by Rome, Ada
A fog horn hooted in the distance. The ghostly sound carried through the thick night air like a shout muffled in cotton. The water slapped in a steady rhythm against the wooden legs of the pier and the hillocks of banked earth. A seagull honked from his perch atop a nearby lamppost, oblivious to the distresses of the human world. I was utterly alone, but I felt a safety in the soothing lap of the waves and the watchfulness of a gauzy, cloud-wrapped moon.
Maybe Trent was ready to give up, but I most certainly wasn’t. We had been through so much in our short time together. I was sure that we had entered each other’s lives for a reason. I also wasn’t ready to sit back and let him ruin his life with this fight against Peter. As long as Kill hovered in the wings, it would not be a fair fight. Kill would not rest until he had destroyed Trent, body and soul. Peter was his weapon to do so.
The breeze kicked up and swirled around my head, whipping tendrils of hair across my eyes. I plucked them aside, tucked them behind my ears, and stared out into the smooth abyss of the dark water. I inhaled deeply, a set of firm resolutions crystallizing as the bracing air entered my lungs. The water tumbled and spread below. The seagull honked once more, as if in confirmation of my decisions.
I would defeat Kill. I would stop this fight on Friday. And I would make Trent realize that our love was stronger than anyone who tried to tear us apart.
Chapter 21
The open garage doors of the warehouse admitted a steady stream of vehicles into its blazing interior. This fight was no secret. The entire world of underground MMA combat was on hand to witness the battle of the year.
I waited on the dirty gravel edge of the parking lot, my fingers wrapped around a section of chain link fence. I checked the time on my phone. 9:37. The fight was scheduled to begin at 10:00. I stuffed the phone back into the front pocket of my denim shorts.
My stomach churned with nerves as I thought of Trent inside that warehouse, pacing the edges of the ring and preparing to take on that beast of a fighter. I had come here with no definite plan of action, but merely a vague sense that I needed to reach Trent and talk some sense into him before he made a terrible mistake that could not be fixed. I unwound my fingers from the fence, squared my shoulders, and marched toward the beckoning portal of lights and noise.
“Well, look who it is,” said a familiar voice. I jumped with surprise and felt an approaching presence to my rear, the measured steps of shoes on gravel and a coarse nasal breathing. When I turned, Kill stood several feet away. He took one more step and stopped, his head cocked to the side and a sarcastic smirk twisting his thin lips. “Have you come here to save your lover boy? I think you’re a little too late, my dear.”
“Stay away from me, Kill. I’m warning you.” Despite the aggressiveness of my words, my heart flipped with fear. My voice betrayed a thin tremble.
He tilted his head backwards and laughed with a raucous shout. “You’re warning me? Come on, Kat, we both know you can’t do shit. You’re just a useless…little…girl.”
With each word, he took one step closer. I tried to back away in the direction of the warehouse, but the heel of my canvas sneaker caught on a large rock. I stumbled and fell into the dirt. My thighs scraped against sharp tones. My palms burned with fresh scratches as I landed with a skittering slide. Kill was upon me in one long stride. His cold and bony fingers wrapped around my arm like a steel vise, crushing my flesh until I gasped in pain.
“Let me go.” I struggled to free myself, my shoes kicking up bits of gravel and dust at his pant legs. He held firm, leaning over me until our faces were only inches apart. With his other hand, he reached into the waistband of his pants and pulled out a dark object. A brief flash from the headlights of a turning car revealed a glint of metal on the end of black barrel. Kill held a gun pointed straight into my chest.
“No, my dear. You’re coming with me.” His breath carried the sharp medicinal tang of hard liquor. “You will not get in the way. You will not ruin my plans.”
He hauled me roughly to my feet and dragged me farther into the shadows along the fence. The gun remained lodge between my ribs. I wanted desperately to break away. I was terrified that he would shoot if I raised a struggle. I stumbled again on the gravel. He hoisted me upright with a vicious tug. His nails cut into the skin of my arm. We crossed a dirt pathway snaking around the warehouse and waded through an overgrown field of spiny weeds that smacked at my bare legs like knife blades.
