Uncaged Love: Volume 6 (Uncaged Love #6) (8 page)

“He’s about to be my father-in-law.”

She pulls her radio from her belt. “Ahh. I don’t think he’ll have much pull in Honolulu.”

I wonder about that, but wait while she spouts a bunch of codes into the radio.

The other officer returns. “They took off.”

“One of their cars is still here,” she says. “They’ll be back.”

I look out the window. She’s right. Next to the police car is a beat-up Ford. The trainer must have left in the other one.

“I’m going to initiate the report,” the guy says.

“Thanks,” Officer Su says, and turns to me. “You really thought it was a good idea to take on a whole mess of local fighters by yourself?”

“I was only after the one,” I say.

She sighs. “We’ve been busting this place for illegal fights for years. Can’t seem to get it shut down. But this might be a start, if you want to file.”

I knew this was coming, but I still feel sucker punched. “I’m not sure.”

“You have police witnesses. They deserve it. At least one of them has priors, so he’ll probably get actual time, not probation.”

I want to ask her which one, if it’s Exterminator, but I figure she can’t tell me. Colt could find out. The Cure has ways. Or we could ask Jax, his spy friend. He knows everything. It wouldn’t surprise me if he hadn’t seen this whole thing coming.

“You all right, Jo?” the woman asks.

I realize I’ve been staring into space. “I need to think about it.”

“We have to stay here due to the damage we caused,” she says. “Probably not one of Judd’s finer decisions.” She cocks her head at the other officer. “But once we get your statement, I can call another squad car to come for you. Or would you like your family?”

“I’m not sure.” Although I sort of want my mother right now.

“Let’s sit down,” she says. We move to the back, out of range of the shattered glass.

“Why were you patrolling near me?” I ask.

“Despite the impression my fellow officers might have given this afternoon, those boys tossing pyrotechnics in your house is a pretty big deal.”

“Really? They were just Black Cats.”

“We see the pattern. They’ve escalated from broken car windows to home invasion.” She gestures to the boxing ring. “And this was pretty serious, what they were doing here.”

I know this. “Have they done…that…before?”

“I doubt it’s the first time it’s popped into their seedy little brains.”

“I get the impression they don’t appreciate female fighters.”

She frowns. “Punks are punks.”

“Is the damage going to cause you a problem?” I ask.

“This place has a record a mile long. I’m not going to lose sleep over it.” She pulls out a small tablet. “I saw most of the interaction, but I’ll still need a statement in your own words.”

I go over what happened. I regret, now that I know people were watching, the potshot at Axel. “He might need medical attention,” I say.

“I’ll put out notice at the hospital and clinics,” she says. “They’ll lie low for a bit, but it’ll be hard for them to resist the underground fights this weekend. We’ll pick them up there if we haven’t before. That is, if we have something to pick them up for.” She looks at me pointedly.

When I don’t respond, she digs around and produces a card. “Call me if you decide to press charges.” She peers out the broken window. “Looks like Big Daddy has arrived to assess the damage. This’ll be fun. We have backup now. I’ll have Officer Jones take you home.”

She walks me out to a second squad car. Three male officers are talking. The man in the gray sweats from the other night jumps out of a pickup and starts cursing as soon as he sees the window. “What the hell have you done to my gym?” he roars.

“A crime was in progress at this address,” Officer Su says evenly. “We had to take necessary actions.”

He spots me. “I remember you.” His face turns mottled with red. “You caused that big scene at my fight.”

Officer Su turns her hard stare on him. “Your fight with illegal betting,” she says. “Your gym rats have been hounding Jo and her brother ever since. Tonight, they added attempted rape to their rap sheet, right here on your property. I think a broken window is the least of your problems if you want to stay open.”

He sneers at her. “You don’t know anything about my business.” He has an overconfident air about him, as though he knows somebody bigger than Officer Su has his back.

I have no doubt he does.

But then, I have The Cure.

Chapter Twelve

The jolly veteran Officer Jones drives me back to my mom’s house after a quick stop at my own place to pick up some necessities. He thinks it best if I stay with her until Colt makes it into town.

