was a good opponent, but I was filled with frustration that made me extra focused and hungry for blood. He didn’t try too hard, actually tried to minimize the damage I did instead of attacking because he knew I was pissed about how the Three-
Hundred had ended. We were attacked by non-participants, and if my mother’s house hadn’t been there to push them back, there’d probably be a death count. As it was, we didn’t recover soon enough to make up for lost time, and Bulldog who didn’t get rockets shot at him, took first place.
Horse had stayed back to help our team, or he would have taken the gold.
That also pissed me off, that I’d needed his help, but at least I knew it was because of Trix and his sense of misguided honor instead of anything personal he thought about me.
With his weight and his skill, it was odd that he’d never won a fight against me, because I hadn’t always brought my best game.
I’d had some years that were a blur of too much indulgence, not enough discipline, but I still hadn’t ever lost to him.
Bothered me. But not as much as the thought of my Kitten home alone, eating who knew what because I wasn’t there to make sure she took care of herself.
She was a grown woman and could handle things like eating, but I wanted to see to it myself.
At least she let me keep her in my bed. If she wasn’t too tired, I was going to kiss her for hours and hours absolutely everywhere she’d allow it.
I could give her pleasure without sex easily enough.
It would probably be addictive and distracting for me, because having her sleep in my arms was bad enough, but I needed more of her, as much as I could get.
We’d already been in Vegas for a week, two weeks at the cabin, and another week in Alabama, and you were looking at a month down, five to go.
It was going too fast. I needed to be enjoying her every moment I could get.
Bulldog hit me hard, right across the face, bringing my full focus back to the fight. Right. I needed to do this too. Because this was my real life without Kitten. Pain. Hunger. The battle.
I smiled at Bulldog and that was the last good hit he got on me.
When the last bell rang, when Bulldog was down on the mat, I pushed my way out of the ring and then stopped when I saw Tom.
One split-second of frozen uncertainty and then I was moving.
I grabbed him and dragged him with me towards the tunnels, to the room where I’d left my phone and where I had access to all the security cams in the place.
Tom spoke quickly. “She went into the restroom and didn’t come out.
When I asked Lily to check on her, she wasn’t there.
It was ten minutes, no more, and then she was just gone.
I called the hotel to see if she was there, but they said no one went through the lobby in a yellow dress.
You’ll have to ask Horse to check his cams to see if she’s already there. ”
“She was here? My Kitten came here? Did she see me fight?”
“Mr. Nix, you can’t keep what you do a secret. No one who sees what you do wouldn’t be impressed.”
I sighed heavily. “You’re saying that you thought it would be helpful to bring her here?”
“She wanted to surprise you, thank you for the kitchen. She’s a real sweetheart. She probably went out the wrong way and got lost. I hope she’s okay, because she was looking particularly…”
“Edible,” Daniel said, standing there with his nose taped, t-shirt and jeans covering up the mess Quig had made of him.
“You saw Sunshine? Where? When? What direction was she going?”
He shrugged and looked down the hall. “You should probably get some pants on. She’s not going to enjoy seeing you like that. It was a clean fight, but you’re still bruised, and he gave you a shiner.”
I grabbed him around the neck and dragged him down the hall with me. I wasn’t playing. “You’ll tell me exactly where she was when you saw her, and what her disposition was at the time.”
“She was two halls down, outside my dressing room, and she looked hurt. Like her husband kept seriously relevant information about his character hidden so she’d feel like an idiot when the truth came out.” He gripped my arms, but he didn’t try to get away.
I released him and stalked towards my changing room, where my phone was along with my pants.
I dressed one-handed while I pulled up the cams. There she was, coming out of Daniel’s room, looking…
Was that really her? I’d okayed that yellow dress, but was her waist really that narrow, and her perfect breasts so close to falling out of the tiny dress?
And she’d been in Daniel’s room? It didn’t matter.
Maybe she’d known him at school. I checked the cams, her walking away, her stride all off because she was wearing men’s sandals, and then down one hall, the feed went black, and that’s it.
That’s the last I could find of her. That feed shouldn’t have been taken down.
We had a hacker on this job, which took money, a lot of money because these cams were as secure as I could get them.
My heart rate doubled as the thought of Dupre touching my wife filled my mind.
I called up Dirk. “The cams were hacked, hallway 3H, same time Sunshine disappeared. Look into it if you’d be so kind.”
“I’m on it. You should ask Jezebel if she’s behind her disappearance for a hazing or something.”
I hung up and then I called Horse. He took some time to pick up. “I’m missing my wife. I don’t suppose she’s returned to your hotel.”
“How long has she been gone?” He was already checking, because he wasn’t slow.
I went back and checked the cams for an exact time-frame. “Twenty-seven minutes.”
“I’ll check, but do you think that she’d go back to the hotel if she left after seeing you work over Bulldog like that? You were particularly ruthless tonight.”
I snarled and hung up. He’d let me know.
I went back to the cams, going over the feed, when she went into the restroom and then came out the other entrance, but she didn’t look lost, no, and the way she looked in that dress was enough to give me a heart attack.