As we moved forward, another structure took shape in the darkness ahead. It was a brick building with the appearance of having been long abandoned. Grass grew level with the narrow boarded windows. The metal door was pocked with a layer of ancient rust. Every fiber of my being told me not to go into that building, to kick and scream and fight and do anything that I could to prevent Kill from dragging me inside. But before I had a chance to react, he wrenched open the door with a grinding creak of long-dormant hinges and tossed me onto a tile floor that was gritty with decades of accumulated filth. The interior was pitch-black but for a weak shaft of moonlight that peeked through a broken windowpane. In the pale light, I spied an opening to my left, a corridor of some kind, and crawled toward it, pressing my back against a greasy wall.
“Where are you, little birdie?” Kill whistled a few cheerful notes. The outer door crashed shut with a bone-shaking thud and a whoosh of stale air.
I knew that I had only seconds before he found me. I fumbled for the phone in my pocket. Kill’s footsteps approached. With each step, he tapped a heavy object – the gun, mostly likely – onto the wall behind me. I opened the voice recorder on my phone, hit the red button, and stuffed it back into my pocket just as a flashlight beam swung in an arc along the opposite wall and landed on my exposed shin.
“Gotcha,” he said in the playful tone one might use while playing hide and seek with a toddler. He pulled me to my feet and thrust the gun into my side. “Join me for a date, Kat. I have a lovely evening prepared for us. Everything that once belonged to Trent will now belong to me.”
His words sent a cold spike of fear into the pit of my stomach. “I won’t be yours, Kill. Never. I won’t go any farther.”
I dug my heels into the floor and angled my upper body toward the wall, trying to brace myself against it. The gun poked painfully into my midsection with the jamming crack of a splintered rib. Kill pushed me hard against the wall and loomed over me. He pinned his hips against mine. With one hand, he twisted the gun into my throbbing ribs. Tears clouded my vision. With the other, he grabbed the front of my flimsy button-down shirt, taking a fistful of fabric and slithering one cold finger under the lace edge of my bra. He bared his teeth and stroked my cleavage in a sickeningly slow rhythm.
“You know, Kat, you’re not the first girl to say that to me.” He breathed another hot cloud of bitter alcohol into my face. “Rosie said the same thing.”
Terror gripped my throat. I struggled to breath. “What do you mean?” I gasped between sharp stabs of pain in my ribs.
Kill chuckled and shook his head. “I think you know exactly what I mean.” He slammed my body against the wall and thrust his hips against me, holding me in place as the toes of my sneakers scratched at the filthy floor.
“You murdered Rosie,” I said in shock. “It wasn’t Peter at all. It was you. All these years, and it was you all along.”
“Bingo,” he said. “I guess you’re not just a dumb bitch.” He snarled in a twisted grimace. His hand inched lower between my breasts. “Rosie and I were meant to be together. She just didn’t realize it. See, she planned to break up with Peter. She said that she was really in love with Trent. She actually confided this shit to me. She was supposed to be with me, not with Trent.” He slammed me against the wall again for emphasis. “But she didn’t get it. She said she only liked me as a friend. A fucking friend! I’m everybody’s fucking friend, aren’t I? She wouldn’t see reason. She wouldn’t listen. I only wanted to love her. She tried to run away from me. She was going to tell everyone. I would be hu
miliated. I’d have to watch the two of them live happily fucking ever after. Rosie and Trent. I couldn’t let that happen.”
A weighted silence settled around us, broken only by the soft drip of a pipe somewhere nearby and the distant whoosh of tires over asphalt on the outer road.
“I strangled her,” Kill said with a matter-of-fact coolness. “I watched her die. It’s what had to happen. And I made Trent think Peter had done it. It was all a setup, that night at the bar. Trent is just so fucking stupid, he never realized it. He beat up the wrong guy. I should have let him finish Peter off back then. But I had more uses for Trent. I had something over him. He thought he owed me. He thought I was his best buddy, dutifully keeping his secrets for more than a decade. What a fucking joke!” He laughed with a gleefully maniacal grin. “There they are in that warehouse, fighting each other to the death like a couple of animals, and they have no idea that I’ve been staging the whole thing all along. I win. I’m the one in control. Trent always gets everything he wants. I don’t get shit. Not anymore. Now I will have everything. And you will never tell anyone.” He pressed his beak of a nose into my cheek. “Because in another hour or so, you’ll be dead.”
