After a few rounds, though, he forgot to hold back, allowing his instincts to kick in and letting them lead, twisting into the counters rather than fighting against them. He had too much on his mind. That woman who’d torn him up and turned him inside out. The shit back in Baltimore, the goddamned bikes he heard revving outside every single night. The bikes weren’t real. They were in his head. When he lived in his body like this, just moved and let go and went with the flow, he could pretend none of it was real.
At one point, Steve came at him with an uncharacteristically blunt attack, open-handed, almost too obvious, and Clay went for it. Quick slide to the side, hand over his opponent’s wrist, into his body, forward propulsion, roll, then Steve’s head between his thighs. All fast, lightning fast, and oh shit… Steve slapped out.
“No, sir. No way,” the man said between tight lips before stepping out of the ring. “In the back, Blane, now.”
Clay hesitated. What the hell?
“In my office,” Steve ordered. He might be little, but he was bossy as shit, and Clay followed wordlessly.
By the time the door closed behind him, he knew he’d been wrong to follow the sheriff back here.
“Who the hell are you?” Steve asked, voice quiet and hard, eyes slitted on Clay’s face.
“Andrew Blane.”
“The hell you are, son. Ain’t no goddamned bricklayer or whatever the hell Andrew Blane does for a livin’.” Steve was breathing hard now, his nostrils wide. “I’m asking one more time. Where the hell’d you learn to fight like that?”
“Here and there,” Clay said, forcing nonchalance as the noose tightened around his neck.
“Yeah? You show up in my peaceful town, claim you ain’t never done a real fight, and then pull out that Krav fuckin’ Maga shit?” All five foot ten of the guy stood up to Clay, in his face, finger poking his chest, and ire focused fully at him. “Who. The fuck. Are you?”
Was it so wrong, in that moment, that Clay wanted to tell him everything? Wrong, maybe, but definitely not surprising.
“I can’t say. Sir.”
“Why Blackwood? There somethin’ goin’ down here that I should know about?”
Clay shook his head, swiped a hand across his face, sighed. “Got nothing to do with Blackwood.”
“Anybody here I need to take a look at?”
“Me?” Clay said with a halfhearted chuckle.
“Right you are, son. If you aren’t military, then you’re a cop, and I want to know what you’re doing in my town.” The air whooshed out of Clay, leaving him stretched out and empty. “Try to fool me? I know law enforcement when I see it, even with that crap tattooed on your skin. You are no civilian, innocent or otherwise. Spotted you a goddamned mile and a half away.”
“Yeah?” Clay asked with a tight smirk. “Never happened to me before.”
“What, that you got made?”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Look. I’m just here to hole up till trial. I don’t want any trouble.”
“That makes two of us.”
“You want me to leave?”
“What, Blackwood or the gym?”
“Either. Both?”
Steve stepped away from Clay, shook himself like a dog, and looked him hard in the eye.
“You swear you’re on the right side of whatever it is you’re running from?”
Clay stiffened and nodded, hard. “Yes, sir. I swear.”
Finally, the older man sighed, running one knobby hand over his cropped, salt-and-pepper hair.
“You… This town… It’s real quiet, you understand? We do accidents on the highway, break up some tussles. Nothing big if we can help it. I’m short a couple of deputies right now. I don’t have the manpower to handle whatever trouble you’re dragging behind you. Please tell me I’m not about to face Armageddon in my backyard. Because it’s too close to my goddamned retirement to have you mess this up now, you got it?”
