I couldn’t see Poncho Guy’s face past the darkness of the night and the shadows of his hood. But he did the menacing bit well. His head tilted to the side. “Were you sent here by cops?”
“Not today.” I smiled, pretending rain was not pelting me in the face.
“Did you get an invitation?”
“I got an invitation to Nancy Burke’s slumber party in the sixth grade. We played spin the bottle. I had to kiss a turtle named Esther.”
“Yeah? Well, I don’t know you, and I don’t give a shit.”
“Oh!” I jutted my hand out of the window. “I’m Charley.”
He backed away and motioned for me to turn around. “No entrance. Go back the way you came in.”
Damn. I totally should have dressed sexy and called myself Bunny. “Wait!” I felt under the dash for my emergency mocha latte money. “I’m just here to talk to Reyes Farrow.”
He seemed unimpressed. “Farrow doesn’t talk. Now go or I’ll drag your ass out of your vehicle and beat the shit out of you.”
That was totally uncalled for. As if in involuntary reaction, my fingers felt blindly along the door until they found the lock. Just in case. Then I held out the fifty-dollar bill and decided to play his game. The forlorn girl so in love with the god Reyes that I’d do anything to get in. Anything to see him. “Please. I just want to see him. I just … want to watch.”
With a loud sigh, he took the fifty out of my hand. “If I catch you recording anything, I’ll drag your ass out of that building and beat the shit out of you.”
Holy cow, he liked to drag and drop. “Thank you.” I blinked a few times in concession, only partly because rain was still pelting me in the face. “Thank you so much.”
He frowned and swept the flashlight to the left, showing me where to park. I followed his directions, grabbed one of the cast-off jackets from the backseat as a makeshift umbrella, saluted a good-bye to the kid sitting there, staring off into his own little space station, then hurried to a side door, where I’d seen a couple run in earlier. Sadly, I was stopped again. By another big guy in a black plastic poncho. Who wanted money.
“Fifty bucks,” he said, his tone flat.
No way. “Fifty bucks? I just gave that guy a fifty to get in.”
I could just make out the lower half of the guy’s face. He smiled. “That was just to park. To get in, it’s another fifty.”
Well, crap. Being broke sucked ass. I pulled out my wallet while a group of men moaned behind me.
“It’s raining, lady. Hurry it up.”
“This is going to be so badass,” another said, ignoring his friend.
“No shit. I hear he’s undefeated.”
“Damn straight he’s undefeated. Have you seen that guy? He moves like a f**king panther.”
Knowing exactly who they were talking about, I tore through my wallet, looking for my other emergency mocha latte stash. This was the last of anything and everything I had, and it’d damned well better be worth it.
“I don’t know. I think I could take him,” another guy said.
I looked over my shoulder as his friends gaped at him.
The guy grinned. “If he were unarmed and I had an AK-47 in my hands.”
They laughed along with their buddy until they noticed I’d stopped looking for money. One of them shouldered me, pushing me a solid three feet forward. “C’mon, honey. We have an ass-kicking to watch.”
“Fuck, it’s already started.”
I heard a loud roar as an audience cheered beyond the door.
“Here,” one of them said, handing the guy a fifty, then sidling past me. The others followed suit, and I soon knew what it felt like to be a washing machine in spin cycle. They pushed me into Black Poncho Guy number two, and oddly enough, a fifty-dollar bill just sort of materialized in my hand. Probably because I jacked it as the last guy slid past me, in that moment where both the giver and the receiver thought the other had it.
“Here it is.” I held up the fifty with a little too much enthusiasm. The bouncer didn’t seem to notice. He snatched it out of my hand, then offered me help inside by way of a none-too-gentle shove. Geez. I stumbled forward as more people entered behind me, so I hurried toward a bright spotlight in the middle of an otherwise very dark and very empty warehouse. The smell of dirt mingled with the aromas of beer and smoke and manly cologne. I liked manly things. Especially cologne.
Still, I strode forward on high alert.
As I drew closer to the action, I realized the crowd was way bigger than I thought it would be. People, mostly men, stood cheering around a chain-link cage like the ones on TV, only rougher. The crude structure had no padding around the bars, and the gate to get in was chained and locked from the outside. That couldn’t be good.
By the sounds of the crowd’s cheers, they thirsted for blood more than the beer that flowed freely. Drinks were bought. Bets were made. Fists were thrown. I was actually rather surprised at how many women were present, then realized they weren’t cheering like the men. They were watching, all eyes focused on one thing. That’s when I saw it. Him. Reyes Alexander Farrow. Through the grid of chain link, I focused on the action, the show the crowd had come to see.
5
Hi. I’m Trouble.
I heard you were looking for me.
—T-SHIRT
Angel wasn’t kidding. Reyes had taken up cage fighting. It was such a foreign concept, I thought he’d said cat fighting at first. I pushed my astonishment aside and hurried closer for a better view, shouldering through the crowd. The fighters didn’t wear traditional boxer’s shorts. Reyes’s opponent wore sweats while he wore jeans and nothing else. His hands had been taped, and he had bandages around his torso and over one shoulder. An injured fighter would never have been allowed to compete in a sanctioned fight. This was about as legal as shoplifting.