“She’ll keep you from going after those punk boys,” he says with a laugh. “I do believe if there hadn’t been three of them, we’d be taking their statements in the hospital.” He shakes his head.

I think, if I’d had my hurricane, it wouldn’t have mattered that there were three of them. I feel like a fraud. I couldn’t protect myself. The worst almost happened. My hands shake. I can’t seem to get the images out of my mind, their hands on me.

Officer Jones works hard to keep me distracted. “Who’s the biggest punk you’ve ever taken on?” he asks.

“I jumped two former heavyweight boxers once. With my arm in a sling.”

He chortles. I realize it’s nice, making him laugh. It’s definitely a relief from the horror of this night.

“I bet you did. How many fights do you have under your belt?” he asks.

“Official ones, or back alley?” I ask.

He laughs again. “I’d say we could use someone like you on the force, but I don’t think we could contain you.”

“I might embarrass some of your hotshot cops,” I say, knowing this is what he wants to hear.

“If you went up against any one of them,” he says with a wink, “I’d put my money on you.”

We pull up in front of Mom’s house. “Thanks for the ride,” I tell him. Light spills out on the porch as Mom opens her door. I called her before we got to my place, letting her know I was coming.

“My pleasure,” he says. “You let us know if you see any sign of those guys. We’ll be patrolling this block pretty heavy.”

“Thank you,” I say, and open the door. “And tell Officer Su thank you as well. They went to some trouble for me.”

“Yeah, that window is not going to look great on their beat report,” he says. “One day they’ll give her somebody other than a rookie.”

I nod and step out onto the street. I shoulder my overnight bag and head up to Mom’s house.

“You going to tell me what happened?” she asks, holding open the door.

Hudson is sitting on the sofa below the window, leaning on his elbows. “Hey,” he says.

I sit down next to him and drop the bag on the floor. “They’re in big trouble now,” I say.

“Who?” Mom demands. “Those boys who busted up Hudson’s car?”

I decide to keep it simple. “Yeah.”

“What happened?” She drops into a rocking chair.

I glance over at Hudson. I have to figure out how to creatively edit the story. “I went to where they work out. I wanted to talk to their trainer, let him know that their criminal activity was going to jeopardize their competition.”

She nods, as if this sounds reasonable.

“But their trainer left with an unspoken approval that I was fair game.”

Mom stops rocking. “For what?”

I shrug. “We got into an altercation. The cops came.”

She grips the arms of the chair. “Are you hurt?”

I shake my head. “Nope. The police got there. The boys ran. But now they’ll face charges, if I decide to file them.”

“Of course you will!” she says. “These boys need to be held accountable for their actions.”

I wish it were that easy. “I just don’t want to hit the news right before the wedding.”

She frowns. She gets that. She stands up. “I’m going to make some tea. We could all use a little soothing.”

Hudson and I look at each other as if to say, yeah, THAT is going to help.

A strange feeling comes over me. It’s unfamiliar, a warmth creeping up despite the nightmare I’ve just escaped. These people care about me. We understand each other.

Hudson leans in. “So what really happened?”

I can’t tell him either, not about what they intended to do. I don’t know what came over them, why they thought they could get away with that. Unless they intended to kill me too. I shudder.

“I couldn’t bring them down,” I say. “I didn’t have the power.”

“Three on one,” Hudson says. “Nobody could do that.”

“Colt could,” I say grimly. And if he finds out about it, he will. “We’ll have to keep this quiet or the wedding will never happen without a disaster.”

Hudson leans his head back on the sofa. “I feel like this is all my fault. I did that stupid fight.”

I elbow him. “It’s not your fault they are punks. I’ve encountered plenty of them in fighting circles. And out of them.” I remember the boys on the street the day I met Colt. And the ones I worked with. And my stepbrother. So many rotten people in the world. It can make you lose faith in humanity. I felt that way for a while. Only Colt brought it back.

Mom sticks her head through the door to the living room. “Hudson, are you working tomorrow on top of training?”

He sits up. “Unfortunately, I am.”

“No tea for you. Off to bed.”

“I gotta move out and find my own place,” he says.

Mom snaps her dish towel. “No way. I need a baby at home.” Then she brightens. “Or a grandbaby!”

