That was the thing about this fucked up moveable fighting ring. It made men think they were gods, and I took satisfaction in watching them fall—I hungered for it, wished it happened more often, because nothing tasted colder or cleaner than when bones cracked and power drained out of a man who thought he was untouchable.
I know I’m fucked.
When the bell rang, they circled—testing, striking. Red got in some blows, and he was fast. I’d give him that—quick reactions, decent footwork. A few more years and he might’ve had a chance at standing toe-to-toe with someone like Mikhail, but right now he was still only a promise without discipline, fire without control, and Mikhail broke him down in increments. I didn’t flinch. Blood spilled, the crowd roared, and I sat still, a shadow among the baying pack. My job wasn’t to care. My job was to be ready when someone fell and didn’t get up.
And then Mikhail landed a blow so hard I felt it. Red dropped. Twitched. Didn’t move.
I watched Mikhail, hands aloft in success, basking in the win, before he was hurried out of the ring with his posse of Russians. Red wasn’t moving, and no one wanted to stay for the dying part.
“Doc!” Viktor ordered, but I was already moving through the stink and noise, down to the cage floor where Red lay quiet. Assess, stabilize. It was ugly medicine, but it worked.
A huge scuffle erupted—two rival groups tearing into each other, the MC assholes on one side and fuck knows who on the other, all of them baying and screaming about bets while Red lay silent on the floor. I dropped to my knees, fingers already probing, and Red groaned as he blinked awake, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. He was half-conscious, his chest rattling in shallow, uneven gasps. I clamped a hand on his chest to keep him still. The chaos around us was spilling toward the exits, the roar fading to a low echo. I grabbed my phone and triggered my cleanup crew.
“One for pickup and deposit. Now,” I said, eyes on the cage as the cavernous warehouse emptied of spectators, leaving only the stink of sweat and iron. My team would arrive quickly, discreetly, and be paid enough to keep quiet.
I checked his pupils, pulse, ribs—one cracked, maybe two. “Stay down,” I muttered, not that he could move far. Blood smeared across my glove as I pressed another pad to a split near his hairline.
By the time the team of two arrived, the place looked empty except for Red and me at first. But in the far shadows, I caught a familiar shape—Rio Villareal, a former Pit fighter who’d walked away for love or some shit. Hell, I’d even met the guy he’d fallen for—Lyric, that hacker kid who was lucky to be breathing after getting shot. Rio lingered long enough to meet my eyes, nod once from the dark, then disappeared again. I don’t know what the fuck he was doing back here, staring, but he was a bleedingheart and most likely worried or something about the man on the mat.
“Where to, Doc?” I glanced up at the two men who’d arrived to stand next to me, Novak and, past him, the newer guy on Novak’s team, Rufus.
“Alive,” I said. No need for a complete cleanup tonight. No body to disappear. Red was hanging on by enough threads that a hospital might pull him back—if luck didn’t run out the way it sometimes did in the Pit.
“Hospital,” Novak acknowledged.
Rufus grinned like the weird asshole he was, his fists opening and closing as if he were sizing up the best way to manhandle the patient, but it was Novak, all focus and muscle, who shoved him aside and crouched beside Red. Without hesitation, he hauled Red up in a fireman’s lift, the motion rough and practiced. Red’s scream was a raw, animal sound that ripped through the warehouse. His body convulsed once, then sagged, head lolling, blood trailing down Novak’s back. Rufus muttered a curse, and Novak barked for him to move. I nodded once. My work was done.
They carried Red out into the cold night, his blood leaving a dark trail on the concrete. The echo of their boots faded, swallowed by the warehouse’s empty vastness. I followed a beat later, the cold air hitting like a slap, with the satisfying weight of twenty grand in my pocket. The remaining members of the cleaning team slipped past me, efficient and silent, erasing evidence, checking cameras, and ensuring nothing could lead back to me. It was a shame I had to use them tonight because standby payments were one thing, but using them cost me. Still, I didn’t do grunt work.
Not anymore.
I’d paid too much in blood and time ever to go back.
Gael had been the one who’d broken his back for scraps, taken orders, and bled on command. But that kid was gone, stripped out of me the same way flesh gets carved from bone. All that was left was Alejandro… or, as everyone knew me, Doc.
And Doc didn’t bend for anyone.
I headed for my car, a prickle at the base of my skull. Was Rio still out here? Why? I slowed, pulse tightening, and stopped dead. Pretended to check something on my phone, though my screen was black. Ears straining for movement. Maybe it was someone leaving the fight late, hoping to catch a glimpse of the bloody aftermath. I searched for Rio—damned Redcars assholes were getting way too used to me being in their lives. Not sure I’d answer any call they made to me again—unless the money was good. I couldn’t see the big man, but there were eyes on me, somewhere in the dark. I turned a slow circle, scanning shadows, jaw tight. Something was off. That feeling never lied, and it had only ever shown up right before things went bad.
I moved toward the exit, every sense stretched. The hum of the generators echoed down the concrete alley, but underneath it—something else. A faint scrape, boots dragging. I turned sharply, nothing there, just the spill of dim light over concrete. My pulse climbed anyway.
I didn’t like it—but I didn’t run either. Not my style. Whoever was there, they’d show themselves eventually. They always did.
And then I’d kill them.
THREE
Levi
Frank was drivingwhile I pretended I wasn’t praying for my life every time he took a corner as fast as if he were in pursuit of a fleeing suspect. At speed, we wound our way up into the hills, and the switchbacks here were narrow, with no guardrails in places; the drop was sheer and black beyond the headlights. Gravel scattered off the edge, pinging into nothing. The charred skeletons of last year’s wildfires were still etched into the landscape up here, and it was eerie, with blackened trees silhouetted against the sky, a reminder of how quickly the Ridgecrest Fire had burned through just two months ago.
My idiot partner had one hand on the wheel, the other clutching his coffee as if it were an airbag, and I decided if we made it to the top alive, I’d kill him.
“This is fucked up,” he said for what seemed like the tenth time.
“Yeah,” was all I gave him, because what we’d been called out to was way past fucked up.
December rains had caused a cave-in on a compromised oil pipeline, tearing open the hillside to reveal a dumping ground no one wanted to believe existed. The call had been grim: multiplebodies unearthed when the soil and rocks collapsed. The site was too big for just one pair of detectives, or even two, which was why they’d yanked Frank and me from our mandatory days off in the middle of the night and told us to help the leads make sense of it before sunrise.
