It also doesn’t hurt that the first several bouts turned into little more than backyard brawls. Bloody affairs with over-muscled men that had once been high school athletes and can’t let it go, so they come out here to the sand every weekend. Smaller guys that work the fields nearby, carrying resentment for damn near everything in their lives, entering the ring with something to prove.
And of course, a healthy sprinkling of fools that have watched a few too many MMA bouts on television and figured it didn’t look that hard. Little more than chum for the crowd, they have done their part, sacrificial lambs for the maddened rabble.
With each passing bout, I sat in the back and felt the energy rising. Starting low, it worked steadily upward, cresting into a veritable hunger, bordering on lust, the feeling so strong I can feel it pushing in from every angle.
Goose pimples cover my exposed forearms and calves as I assume my stance in the corner, waiting as the ring announcer steps through the ropes. A cordless microphone in hand, he doesn’t pretend to be some sort of Michael Buffer knockoff, showing up in the traditional attire of a tuxedo and polished wing tips.
Opting for little more than board shorts and a tank top, the tail of his unbuttoned Aloha shirt flaps to either side. No more than a couple of hours from the surf, his long hair is sun bleached and pulled back, a crooked grin on his face.
All in all, a look that holds no pretense, neither confirming nor denying the fact that he’s a Los Angeles trust-fund baby down here hiding from his family and the real world and all the responsibility both brings with them.
Not that I give a shit. This isn’t the place anybody ends up unless they’re hiding from something.
Myself included.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, his sandals slapping against his heels as he saunters to the center of the ring. A quick squawk of feedback through the cheap mic echoes through the speakers, vocal displeasure sounding out from the audience.
Pretending not to notice, he pushes on. “Let’s hear another round of applause for our last combatants, Charlie Reed and Eric Montrose!”
Calling the last two guys combatants is something like calling the Grand Canyon a ditch. Both big and beefy, the bout quickly devolved into a couple of gorillas trying to see who could withstand more haymakers.
It was like watching three rounds of the last forty seconds of every Rocky Balboa fight.
The crowd had loved it.
The reception to his request is weak at best, what clapping there is accompanied by a healthy smattering of boos. Already the crowd has moved on from the last spectacle, ready for the next in line. A small shower of peanut shells and paper napkins rain down, the items dotting the outer edges of the ring, some even landing within a few inches of my feet.
Not that the announcer seems to notice. Even with the top of my head buried into the corner pad, my gaze aimed straight down at the ground, I can imagine the look on his face. One corner of his mouth is rising higher, his grin growing ever more lopsided.
He lives for this shit, inciting the masses, feeling like he’s some sort of ringmaster in his own personal circus.
All bought and paid for with his daddy’s money.
Not that he — or any of us — have any delusions about where we are and what we’re doing. The last guys beating the hell out of each other just means there are a few more stains on the mat going forward. Pelting the ring with garbage doesn’t mean we’re going to slow things down to sweep up. It’s just that much more crap for me to now roll around in.
This isn’t Las Vegas, or New York City, or even Rio. The people that have shown up to watch know that. Those of us that step inside the ring damned sure know it.
And here we are in spite of it.
Or, some might even argue, because of it.
“All right,” the announcer says, a bit of his surfer accent sliding out, making him sound like McConaughey in Dazed and Confused. Rotating at the waist, he looks to either side before saying, “and with that, I’ll get us straight to what we all came here to see tonight.”
“Ham!” a stray voice calls out. “Ham!”
My eyes slide shut. This is the worst part. That damn chant that some drunken idiot always gets started.
“Ham!”
Ignoring him, the announcer calls, “For tonight’s main event, we have one of the most anticipated bouts in Shakey Jake’s history.”
His voice cracks as he walks around the ring, pretending that he’s trying to whip them up a bit more, though there’s no need. The collective energy has continued to rise, the lack of walls or a roof having no negative effect on the tension brimming in the air.
No, this is about him siphoning off a little piece of things for himself, reminding everybody here who is responsible for all this.
Because it has been a whopping fifteen minutes since he last pointed it out.
“Two women, different in every way,” he continues. “One Latina, the other white. One from South America, the other North. One making her Tijuana debut here tonight, the other putting her crown and perfect record on the line!”
