Kicker (DS Fight Club Book 1) (4 page)

“Man, it seems like I was just doing this,” Ryan muttered as he taped up Tig’s hands. At Tig’s unusual silence, he looked at his friend. “You okay, Tig?”

“I don’t know. This is weird. The whole feel of this night is weird.”

Ryan nodded in agreement.

“Tig . . .”

“I’m fighting, and then I’m getting my cut, and I’m getting the hell outta here. Something’s off.”

“You drive the truck?”

“Yeah, I did. I almost got hit on my bike last time—scared the shit outta me.”

“Hey, Goody, you finish taping up your girlfriend?”

Tig saw Ryan’s jaw clench.

“Ryan. Not. Worth it,” Tig murmured out of the side of his mouth.

Ryan exhaled and nodded. “Gimme five, Carter, and then I’ll service your mom.” Ryan rolled his eyes but grinned when he saw Carter scowl.

“Fuck you, Goody. I’m sending the next fighter over to you.”

“Sure.”

“That guy’s an ass,” Tig muttered.

“That guy’s always been an ass, but he’s worse since he’s taken over his old man’s construction business.”

Tig looked around the half-empty construction yard. It did not seem like anything had moved or changed in the past two years. But then, it probably hadn’t since Carter seemed to be more interested in holding illegal fights on the grounds than actually getting construction contracts.

Ryan put one last layer of tape around Tig’s wrists. “Feel good?”

Tig nodded. “Thanks, Goody. I mean it.”

Ryan patted Tig on the shoulder. “I know it.”

“Oh, hell no. He’s not wrapping me, Carter. I want another cutman.”

Tig’s head snapped up.
Holy fuck
.

Damon Pierce, heavyweight brawler and all-around jerk, stood and glared at Ryan, who met his ferocious gaze.

Carter rolled his eyes. “Goody, you gotta problem with Pierce here?”

“Yeah, I gotta huge fucking problem with Pierce, but I’ll wrap him just like I do anyone else.”

Carter held his hands up. “What do you say, Pierce? He wraps, or you don’t fight. That’s the deal.”

Pierce grudgingly agreed and took Tig’s place on a small table.

Tig watched Ryan carefully wrap Pierce’s hands, taking as much care, if not more, as he did with Tig’s wrappings.

“Nice score with Fight of the Night, Mashburn,” Pierce said.

“Thanks.”

“Tell Dig congratulations on his win, too.”

Tig barked a laugh. “Oh, hell no. You want to talk to Dig, you do it yourself. Jesus Christ.” Tig shook his head in disbelief. Barely eight months before, Pierce had broken Dig’s arm severely enough that the doctors had thought it was a career-ending injury. Matters got even worse a few months later when Pierce broke Colin’s jaw and snapped his arm during what was supposed to be an exposition fight. Thank goodness both Dig and Colin’s bodies had healed, but the rift between Pierce and the fighters of DS Fight Club had not mended

“Where you fighting out of these days?” Tig asked.

Pierce shook his head. “Nowhere. Here.” He looked like he was going to say something else, but he stopped himself in time.

“That feel okay?” Ryan asked Pierce.

“Yeah, that feels good. Thanks. Hey, man, no—”

Ryan waved Pierce off. “Ain’t no thing, man. Ain’t no thing.”

Pierce flexed his hands and cracked his neck. “Thanks again. Tig, good luck out there.”

“You, too.”

Tig and Ryan watched Pierce walk away and push through the crowd.

“You ever get the idea that that dude’s a whole lot more complicated than he seems?” Ryan mused as he traded wraps for bandages.

Tig huffed a laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, I think he just might be.”

*****

Because Tig had won Fight of the Night in a legitimate fight the night before, instead of going on near the beginning of the card, he went on next to last, which gave him plenty of time to watch the crowd and see who was actually at the fight.

Most of the usual suspects—namely thefighters and that ass Carter—were in attendance, but there were two surprising faces: Jett Raptor and Tom, a guy that Tig recognized as the matchmaker from Raptor Pryde, as well as some other men that looked more like scouts than anything.

What the hell were they doing here? Had Raptor returned to recruiting from the underground fight circuit?

He shook his head to clear it. He needed to concentrate on this fight as opposed to letting his mind run amok with increasingly implausible scenarios.

“Mashburn. You’re up next,” Carter bellowed.

Tig cracked his neck and headed down to the makeshift octagon to take care of business.

*****

Tig did not get out of the construction yard until after the last fight because, unlike the usual procedure, all the fighters had to wait until the very end to receive their winnings.