He spread his legs apart and worked his fingers deeper under the edge of my bra. My thigh was positioned just below his crotch. I had one chance to do this right. I screwed up all of my strength and lifted my knee with one vicious jerk that slammed between his legs. He gasped and doubled forward, the gun momentarily slipping from its perch between my ribs. I grabbed a fistful of his hair and smashed my knee into the underside of his jaw with a loud smack of bone on bone. He spit flecks of blood onto my thigh. I jammed my foot into his chest. He staggered backward, his arms flailing and shoes slipping.
I turned and ran in the direction of the exit, my heart exploding with terror. The beam of Kill’s discarded flashlight provided a hazy glow that was just strong enough to reveal the outline of the door. I wrenched it open and stumbled into the night. I knew that Kill’s footsteps must be right behind me, but I couldn’t hear anything over the pounding of my pulse in my ears. I sprinted through the sharp and stinging weeds and over the dirt pathway, aiming with every last ounce of endurance for the open warehouse that shone like a beacon of salvation.
I felt fingertips swipe at my elbow. I was almost within Kill’s reach. I ran faster, nearly within the safe embrace of the crowd. The warehouse lights glared painfully into my eyes after the darkness of the surrounding night. I crossed the threshold and ran straight for the ring at the other end. The fight had already begun to a thundering chorus of cheers and shouts. I turned once to see if Kill was still following me. He had slowed to a brisk walk, but his eyes bore into mine from about twenty yards away. When I turned back to the ring, I ran face-first into what felt like a solid brick wall.
“Kat? Are you alright?” I looked up into Eugene’s red beard. I had crashed into the iron musculature of his chest. After a dazed second, I shook off the stars that tinged the edges of my vision and grabbed his massive biceps.
“Eugene, I need to get to Trent. I need to stop the fight.” For the first time since I had escaped from Kill’s grasp, I thought of my phone. I reached into my pocket to retrieve it. To my incredible relief, it was still recording. Kill’s full confession was on tape, right there in my hand.
Without a further word, Eugene clasped my wrist and pulled me through the crowd, which parted before his powerful and determined stride. As we drew closer to the ring, I sensed that Trent was in trouble. The fighters flew past in a whirl of punches and kicks. Peter appeared to have the upper hand. Trent teetered off-balance. A gash bled from his forehead. But just when it seemed that Trent might be done, he turned the tables with a lightning-quick roundhouse kick and an arcing cross-body punch that landed square on Peter’s jaw and flipped his head back and to the side.
The crowd roared, clapped, and stomped on the metal bleachers. A bell clanged, signaling the end of the round. The referee sent the fighters to opposite sides of the ring. Eugene placed his meaty hands on my shoulders and pushed me forward the last few feet to a spot just behind Trent, who squatted on his muscular thighs and swiped at his bleeding forehead with a towel. His body was coated in a glistening sheen of sweat. His thick chest heaved with each inhalation.
I stood on my tiptoes and gripped the cage netting. “Trent!” My voice was lost amid the shouts of the crowd. “Trent!” I screamed louder.
He turned, his eyes unfocused and searching. “Kat,” he said once his gaze had landed on my upturned face. He leaned toward me on one knee.
“Trent, I need to talk to you.”
“Now? What the hell, Kat? It’s not really a good time.”
“You need to stop this fight. You have everything all wrong.”
He shook his head. “We’ve been through this, Kat. Get out of here. You’re not going to stop me from finishing what I started.”
I held up my phone. “It’s not what you think. It was Kill. I have it on tape. He’s the one who murdered Rosie. It wasn’t Peter. It was Kill. He set up this whole thing. He’s been lying to you all these years.” I pressed the play button on the recording, but neither of us could hear it over all of the surrounding noise.
