by Paula Cox
Here in the world, you still fought for what you wanted, but you did it with emails and memos and mostly behind a cloak of anonymity. You didn’t risk yourself out here. Dax had found that out the hard way last night, when he’d stepped in to save a man’s life in the ring and gotten his nuts kicked in by the public and the International Mixed Martial Arts Federation. No, out here you didn’t do the right thing; you did the proper thing. There was a big difference.
“What’s distracting you, bud?” Carlo asked him. “Seriously, you’re miles away. What gives?”
Dax stood up straight and ran a hand over his damp buzz cut. “Nothing that can’t wait. Come on, I wanna nail this thing.”
Carlo shook his head. “Not until you tell me what’s up. Those gremlins in your head, they got something to do with last night?”
“Could be.”
“Why? You did the right thing.”
“Not according to every other asshole who was there. I stopped their fun, and they hated my guts for it.”
Carlo cocked his head to one side. “Come on, you can blank that shit out. You know how it works. There’s something else, isn’t there?”
“Yeah, that ref—”
“The ref was a piece of shit. Bought and paid for. Someone, somewhere didn’t want the fight to end early. It had to be a KO or a tap-out or else big bucks would be lost.”
“Exactly.”
Carlo squinted at him. “And we’ve seen that shit before. So tell me, what’s really knocked you out of joint?”
“I don’t know. Things.” In Dax’s clammy fist, a layer of dampening chalk dust; in his mind, a look of horror he couldn’t get over. Thad Hollis’s missus, ringside, alone among a crowd of rich pricks and their trophy wives, alone in what she saw happening to her man in the ring. Dax had seen desperation like that before, written on the faces of brothers-in-arms in the direst combat situations, certain that something bad was about to happen and equally certain there wasn’t a damn thing they could do to prevent it. Sure, he knew that look well. A person was most alive behind a look like that. And something about Tiana Crowe had struck him deep in that moment…he’d seen her at her most desperate.
The whole arena, the whole world had been against her. Against her man in the ring. She’d loved and she’d hated and she’d blazed in that moment. Through her pain, Dax had seen what she’d seen, understood what she knew and what no one else had cottoned onto: that something was wrong with Thad Hollis. Not the fact he was losing the match. No, it was more than that. Something only a person who was intimate with him would know about him. His fighting and his behavior had been erratic, as though he’d been struggling to stay in control of himself. Dax, probably like everyone else, had assumed it was adrenaline or maybe steroids pumping him up, but when he’d observed Tiana, not just worried but furious and terrified at the same time, he’d understood what was wrong.
The ref should have stopped the fight. He was right there, he could see that Hollis had lost his coordination, that he wasn’t responding to the vicious blows, that he wasn’t going to tap out inside that sleeper hold. And when Dax had seen her face, he’d reacted the exact same way he’d have reacted if one of his brothers-in-arms had been close to death in the field.
Well, it wasn’t exactly the same if he was honest. The fact that Tiana Crowe was one of the most intriguing and beautiful women he’d ever seen, had made him not just react to her pain, but well and truly overreact. In his own way, he’d protected her in the ring last night, not just her clueless boyfriend.
“Don’t feel like talking, huh?” Carlo began to unfasten his hand wraps.
“Not really, bud. Just some stuff I need to get straight in my head. You know how it is. Back in the world, things can get…complicated.”
“Tell me about it. But you should really focus on this, on being the best. You are, you know, as much as I hate to admit it.”
“What?”
“The toughest son of a bitch I’ve ever fought. Don’t let all this other bullshit get to you. Just remember what it was like over there and stay in that zone. You’ll go all the way. None of these pricks will get anywhere near you.” He paused. “Monte still around?”
“In and out. Last time I spoke to him he was getting ready to enroll in that famous course he was always telling us about.”
“No shit. Engineer?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s the stuff right there,” said Carlo. “Fresh out of the clinic and already dreaming big.”
“Yeah. But he’s not fully out yet.”
“Planning ahead though, right?”
“I guess.”
Carlo chuckled to himself as they made their way to the locker room. “You two always did have it all worked out.”
“Yeah, we always said we’d take over the world somehow. One builds bridges, the other knocks people down for a living. We’ve got it all worked out.”
“Think he’d want me to swing by?” asked Carlo. “I don’t fly back east for another few days.”
“Probably not a good idea,” Dax replied. “It’s not you, muchacho. Monte’s had a hard time letting go, that’s all. He’s good for a while, then something will trigger him and he’ll either bounce off the walls or shut himself off completely. Seeing you might put him right back in that place he doesn’t want to be.”
“But he sees you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Any other guys from the unit?”
“None that I know of. We never talk about it. I think that’s why he can put up with me—because we got out at the same time and he knows I’m never going back. Moving on—that’s been his problem. A part of him is still there, back in the shit.”