That meant that Tig was a wreck. Every single one of his senses pinged with warnings, and even more so because of the prevalence of unfamiliar faces at the fight.

Carter put a thick envelope in Tig’s hand, but he did not look happy as he glanced toward Raptor. Tig huffed a laugh and was tempted to give his former trainer the finger, but refrained, at least for the time being.

“Let’s go. Go, go, go. We gotta move, Tig.” Ryan shoved Tig in front of him, walking so quickly that he forced Tig to trot.

“What is going on, Goody?”

“Shit’s about to get real, Tig. Please tell me you didn’t park your truck in the lot. . . .”

“Nah. I parked around the corner. Didn’t want to risk getting completely blocked in. But I didn’t get my—”

“Doesn’t matter. We gotta go. I’m right here. Get in.” Ryan unlocked the door, climbed in the car, and glared at Tig.

“Damn, all right, Goody,” Tig muttered, reluctantly getting in the car. He had barely closed the door before Ryan sped away. “What the fuck is going on?”

And then they heard the sirens.

“That’s what’s going on, Tig. Place was about to raided.”

“Holy shit. How did you know?”

Ryan looked uncomfortable and just shook his head.

“How much did you bet, Tig?”

“What?”

Ryan heaved a big sigh. “How much did you bet? You bet on yourself, right? How much?” Ryan cut his eyes to the man in the passenger seat and then concentrated back on the road. “How much? Ten? Five?”

“Just a grand.”

“
Just
a grand.”

“And, of course, now that’s gone. I mean, I got my purse, but . . .”

Ryan pulled out another envelope from his jacket. “Take it. Tig,
you
were the draw tonight, not Pierce, not anyone else.
You
.
You
brought those people in the gate. That’s your portion of the gate take. And your winnings are in there, too.”

Ryan stopped at a red light and looked at Tig. “Tig, no more fighting. You’ve got way too much to lose now. Play the long game. No matter how desperate things seem right this minute, you’ve got people that have your back and will help you out—anything you need.”

“I’m gonna need a ride to pick up my truck tomorrow, provided that it doesn’t get impounded.”

“What time?”

“Oh . . . uh . . .”

“What time?”

“Eight.”

“Done.” Ryan pulled up to the Fight Club, where the parking lot was full and several of the lights in the apartment segment of the building were still on. When Tig opened the door to get out of the car, he could hear music playing.

Ryan huffed a laugh. “I guess they’re still blowing off steam.”

“Yeah.” Tig heaved another big sigh. “Thanks for looking out for me, Goody. I mean it.”

“Sure thing, Tig. Remember what I said.”

Tig nodded and managed a weak smile. He thumped the dashboard of Ryan’s truck and got out and made his way up the external staircase to his apartment.

He slipped into his studio apartment and turned on one small light, praying that no one would wander downstairs and realize he was home.

It wasn’t until he pulled off his boots and took the envelopes out of his pockets and put them on the table that he allowed himself to relax the smallest amount. He looked at the bulging envelopes.

“Ah, fuck it.” Tig sat down at the small table and separated the bills out by denomination, and then he began counting.

The next morning, Tig was feeling a lot more hopeful and might have still been on a little bit of a high after the two fights. True to his word, Ryan was waiting for Tig at eight o’clock, with the bonus of a breakfast sandwich and a huge black coffee. They did not say anything as Ryan drove them to the back to the construction site where Tig’s old truck sat a block away, untouched.

“No one wants to steal a pumpkin-colored, forty-year-old Datsun,” Tig said with a grin.

“Is that what you call that color? Good God A’mighty. I’m gonna wait and make sure that thing starts up.”

“Oh, it’ll start. Thanks for the ride.”

Ryan nodded, but indeed waited for Tig to start the truck, which he did with no issues. Ryan shook his head, waved out the window, and drove off. Tig sat in the truck for a long moment and then pulled out of the parking lot and headed down to middle Georgia to see the man at the bank.

Brad whistled long and low. “LottieLou, you have outdone yourself. You’ll have men crawling all over you tonight.”

Charlotte grunted. Brad said that every time they went out, but the swarming mass of admirers never appeared.

“Oh, you need to have a better attitude than that, my dear birthday girl. You look fabulous; I look handsome. We’re going to eat, drink, and be merry on this most joyous day.”

“God, you’re doing community theater again, aren’t you?”

“How can you tell?” Brad cackled, and Charlotte could not help but grin at her best friend in the world. She and Brad met on the first day of kindergarten and were instant friends, each sensing that the other wasn’t quite like the rest of the students in their exclusive private school.

