“I’m saying I train while I talk.” Vic shrugged, all innocence, but the grin didn’t waver. “I’m a busy man. You want my time, you work for it. Besides—” He looked Jack up and down with the appraising eye of a man who’d spent his whole life sizing up fighters. “Big guy like you, I bet you’ve thrown a punch or two. Show me what you’ve got.”
Jack studied him for three heartbeats. I could practically hear the gears turning—the lawman weighing the options against the man who’d just been told to prove himself.
He unclipped his duty belt—the heavy nylon rig that held his service weapon, cuffs, radio, and a dozen other tools of the trade—and handed it to me. The badge came next, and he placed it carefully in the palm of my hand. I closed my fingers around the cool metal, feeling the weight of it.
“Hold those for me,” he said quietly.
Then he grabbed the back collar of his polo and pulled it over his head in one smooth motion.
I’d seen Jack shirtless roughly ten thousand times. It never got old. A wall of solid muscle that had been built over a lifetime of serious physical training—broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist, arms roped with the kind of definition that came from functional strength, not vanity reps. The three bullet scars on his right side caught the fluorescent light—puckered and pale against his tanned skin, souvenirs from the SWAT raid that had nearly killed him a decade ago.
Every man in the gym was watching now. A few of them had gone very still, their eyes moving from Jack’s frame to Vic and back again, doing their own calculations.
Jack toed off his boots, then peeled off his socks and tucked them inside. He stood on the concrete floor barefoot, rolling his shoulders once—loose and easy, like a man did when his body remembered something his mind hadn’t done in a while.
“Somebody want to lend me some gloves?” he asked.
Vic’s grin faltered. Just a fraction, just for a second—but I caught it. He’d expected Jack to back down. He hadn’t expected Jack to take off his shirt.
“T-Bone.” Vic pointed. “Get the man some gloves.”
T-Bone hesitated, looking at Jack with an expression that mixed concern with something that might have been admiration. Then he moved to the rack along the wall and came back with a pair of sixteen-ounce training gloves—red, well worn, the leather supple from years of use.
“Come here,” T-Bone said to Jack, keeping his voice low as he held up the first glove. “I’ll lace you up.”
Jack extended his right hand, and T-Bone slid the glove on, working the laces with practiced fingers. While he worked, he talked—quiet enough that only Jack and I could hear, his lips barely moving.
“Vic’s a southpaw,” he murmured, pulling the lace tight. “Leads with his right, throws the cross with his left. That left hand is where his power is—don’t let it get clean to your jaw.” He moved to the second glove. “He drops his right when he loads up the left. You can slip it and come over the top, but he recovers fast for an old man, so don’t get lazy about it.”
“What about body work?” Jack asked.
T-Bone’s eyebrows rose a fraction—the subtle recognition of someone who spoke the language. “He’ll go to the body if you let him get inside. Likes the liver shot. Keep your elbows tight and make him work at distance. Your reach is longer—use it.”
“His cardio?”
“Not what it used to be. He’s been smoking for forty years and pretending it doesn’t affect him. Third round, he starts breathing heavy. If you can keep the pace up, he’ll fade.”
T-Bone finished with the laces and stepped back. “Don’t let him bait you into a brawl. He wants to make it dirty, drag you into his game. Box him. Use your jab.”
“Noted,” Jack said.
I grabbed his arm before he moved toward the ring. “Jack.”
He looked down at me. Those dark eyes—the ones that went nearly black when he was angry or aroused—were calm. Steady. Focused in a way I recognized from every dangerous situation we’d ever walked into together.
“Don’t you dare let that man rearrange your face,” I said. “I really like it.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “I’ll do my best.”
He turned and climbed through the ropes. The canvas gave slightly under his bare feet as he moved to his side of the ring—no corners, no bell, just two men and the space between them and whatever truth was hiding there.
Vic was already in the center, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. For a man in his sixties with bad knees and decades of damage on his body, he moved with surprising fluidity. The muscle memory of a lifetime spent in rings exactly like this one. He’d pulled on his own gloves—black, beat up, the leather cracked along the seams—and he held them up in a classic guard, his left tucked tight against his chin, his right extended.
Southpaw. Just like T-Bone said.
The gym had rearranged itself around the ring. Fighters drifted closer, leaning against the ropes of the second ring, sitting on benches pulled near, standing in clusters with their arms crossed. The atmosphere was charged—that energy that built when men gathered to watch other men fight. Primal. Electric. As old as humanity itself.
I found a spot at ringside, Jack’s duty belt slung over my shoulder, his badge still warm in my hand. I probably looked ridiculous. But I’d looked ridiculous before and survived.