Any man would want her, and there were so many men who came to these things who were predators.
Even if Michael Dupre hadn’t kidnapped her, something must have happened.
I watched her, tracked her until she got to Daniel’s room, and then walked in like she knew where she was going two minutes before he walked inside.
I watched that door, speeding through the feed until I saw the medic go in, come out faster than he should have, and then Kitten come out, her expression not difficult to read, even under all that makeup. Hurt. Betrayed. Lost.
I spun around and almost ran down Daniel, because he’d been watching the feed over my shoulder. He was unnaturally quiet, could kill you without you noticing. “You had a conversation,” I gritted out.
“Not exactly.” He gave me a bland smile. That smile. I was going to kill him. I had him bent over backwards before I realized I was going to do it. He didn’t look surprised.
“Then what, exactly did you have with my wife?” I growled at him like a caveman, my fingers digging into his throat.
“Maybe we talked about what her plans were after the six months were over. No, it’s only five months now. Less,” he drawled with a smile that was growing in malice, even in that position. He didn’t mind pain, probably liked it.
I was going to kill him. I was going to peel his flesh from his bones and dry them in the sun. “Did you set me up to fail? Did you hurt her?”
He finally bared his teeth at me. “I didn’t hurt her.
She came in and gave me a lecture on how wasteful it was for me to get beat up when my brain should be going towards something useful instead of something destructive.
I knew her in school. I told you not to get involved, but you couldn’t help it.
Because you can’t resist a challenge. But then your show came on the screen, and she got all hurt, said she was going home.
The question is where she thinks home is, and whether she made it there or not. ”
I released him and took two steps back, trying to breathe calmly, to think through the situation in a logical way. I called Jezebel. No, she wasn’t logical, but she was the second on the team, and I needed all her mental faculty when my thoughts were tangling in panic.
“I heard Kitten came to the fight,” she said, answering right away.
I growled. “And left. Maybe. The cam went out in the hall where she was last seen. That’s more than slightly suspicious, but it could have been a coincidence. Did you or the other girls see anything?”
“I did see her with Tom for a minute between crowds. She sure cleans up trashy.”
“Excuse me?”
She laughed, but it was hard and brittle. “Do you think it’s the stalker?”
I took a shaky breath. “I’d better call for some official eyes on the airports.” That would require me calling my mother, but if Dupre was behind this, I needed to get her back as soon as possible. The psycho taking her to a foreign country was absolutely out of the question.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
I hung up and took a steadying breath before I called my mother, the same number she’d had for as long as I’d known her, an emergency number that would always go directly to her. I’d never used it before, but this was her deal, after all, that I was trying to fulfill.
“Nix, to what do I owe the pleasure?” She sounded pleasant enough for a reptile.
“My wife. An Alabama deb according to your specs, the stalker victim of one Michael Dupre, who shot me two weeks ago. She was taken thirty one minutes ago from the MGM and I’d like you to use your resources to hunt her down.”
It was quiet for a few beats. “You married an Alabama debutante? And she was already the object of Dupre’s fascination? She sounds like everything you’ve been running away from your entire life.”
That was irrelevant. “Will you do as I wish?”
“I will do as I wish, but of course I would never allow Dupre or anyone else to interfere in our personal arrangement. I’ve already let Benton know what needs to be done. Congratulations on the marriage. I’ll have to send you a gift.”
“Please, don’t.”
She laughed. “I promise not to scare the child. Daniel sent me the files. She’ll do nicely, and although her strains aren’t as strong as one would like, she will add to the family legacy very respectably.”
The thought of my mother having anything to do with another innocent child made my stomach churn. “It’s still only six months, even if she wanted marriage because she’s religious. I don’t have time to debate. Let me know what you find.”
“I’ll let Daniel or Benton contact you. You seem to find interacting with me in a civil manner beyond your abilities.” She hung up on me, leaving me with a lot of feelings and not a lot of outlets.
“Nix, I heard that your wife’s missing,” Trixie said, coming in like it wasn’t a male changing room. I didn’t care.
I walked over to her and grabbed her arm, needing to hold onto something before I fell off the tilting world. My sweet Kitten must be so terrified right now. “Will you check the hotel, our place? I’m going to run to security, see if they can find out exactly where the feed got broken into.”
She grabbed my arm for a second then turned and stalked out, on a mission that she wouldn’t fail.
“With everyone leaving the fight now, it’s going to be a mess out there,” Tom said from the doorway sounding dour. He’d lost what he’d said he’d protect. Yes, Sunshine had clearly ditched him intentionally, but that didn’t make him feel any better about it.
I passed him. I’d walk around where she had been through the crowds, just to make sure she hadn’t found a closet to cry in or something. She’d looked like she was about to cry.
My eyes were pretty itchy come to think of it. “It’s going to be a mess until we find her. Tom, we have to find her,” I gritted out while my heart cracked at the thought of losing her forever.
“We will, boss. She’s smart. She’ll be careful until we can get to her.”
I could only hope. No, I could also do everything in my power to bring her back as soon as possible.