“He just needs time, though, right? To adjust? He’s not a head case or anything?”
Dax didn’t answer that. He didn’t know how to. Wasn’t it all a question of degrees? His own readjustment hadn’t exactly been a picnic. In fact, the jury was still out on whether he—or Monte, or any of the guys for that matter—would ever recognize the people they’d been before joining up. It just wasn’t something you could quantify. Not even in fighting terms. The strongest guy in the world could go to pieces under fire, or he could take anything combat could dish and then still go to pieces when he returned home—for reasons too personal and too insidious to predict.
Every man in the unit was different. And yet they all had this in common: they’d experienced things that no one in civilian life could ever understand. For that reason, Dax knew, it was important that he spent time with his old friend, Monte—the best friend he’d ever had—for both their sakes. Adapting to the world would always be a struggle, but at least in each other’s company they could take on the world together, and take it slow, with one foot on safe ground. Maybe Carlo didn’t understand that yet, still tied to the Corps as he was. He hadn’t had the rug pulled out from under him yet; he hadn’t tried to lower his combative guard and let the world in only to find that, in doing so, you let more things out than in—things that should never see the light of day. Things that didn’t belong in this emptier world of vague threats you couldn’t fend off with training or adrenaline in the heat of combat. A soldier needed thick skin, he needed that ability to disconnect parts of himself, to let his training and his survival instincts take over. But here, you were supposed to shed that skin, to reconnect those parts that had been shut off for so long, and to forget that training and leave those survival instincts behind.
The suck was behind them now. But it still clung to Monte, just like it did to Dax and the others, and like it would to Carlo when he finished his twenty.
“I don’t know about head cases,” he said, “but that ref from last night wants his head busting, that’s for damn sure.”
“You going to follow up on that?” asked Carlo.
“Dunno. You reckon I should?”
“I’ve never seen you back down from anything, muchacho. And they’re probably going to come after you with everything they’ve got
. The IMMAF, I mean. You showed up one of their own on live TV.” Carlo snorted a laugh. “You’ll be a freaking legend in the unit. That clip will be all over YouTube by now.”
“The idiot should’ve stepped in before it got to that.”
“You threw the sucker away like an old burrito. Legend.”
But Dax wasn’t thinking of the rat-faced ref or the TV cameras or anything else. He just couldn’t get over that look of horror on Tiana Crowe’ face when she saw her man lose his hold on reality in the ring.
It was the look of a woman who couldn’t possibly know what that unreality of combat was like, yet she’d glimpsed it nonetheless. In those fleeting, agonizing moments, she’d seen a great fighter, the man she loved, crumble to nothing. But more than that, much more, she’d raged against it.
The only question now was…where could Dax find a woman like that?
Chapter Three
While Dax and Carlo had been inside, a city bus had broken down across the street from Scallion’s Gym. Not the best spot in L.A. for that to happen. The neighborhood wasn’t the crummiest Dax had seen—not by a longshot—howdy there, Helmand—but there was a definite air of turn-up-this-alley-at-your-own-peril to most of the side streets. The obese bus driver, guarding his vehicle like the captain of a stranded ship in pirate waters, was engaged in a colorful slanging match with a couple of hookers who desperately wanted to catch a bus to Echo Park.
Dax shook hands with his old sparring buddy, and they both promised to keep in touch. While Carlo made his way toward the corner of Main Street to hail a cab, Dax slung his gym bag over his shoulder and headed in the opposite direction, to the parking lot shared by the auto parts store and the 7-Eleven—where Scallion’s gym members were allowed to leave their cars for up to three hours, provided they left a member’s badge clearly visible in their windshields.
The cold wind began to bite, so Dax dug into his bag for his hoodie. No sooner had he fished it out than a hard, sweeping blow knocked his legs out from under him. He went down onto his side, scraped his ass on the edge of the curb. Someone kicked his ribs from behind, then stomped on his shoulder when he struggled to get up.
Instinctively he made himself small, covering up as best he could while this evil fucker rained kicks and fists down on him. The guy was big, broad-shouldered, and wore a tracksuit. Under his purple Lakers beanie, his head was bandaged. An intense blankness in the bruised and bloodied face told Dax that he might be dealing with a nut job, maybe just escaped from the psych ward of some hospital. But his blows were ferocious. They hurt like hell. This guy knew how to hurt, and if Dax didn’t do something quick, this would not end well.
“Get the fuck away from me!” He planted a vicious boot on the psycho’s kneecap, staggering him back. Dax got to his feet and, despite nursing a splintering pain in his right side, rushed his opponent as though his life depended on it. He’d never lost a fight in his life, and he wasn’t about to start now, outside his own gym, at the hands of some Loony Tunes out on a homicidal day pass.
