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"Five sisters. All younger. Single mom." He took a towel off the stack on the corner of Kelvin's desk in easy grab-and-go reach for the occasional blood-spurting nose after a hard hit and wiped the coffee off his hand. "There was no such thing as 'not my problem' in our house."
A quick flick of his wrist and the towel landed in the canvas laundry bag on the floor. Oh yes, he'd been house trained and then some. He knew when to come armed with chocolate and when retreat was the only option—something that had saved him more than once when it came to the women he loved and the ones he only loved for a night.
In the ring, two fighters switched from silent sparring to shoving and hurling curses at each other. The light heavyweight in green shorts got out something about the other fighter's mom and donkey dick when a trainer stepped between them. Neither fighter looked ready to let go, though. Park barked out an order for the two smack-talking idiots to cut the shit and they backed off. Proof that when it came to brawling, testosterone had nothing on estrogen—even the pip-squeak variety.
After a shouted snarl that heads mattered more in a match than fists, Kelvin turned back to Isaac. "It really works?"
He nodded as he scanned the gym for unfamiliar faces. "Anyone new hanging out here lately?"
"I'll give you the same answer as I gave you yesterday and the day before and the day before that. No."
Not that he'd been expecting anything different, but a break would be nice. Until he could nail down who had tipped off Wolczyk about the party, he wouldn't be able to determine if she was still in danger from Fane and his shitballs-crazy cult members. "No one asking about Tamara?"
"People mostly keep to themselves. They don't chat. It's a gym, not a women's bathroom."
He cut a glance at the other man. They both knew that was some high-frequency bullshit. A gym was guaranteed to be filled with the stink of sweat and gossip about who was doing what, who, and when.
"Anyone acting weird?" he asked.
"Besides you and that one there—who has every fucking reason in the world to spend hours every day pounding the shit out of that heavy bag?" Kelvin nodded toward Gidget Harms, grim-faced and dead-eyed, pummeling th
e black and red bag chained to a support beam. "Not any more than normal. You gotta be at least a little crazy to want to step into the ring and face off against someone who wants to beat your head in. It's almost as bad as those poor idiots who keep circling around the same woman who doesn't have one little bit of interest in him." He didn't bother to smother his smirk. "Not that you know what that's like."
The man had the subtlety of a two-by-four studded with nails. "You're a fucking riot, Kelvin."
He just grinned. "That's what they say."
Refusing to cop to the inner voice echoing everything Kelvin was goading him about, the guy code mandated that he couldn't leave without delivering one last little verbal love tap. "Good luck with the lice. If your head starts itching, don't wait to check it out. Those suckers love to jump from one head to the other. Makes me itchy just thinking about it."
"You're a real dick, Camacho." Kelvin flipped him off.
He returned the non-verbal endearment. "That's what they say."
As he made his way past the main sparring ring, the speed bags, and the fighters practicing footwork in front of the mirrors, he took narrowed down approaches to get the most information possible out of Gidget. The woman was on the thin edge and was just as likely to jump the line as she was to stay sane. Not that anyone could expect her to be any different. It had only been a few months since the B-Squad had rescued her from a whack job on the DEA's Top Ten. Yasmin Romanow had a personal grudge against the women of the B-Squad and had kidnapped Gidget and then used her as a human guinea pig for six months, testing out the mind-control drug Genie's Wish. During the rescue op, Bianca had gotten drugged and nearly killed Taz on Romanow's orders. The whole thing had nearly gone down in a ball of flames, but the team had managed to make it out and saved Gidget. She'd come home physically unharmed, but hurt in a whole other way.
He hadn't known her before she'd been kidnapped. From what he could gather, she'd been just another carefree, rich party girl without a single person in the world who cared for her besides Bianca, Vivi, Lexi and Elisa—her girls from St. Bernadette's Academy for Young Ladies, a sort of reform school for rich girls gone bad. They'd been the ones determined to find her, but the woman they'd brought back wasn't the one they'd known from before. An air of angry fragility hung over her, but he couldn't help but think there was more strength inside her than she let show. No one could have survived what she had without it.
Giving the heavy bag one last punch, she turned as he approached and sat down on the wooden bench in front of the lockers. Bright red hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, pale skin pink with exertion, and sweat turning her oversized gray T-shirt black in spots, she kept her gaze on the men sparring in the ring instead of Isaac who stood in front of her.
Okay. This was going to go well, he could just tell. "Hi Gidget."
Her gaze flickered over to him for half a second before snapping back to the fighters.
Strike one. Good thing he didn't give up easy.
"You down here every day?"
Acting like he wasn't even there talking to her, Gidget lifted her right wrist to her mouth, took the Velcro flap of her training glove between her teeth and yanked it open.
Strike two. Way to suck wind, Camacho.
"Have you noticed anyone out of place? Heard of anyone asking about Tamara? Know of anybody who knew the B-Squad would be gathered at the engagement party?"
Gidget trained her focus on him, but didn't say a word. She just went to work on her other glove.
Okay, she was looking at him. Glaring. Snarling a little. But there was eye contact. That was progress, right? Shoving back the annoyance at the lack of answers from anyone about how Wolczyk knew to show up at Taz's and Bianca's engagement party, he pushed forward. Interrogation wasn't his thing—his patience was for shit—but he refused to give up.
"Look, Tamara's hiding for a damn good reason, but the asshole found her anyway. I've got to figure out how before he realizes he hit the jackpot and comes after her."
