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I flipped my leg over it, started it up, and threw it into gear. A few moments later, I was doing ninety on the MacArthur Causeway, heading to I-95. I didn’t know where I was going, just that I wanted to get as far away from that condo as quickly as I could. Driving as if there were a bunch of fast-moving zombies from World War Z on my tail, I slipped between cars and trucks as I headed west, reached the interstate, and sped northward.
The wind on my face drew water from my eyes, but I reveled in the feeling, the unhindered freedom the bike gave me. It wasn’t as good as the schooner on the sea because of the traffic I had to buzz around, but it was a decent substitute. The air still smelled like salt this close to the ocean, and I could nearly taste the sea on my tongue.
I didn’t keep track of the time I spent just speeding up the highway. At some point I took an exit, turned around, and headed back toward Miami Beach. I didn’t get that far though, choosing instead to get off the interstate and head through some back streets. I zipped through some neighborhoods with unkempt lawns and boarded-up windows then past some strip malls with half the stores closed up. There weren’t a lot of people around, and those that were looked like they’d rather be somewhere else.
I finally pulled the bike over, dropped the kickstand, and put my head in my hands. I leaned over the handlebars and took several deep breaths before I sat back and looked around.
I hadn’t been to this area of town before, and it looked shady, to say the least. It definitely looked like the kind of area tourists avoided because they were more likely to get mugged than offered a drink with an umbrella in it. It immediately reminded me of living on the streets of Chicago before Landon found me and hauled me out to Seattle to start training.
Training.
I snorted to myself.
I’d learned how to kill and how to avoid being killed so I could fight and win in death-match battles to amuse the stupidly rich and powerful people of organized crime all over the world. I’d earned an insane amount of money for taking the lives of others in the most brutal ways possible. It had never bothered me in the slightest.
Why should it have? It wasn’t like those who came up against me didn’t know what they were getting into. At the level I played, all of them had been in tournaments, and none of them came out with clean fingernails. There was blood on the hands of everyone I killed.
If I hadn’t done it, one of the other fighters would have. It was only a matter of time. Very few tournament players ever actually retired—most of them just got beat. John Paul and I were two of the very few who actually gave it up and went on to something else, though the circumstances made it more of a necessity than a choice.
You didn’t testify against the mega-super crime boss for torture and murder without having to go into hiding. It wasn’t like Franks was going to offer me my job back after that. Landon had to cut his losses, give me a new identity, and send me on my way with John Paul looking out for me as I dived further and further into a perpetual bottle of vodka.
Thinking about training with Landon made me realize I wasn’t exactly following what I had been told to do—watch my surroundings and always know what dangers might be lurking. In a neighborhood like this one, I needed to pay attention. I straightened up and took a good look around me, wondering which of the idiots around here might have thought I was a good target for pickpocketing.
The idea of someone coming after me and stealing my wallet was kind of intriguing. Maybe that was exactly what I needed—a good fight in a shitty neighborhood where the police wouldn’t show up until I was long, long gone.
I tossed my leg over the bike and started mea
ndering down the street. A few dodgy people walked by, but I must not have looked like a viable target to them. After walking up and down a few alleys, I came across a hole-in-the-wall bar with a decent amount of noise coming from it.
There was a guy standing by the door, giving everyone who approached the bouncer-vibe. He checked IDs, turned a few people away, and then leaned back against the frame of the entrance to smoke. When I approached, his eyes lit up.
“Hey, are you the dude they’re waiting for?”
Slightly startled, I debated lying to him and saying yes, but lying in this kind of circumstance was a little too risky. For all I knew, he was waiting for the boss-man’s boyfriend.
“Don’t think so,” I replied. “Why?”
“Oh,” he said as his forehead crinkled a bit, “that’s a shame. You look like a good match.”
“Match for what?” I asked.
He crooked his thumb and motioned inside.
“Just a little friendly competition,” he said with a sly smile. “You wanna watch? They’ve been letting anyone stupid enough to give it a try into the cage tonight since the other dude hasn’t shown up.”
I shrugged but couldn’t help feeling a little excited. I brushed passed the dude to get a look inside and found myself in a warehouse with a makeshift bar off to one side, a bunch of tall tables and chairs around, and hundreds of people yelping and hollering at the center of the place. Surrounded by a ring of chain link, a large platform housed two guys in shorts who danced around each other, punching and kicking as everyone cheered and handed wads of cash back and forth.
Cage fighting.
This place obviously wasn’t UFC regulated or anything. The referee was a chick in a black-and-white striped bikini, for Christ’s sake. There was one dude in orange trunks who obviously had some MMA experience and was decently big and another one who was obviously a drunken college idiot who knew what the inside of a gym smelled like, but that was about it. The green trunks he was wearing didn’t even fit him right and were probably borrowed from the bar.
College-boy was getting hammered.
I handed the cover charge over to the bouncer and made my way to the side of the cage to watch the beating. My fingers twitched as I ran them over the edge of the chain-link fencing, and I felt my heart rate increase. I’d never been in a cage fight, but this was similar enough to the street fighting I did as a kid. Everything around me felt familiar.
A couple of hard lefts to the face and a quick kick to the side made college-boy drop to his knees. Orange-trunks jumped on his back and immediately began slamming the kid’s head against the mat. Stunned, the poor guy could barely smack his hand against the other dude’s shoulder to tap out.
The winner began to jump around the cage, smacking his hands on the chain-link and yelling at the audience. I watched him closely—the way he moved, where his eyes went, and how his feet touched the floor—while college-boy was handed over to his buddies and another dude walked into the cage and looked out at the patrons.
