Crave (Fallen Angels 2)

"If I'd come to kill you," Jim murmured, "you'd be on the ground already."

Bingo.

"Okay," Isaac said. "You hold my shit while I fight. We can start there."

Well, didn't that call out the f**k-no in the guy's face. "You can't get in that ring. Between the flyer I saw and the arrest, you might as well have a GPS tracker shoved up your ass."

"I need the money."

"I have cash."

Isaac glanced over by the exit and realized that there were two big men hanging by the door. When they raised their hands in greeting, he asked, "They with you?"

Jim seemed surprised. "Ah, yeah. They are."

"You starting your own crew? Going freelance?"

"You could say that. But we were talking about you and how you're not fighting."

To piss with that. He wasn't stiffing that attorney for twenty-five grand, and the two thousand dollars he had left after that wasn't going to get him far. And although Matthias could send a guy into the ring who could kill him in front of a hundred witnesses and still make it look like an accident, what choice did he have? He was no one's charity case--he'd learned that long ago--and he wasn't about to be in debt to Jim, either, just to settle an old score.

In ten minutes, he could earn another a grand or two. And if he got shanked by Matthias's second in command, the one who'd showed up last night? It didn't really matter. He'd known the moment he bolted from the team that a funeral was waiting for him, except he was like someone with a mortal disease: The cure for going AWOL was a bitch and likely to kill him, but at least he was putting up a fight and dying on his own terms.

Staying in XOps? Shit, he was dead even though he had a heartbeat.

He was so hollow at this point he might as well be in his grave.

"I'm fighting," he said. "And I'll give you my stuff to hold while I'm in the octagon. That's as much help as I'll accept tonight."

No reason to tell the guy how much cash was in the windbreaker. And Heron already knew about the guns--but clearly wasn't of a mind to use them.

"This is a huge mistake."

Isaac frowned. "Lot of people would have told you to leave Matthias out in that desert to die, but you brought him back because you had to--and you wouldn't have let anyone talk you out of it. Same thing here. Either get on board or get out of my way."

A curse word. Then another. Finally, Jim took a last inhale on the cigarette and ground the butt out on the bottom of his combat boot. "Fine. But I will intercede--are we clear? You get in the ring with the wrong asswipe, I'm going to shut the fight down."

"Why the hell are you doing this?" Isaac said hoarsely.

"Why the hell did you go out to find me and Matthias that night?"

Memories of two years ago bubbled up and Isaac went back to the desert, back to the moment when the encrypted radio had squawked and he'd picked it up and heard Jim's thready voice.

Ten minutes was all it took to make the arrangements: medic to their tent, airlift out waiting, and a trauma team over the border, boom, boom, boom. And then he'd sat there and waited for about a minute and a half.

The Land Rover he'd found had been parked with the keys in it and Isaac had gotten behind the wheel and gone gunning. What Jim hadn't known was that when Matthias and he had left, Isaac had hung back and watched the direction they'd headed. Something just hadn't seemed right about the trip out into the dunes: Nobody went anywhere alone with Matthias. It was like asking an Ebola patient to cough on you.

Making big fat sweeps out from camp, he'd found them an hour later a good five miles away from where he'd started: In his night-vision goggles, he'd zeroed in on something moving slowly across a rise, and considering that trolls didn't really exist, he could only assume it was a man hefting another man through the sand.

As he'd driven over to them, he'd thought about how funny deserts were: Like their polar opposite, the ocean, at night they melded into the sky at the far distance, and it wasn't until you had a reference point, like a shrub or a ship--or a dumb-ass idea like Jim's savior shit--that you had visual confirmation the earth was in fact round, and not square.

And that Heaven was not where you were.

He'd been traveling without headlights and he didn't turn them on. Instead, he took a white undershirt and held the thing out of the window, knowing that Jim would see it and hopefully not think it was the enemy. Fucker had been armed like a tank battalion when he'd left camp.

As Isaac had eased to a halt, he'd gotten out with both hands fully visible and allowed Jim to approach. The guy had looked exhausted, but then he'd been carrying Matthias's deadweight across his back for God only knew how many miles through the shifting sand.

It had not been a surprise that Jim had glared at the knight-in-shining routine--in spite of their boss's condition, which was clearly critical.

Just passing through, Isaac had said. Thought I'd take you to dinner.

With a shake, he came back to this night, here in . . . Where was he? Malden?

His voice held the same exhaustion Jim's had had way back when. "Don't get yourself killed because of me, okay?"

Jim muttered something that sounded like, A little late for that . But clearly, that hadn't been the words.

Forcing his head back into the game, Isaac left the past and his emotions in the dust, his focus shifting to the present as he turned away and started walking into the entrance to the building.

As he stepped inside, Jim and the guy's two buddies were tight on him and he had to wonder why Heron wasn't wearing a hat to hide his face or anything to disguise who he was. Dumb son of a bitch. Gets free . . . only to come back in.

Crazy.

Fucking nuts.

But he had his own problems to worry about, and God knew, Jim was an adult and therefore allowed to be a moron when it came to his own life.

While Isaac went along, the rear hallway of the abandoned office building was an obstacle course, thanks to countless empty drywall buckets and a thousand half-drunk bottles of Mountain Dew and Coke. But it had been a while since anyone had lifted a finger here--there was dust all over the debris.

Clearly, the money had run out just as the screwdriver-and-monkey-wrench crowd had come in: Naked electrical wires snaked across the unhung ceiling, along with partially completed HVAC ducts and plumbing pipes. Illumination came from battery-operated lanterns placed every five feet on the floor, and the air was cool to the point of being cold. At least until they got into the huge lobby of the place. In spite of the cathedral ceiling, the fifty or so guys milling around on the raw concrete floor kicked up the temp, thanks to body heat.

It was clear why this was a perfect place to fight: The architects had planned some kind of glass extravaganza for the front entrance, but like so much else, it hadn't been completed. Instead of a whole lot of see-through panes, there were plywood sheets nailed onto the girders.

So the lighting and the crowd were hidden.

The octagon had been set up in the center of the space, and as soon as Isaac walked into the crowd, the cheering started. As strangers slapped him on the back and congratulated him for getting out of jail, cell phones flipped up to all kinds of ears, the network going to town, with news that he was good to go even after the bust.

The promoter rushed up to him. "Holy f**k, they're going wild already! This rocks . . . !"

Blah, blah, blah.

Isaac scanned the faces as he went over to the far corner and settled in to wait. As Jim eased into a lean beside him, he found himself saying, "Last night, an old friend of ours showed up."

"Who."

"And what do you know," Isaac said grimly, "he's back."

Over where the bouncers were taking the gambling money and the fighting fees, Matthias's number two was getting a wallet out of his pocket. As cash changed hands, the guy looked over and smiled like a crocodile.

Then he pointed right at Isaac's chest.

"You're not getting in that ring," Jim bit out, stepping in front and blocking the sight line.

Isaac stared over Heron's heavy shoulder, right into the face of the man who'd been sent to kill him. "Yeah. I am."

Chapter Ten

It was past ten o'clock when Grier parked her Audi out in Malden and cut the engine. She'd manuevered the sedan around on the packed dirt so that it was facing out and was away from most of the other cars--although it wasn't as if the "parking lot" had any dedicated exit or entrance or spaces.

As she'd driven by the address Louie had given her over the phone, she hadn't been sure she was in the right place. The office park had been empty as far as she could tell, the dozen or so matching five-stories spiraling off from an unlit main drive like schoolchildren lined up for a head count. Evidently, the development had been intended for high-tech companies, at least according to the sign that read, MALDEN TECHNOLOGICAL PARK. Instead, it was a ghost town.