“What are you talking about?” Trent knit his eyebrows together. He scanned the crowd behind me. He narrowed his eyes and pressed his lips together.
I turned and saw Kill only a few feet away. A trickle of blood ran down his chin where I had landed a vicious knee thrust only minutes earlier.
“Trent, he kidnapped me. He was going to murder me too, just like Rosie. He confessed. I have it all right here.”
I waved the phone in the air. Kill’s eyes widened. His face instantly turned a purplish scarlet.
“Don’t do this, Kat,” Kill seethed. “Don’t fucking do this, you bitch.” He raised the gun and aimed it above my head, right at Trent.
“No!” I cried. I climbed the netting and placed myself between the gun and Trent. I closed my eyes and braced for a shot. Instead, I heard a tumultuous crash of chairs and the thump of pounded flesh. When I opened my eyes, Kill’s figure was engulfed in a heaving mass of punching and flailing arms and legs. Eugene led the pack, ripping the gun from Kill’s fingers and slamming a fist into his cheek. Finnegan had an arm wrapped tightly around Kill’s throat. Kill struggled helplessly, his eyes bulging, his face turning a deep purple, and his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish.
To my surprise, when the scuffle subsided, Trent stood in the center of the melee. He had leapt from the ring with superhuman reflexes and pounced on the gun barrel before Kill was able to squeeze off a single shot.
“Kat, are you ok? Are you hurt?” Trent ran to me and placed his palms against my cheeks. He looked into my eyes with heartfelt concern. I nodded, my tears dropping and rolling onto his fingers.
I held up my phone and pressed play on the recording. In the stunned silence that followed, we could hear Kill’s words, slightly muffled but still fully understandable. I had his entire confession on tape, every word of it. Trent turned pale as a ghost when Kill described strangling Rosie. He wrapped his arms around my waist, rested his chin on the top of my head, and embraced me firmly and tightly.
“You don’t have to fight Peter,” I said. “You can walk away. Don’t play into Kill’s hands. Don’t let him win.”
Trent nodded. “I’m so sorry, Kat. I’m sorry I put you through this.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“Yes, I do. If it weren’t for me, you never would have been in that position. Kill never would have been able to touch you. I should have been there. I will be there from now on. I’m never leaving your side again.”
He kissed me long and passionately. “I’m never leaving your side either, Trent.”
“I love you, Kat.”
“I love you, Trent.” We kissed again.
“Well, this is beautiful,” said a gruff and growling voice. “But we have a fight to get back to.” Peter squatted
on the edge of the ring, just behind the cage netting. His massive fists rested on the mat. He glared with a fiery anger.
“It’s over, Peter. I call it.”
“It’s not fucking over. We had an agreement. We fight until the end.” He stood, his towering physique blocking out the light and leaving his face in shadow.
Trent shook his head. “I don’t have an issue with you Peter, not anymore. I thought that I did, but I was wrong. He’s the one that you want. He murdered Rosie and made everyone believe that it was you.” Trent pointed to the gasping and red-faced Kill, still pinned by Finnegan’s meaty, tattooed forearm. “I am sorry for what happened all those years ago. I really am. And I don’t forgive you for what happened to Oscar. But this,” he swept his arms in an arc around the ring and the crowd, “this will not solve anything.”
“Like hell it won’t. Get back here.”
“No.” Trent pulled me to his side and kissed my temple. “I forfeit. You win.” He paused and locked his eyes on mine. “Love is stronger than revenge.”
The bell clanged. The referee walked to the center of the ring and announced Peter as the winner of the fight.
Trent stepped toward Kill and stopped. “You’re going down. You can’t prevent it now. All of your plans are ruined. You’ll pay for what you did to Rosie. I’ll make sure of it.” He punched Kill in the face with a thundering blow. Kill’s knees buckled. His head lolled sideways.
Trent gripped my hand. We walked away from the ring and through the crowded bleachers. The audience stared after us, shocked and speechless. A few people clapped softly and patted Trent on the shoulder as we passed.
“What do you say we head upstate tomorrow and play that recording for the Leidensburg police department? I think they might be interested in what it has to say.”