“Okay, fess up, chicklet. What’s got you chewing your cherry-red lip? Hm?”

“You ever feel like you’ve just missed something exciting?”

“All the time, Lottie, all the freaking time . . .”

“I’m being serious, Brad.”

Brad laughed. “You’re always serious, Charlotte; you’ve always been serious.” Her friend grinned at her but then stopped his teasing when he saw the wistful look on her face. “Aw, Lottie, what’s going on?”

Charlotte gave Brad a quick overview of the night before—from the time that she got to the pub up to her inclusion in the after-party.

“You’re leaving the most important part out, Lottie.”

“What?”

“The
fighters
. You mean to tell me you were surrounded by testosterone-laden man meat, and you did not get a single picture of these guys? You’re letting your best friend down.”

Charlotte laughed.

“And besides, Daryl and I need some new role-playing material.” Brad wiggled his eyebrows.

“Oh, man, I knew I should have kept my big mouth shut,” Charlotte muttered. “They’re all
really
young, Brad. Like babies.”

“So? When’s that ever stopped you?”

“I haven’t had just a pickup in a long time, and I don’t think I ever want to go back to that, you know?”

“Yeah, sweetie, I know. But this Bailey sounds like she’s a responsible adult—what about her? You need to expand your horizons beyond the fratty douches that your daddy tries to force on you.”

“Ugh. Don’t mention David. He’s expecting me to go to a luncheon with some of his investors tomorrow. . . .”

“You have got to be kidding me. On your birthday?
Your
birthday? That’s ridiculous.”

“Yes, it is, but I don’t want to listen to him if I
don’t
go.”

“You have got to put your foot down. He doesn’t own you, and you do not owe him a thing.”

Charlotte sat in the passenger seat and looked out the window, knowing Brad was right but not wanting to think about her father and his expectations on a night when they were supposed to be having fun.

She clapped her hands together. “All right, Bradley. Moratorium on all things David Markham for the next twenty-four hours: no David, no Angelique, no nothing at all that has to do remotely with either of them. Deal?”

“That is a deal I can agree to. So, on to more important subjects: small plates or entrees? You are the birthday girl, you decide, LottieLou.”

*****

“That was so good, but I’m way too full. I think I need a nap.”

“You are not getting out of dancing. You look too good tonight. Hell, you look too good every time you step out of the house. I guess that’s one thing that Angelique was good for.”

Charlotte looked at Brad sternly and tutted him. “No Markham talk, remember.”

“Oops.” He winked at her.

Brad pulled into the steep parking lot behind the converted bank, parked, and turned to Charlotte.

“Ready, Freddy?”

Charlotte nodded, getting excited to listen to some live music and do some dancing. She squeezed Brad’s hand, and they started making their way up the hill to the bar.

“I really can’t believe you could walk up that hill in those things,” Brad said as they waited in line. “Or in that tight skirt.”

“It’s called a wiggle dress for a reason,” Charlotte said, giving a little shimmy. “It’s got a lot more give than it looks like it should.”

“Well, you look kind of like a slutty Snow White, and I approve.”

“Thanks, I think.” Charlotte sighed but then smiled when Brad bumped her with his hip.

Charlotte looked at the crowd as they waited in line, and made a mental comparison with the crowd of when she first started coming to the bar to hear live music in the late 1990s. The crowd wasn’t all that different, maybe more piercings and visible tattoos, but in general, it was the same rockabilly crowd that had been frequenting the venue for almost twenty years.

What the hell? Twenty years?

Brad burst out a laugh. “What is that look on your face? You realizing that we’re old enough to legitimately talk about Little Five Points ‘back in the day’?”

“God, yes.”

“Well, snap out of it, okay? Okay. Good, now that that’s decided, you want to pick, or will you allow me to pick?”

Charlotte groaned. They had been playing this game for years now—or, more accurately— they had been until a year and a half ago when Brad met Mister Right and settled down to a life of domestic bliss. His Mister Right was out of town on business, so Brad was her only date for the evening, and she was glad. Charlotte did not think she could stand
two
matchmakers tonight.

“Let’s play it by ear, okay?”

“Hmph. Well, I owe you, or you owe me, or something.”

“You owe me for eighteen months of nausea and jealousy from watching you two lovebirds moon over each other,” Charlotte said with a grin.

Brad paid for Charlotte’s cover (“It’s your birthday, woman. Let me buy you
something
.”), and they made their way into the small bar.

“Okay, let’s get you a rockabilly boy!” Brad shouted with obvious glee.

Charlotte huffed a sigh and smiled weakly.
Sure, let’s get me a rockabilly boy.