The man saw him coming, sidestepped, and threw Dax off his feet with a perfectly executed hip toss.
Jesus, who was this guy?
Again Dax got to his feet, trying not to display how much his ribs hurt. “Who the hell are you?”
“Don’t remember me, huh?” Section Eight spat onto the sidewalk. “You will. You fucking will after this.”
Dax widened his stance. “Come at me again and I’ll break you in half.”
“Yeah. You’re ten men when it’s someone else’s fight you’re pissing on. Out here you’re nothing. You make me fucking sick.”
“Hollis? Thad Hollis? But I—”
“You what?”
“I saved your life last night. What are you doing out—”
Hollis marched up to him and swung a punch. Dax blocked it, jabbed his bandaged opponent in the nose, rupturing what had to have been barely healed cartilage. Blood ran down to his mouth. Hollis didn’t seem to care. He just spat the blood away and swung again. This time Dax caught the man’s arm and jammed it up behind his back.
“You need to stop this shit,” said Dax. “Cool it, okay?”
Hollis replied with a sneaky elbow as he escaped the arm lock. It caught Dax in the temple and left him seeing stars. Three or four hard blows to the face knocked Dax into the road, where he had to steady himself on a fire hydrant before he spilled into an onrushing Buick.
“I’ve had enough of this shit.”
“We’re just getting started,” said Hollis. “Nobody humiliates me in front of my fans like that.”
“You were dead in your feet, Hollis. That ref would have let you choke out before he stopped it. Do you hear me? You could have died last night.”
“Bullshit. I had it under control, and you pissed it away.”
Furious, Dax grabbed hold of the fire hydrant with both hands and wrenched it as hard as he could. The metal squealed, carked. Then he marched right up to his opponent, ducked a haymaker and slapped an inescapable, vise-like headlock on him. “I’m done trying to convince you. You’ll just have to pick up where you left off last night. Lights out for real this time.”
“Screw you!”
“And next time you come after me, one of us dies.”
“Get off me!”
“No more favors. Last night, that was your one-off.”
With all his freaky psychotic strength Hollis tried to pry Dax’s fingers loose, but he couldn’t get enough leverage. He just didn’t get it. Once a Marine got the upper hand in a combat situation, you’d have more luck taking a bone from a bulldog than you would at getting the best of him. And Dax was pissed off to boot. He’d risked his reputation last night, risked the ire of the IMMAF, and this ungrateful piece of shit wanted payback? Against someone who’d saved his life?
He should just snap the bastard’s neck and call it a day.
But damn it, he wasn’t that guy anymore. He didn’t know what the hell he was, but those days of thinking swiftly in terms of life and death were behind him now. They had to be. His soldier’s instincts were not wanted here, either inside the ring or out of it. Last night had proved that. Those stupid, bloodthirsty assholes. No, using force to do the right thing here was not treated kindly.
Maybe he should have stayed in the Corps after all. At least there, in the suck, no one had pretended any of it made sense. Everyone kind of knew, even if they didn’t say so, that things had been FUBAR all along and would not be changing anytime soon. But here, the insanity was that no one could see how deluded they were. They had rights with a capital R, and that was good enough for them. It didn’t matter that they no clue what to do with those rights, when corruption was all around them and the best they could do was hate on a guy who thought challenging a referee to save a fighter’s life was more important than watching that fighter take more punishment.
A part of him wished he hadn’t lifted a finger last night. It would have saved all this. But the stronger part of him, that part he’d clearly brought back, undimmed, from Afghanistan, told him to be himself, to fight the fights that needed fighting, and to never back down.
So he squeezed until Hollis passed out. Then he dragged the idiot to his car and drove to the nearest hospital.
He checked them both in.
Chapter Four
If there was one thing Tiana hated more than fitness gyms, it was men’s boxing gyms. They had such a threatening vibe; the people in them had one thing on their minds: putting the hurt on other people. It reminded her of all the worst parts of having a fighter like Thad as a boyfriend. She’d always felt safe around him in high school and for some time after, but after his umpteenth successive concussion—she couldn’t recall the incident or even the year—he had begun to turn his hostility inward, toward her, because she was letting him down somehow. She was not living up to his idea of what a famous MMA fighter’s partner should be like. Not supportive enough? Not hot enough? Not strong enough? He’d never explained it to her in any w
ay that made sense. He’d let his crazy verbal outbursts do the talking, and later, when they’d failed to convince her, he’d let his physical advantage take over.
She shuddered at the memories—they were more recent than she wanted to admit. Because Thad was not getting better, he was getting worse. And entering a sweat-pit like Scallion’s hammered home two things: how much she hated boxing gyms, and how worried she was about Thad. To come here of all places, alone, to thank a man whose looks and reputation flat-out scared her, told her how desperate she was to do something she could feel good about.