Hudson laughs. “Now who’s getting ideas? I wanna see Jo work that into her sparring schedule.”

I toss a sofa pillow at him as he ducks down the hall to his room.

“Come on,” Mom says. “The kettle is about to whistle.”

I head into the kitchen and sit at her table. This room is becoming familiar to me. Like home.

She shuts off the burner right as the kettle starts to steam. I watch her as she pours water into two mugs already prepped with tea bags.

Mom takes her time returning the kettle to the stove and settling on a chair. I still don’t know her very well, so I wonder if this is the way she acts before saying something difficult or asking hard questions.

I grip the mug. “I’ll be fine on the sofa,” I say.

She purses her lips. Her hair is up in its usual messy twist, but at the end of the long day, tendrils have escaped all around her face. She looks young and pretty, and I wonder why having a man in her life is so bad. But I don’t ask.

“So I get the feeling you’re not going to tell me the whole story,” she says.

My hesitation is enough to make her tap her fingers on the table. “All right,” she says. “Do you have a girlfriend? Somebody close? You can’t bottle all this up. It will find its way out.” She arches an eyebrow at me pointedly. I know she’s talking about the hurricane. I can’t tell her that it let me down when I needed it the most.

“There’s Zero. He’ll be up for the wedding,” I say.

“I recall you mentioning him. Is that his real name?”

“It’s actually short for Zerobia.” I wonder how much I should tell her about Zero in advance. He’s sort of a force to be reckoned with now that he’s gone full-time drag. He likes living as a man dressing as a woman and has no intention of changing his gender assignment.

Mom sips her tea, watching me.

“He is a stage actor, in drag. Zerobia is his stage name. He goes by Zero, though.”

She sets down her cup. “Will he be dressed as a woman in the bridal party?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

She stands up, then sits down again. “I’ll have to remember to tell Zandalee to switch one of the boutonnieres to a bouquet.”

I let out my breath slowly. I’m relieved that she will take him as he comes. Zero and I are a package deal.

“You going to call him and talk out what happened tonight?” she asks.

It’s a good idea. “Maybe. It’s late in Vegas.”

“Tomorrow, then.” She stares out the back window. There isn’t anything to see, just the darkness of night.

I decide to bring up the hurricane again. She’s the only one who understands that.

“Mom,” I say. “The other night, at the match, I had another hurricane. It’s what started all this mess with these punks.”

She turns back to me, concern all over her expression. “What did you do?”

“The boxer kept hitting Hudson when he was down. I blew my stack. I jumped him.”

Mom presses her hand to her throat. “Did you hurt him?”

“No, but a crowd came in to stop me, and I just laid into them all. There were quite a few injuries. I don’t think anything serious.”

She reaches across the table for my arm. “Jo, you have to be in control.”

I stand up abruptly, and the chair pushes back with a squeal. “I thought I was! I thought I gave up that powerful strength for Colt.” I turn around. “I made a bargain with the universe, that I would never use the hurricane again if Colt would be all right.”

Mom stands up to face me. “It doesn’t work like that. It has a life of its own. It can’t be bartered with. Either you control it, or it has control of you.”

My throat tightens and I have to fight to swallow. “It let me down tonight. I needed it back, and it didn’t come.”

She sinks back into her chair. “You have to tell it what you need.” Her expression falls, full of despair. “You can’t be afraid.”

I sit next to her again. “What do I do? Use it or send it away? I obviously can’t rely on it.”

She stares at her hands. “Let me tell you what happened to me, and maybe this will help you in some way.”

I hold my breath. I knew there was more to her story.

“After I left your father, I went north and wandered the streets of Chicago. I worked a little, as a waitress for a while. Sometimes I sold flowers in bars.”

She touches the rim of her mug. “After a year, I met Hudson’s father. He was very charismatic. I knew he was bad news. I did. I could sense it. But he had a magical way of making you feel special and loved. I moved in with him after only a week.”

She shakes her head. “Foolish, foolish thing to do. As soon as he had me, he showed me his true nature. Hard, dangerous, abusive. I was literally locked in. With no close friends, no real job, I had no one to notice when I disappeared from the world.”