The hype achieves some modest bit of effect, enough to at least push a swell of cheers and applause from the crowd.
Again, I hear the same inebriated bastard attempt to get a chant going, calling, “Ham! Ham!”
Once more, the announcer ignores him. My time will come. Right now, he’s still milking his moment.
“In the blue corner,” he continues, his voice rising and ebbing, “a woman coming to us straight from the underground club circuit of Colombia. Standing six foot two and weighing one hundred and sixty pounds, with a 38-2 record, the Bogota Brawler herself, Victoria Rosales!”
I don’t bother moving from my spot in the corner, already knowing exactly what the woman looks like, her actual physical description enhanced the standard twenty percent by announcer hyperbole.
On a good day — in boots — she might go six feet even. Weigh maybe a pound or two above a buck forty. Striated muscle lines her arms and shoulders but her midsection is a bit softer, free of definition, with small bulges visible above her trunks.
Not that all of that is easy to see, most of it obscured by dark ink etched into much of her skin. Beginning around her ear, it wraps down one side of her neck before spreading over her back and, eventually, making it all the way to her calves.
With basic coloring and blurry lines, it’s the sort of thing referred to in the States as prison ink, though I don’t have enough knowledge of the girl or parlors in Colombia to know if she got hers inside or if that’s just how tattoos look down there.
Not that it much matters, my lifetime interaction with her is about to come to an abrupt end in about ten minutes.
Perfunctory cheers ring out as a bit more debris lands in the ring. Right now, I imagine she has a fist or two raised into the air, making a small circle, the announcer remaining silent, extending the moment as long as he can.
Same cocksure smile on his face.
The first few times I was down here, I played the part. I stayed upright in the corner, responding to all the cues, doing what was expected.
That was long ago, well before I came to see that it went the same way every time, that the kid was more interested in playing out his own little fantasy than actually doing justice to the venue or the fighters.
Now, I just stay in my corner, wrists draped over the ropes, top of my head pressed into the pad, waiting it out.
“And her opponent,” he eventually pushes out, “a woman that you all already know. Making her way down from just over the border and standing before you tonight with a perfect twenty-eight-and-oh record, your champion — Haaaaam!”
Click to download and continue reading HAM now!
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Sneak Peek #2
Ships Passing, My Mira Saga Book 4
Prologue
I’m not sure how I know. Like the words to a song I haven’t heard in ages or the ending of a movie I stumble across la
te at night on cable, the pattern is already ingrained in my mind, the outcome sealed long before reaching the conclusion.
As if imprinted on me so long ago that the origin has ceased being of importance, cast aside into the ethereal abyss that the mind creates for all that it doesn’t deem worthy of preserving.
The instant I hear the sound, the clear din of an engine approaching, every nerve ending in my body draws taut. My senses sharpen, picking up on the slightest shifts around me.
The diminishing light inside the room. The weak rattle of an air conditioning unit from next door. The smell of dust and cleaning product in the air.
Perched on the edge of the bed, I sit ramrod straight, counting off seconds. A sheen of sweat covers my skin, the residual light of day reflecting from it, though I am not nervous.
The point for that has come and gone.
Nor am I angry. Or sad. Or really feeling much of anything beyond the tiniest bit of relief, knowing that this inevitability was coming. In a way, I’m just glad to get it over with, to put this behind me forever.
Fingers splayed over the tops of my thighs, I hear as the brakes moan slightly, bringing the approaching vehicle to a halt. As the engine cuts out a moment later.
As a door wrenches open and footsteps crunch across the parking lot, the mixture of dirt and gravel allowing each one to ring out. Hearing them, I am able to track my visitor’s movement, imposing them on the images in my mind, knowing exactly where they stand at any given moment.
My breathing increases slightly, my pulse picking up, thrumming through my temples. Still, I remain motionless on the edge of the bed, watching as a shadow passes by the threadbare curtain hanging over the window at the front of the room.
It is time.
Finally.
CHAPTER ONE
Hours have passed since I first showed up to see my home standing as a fiery pyre, oversized fingers of orange and yellow reaching ever higher into the night sky. In the time since, most of the commotion that was present when I first arrived has subsided.
Many of the first responders have now come and gone, nothing more than a pair of police cruisers sitting at either end of the street. To my right, a couple of officers lean against the front hood, glancing between the house and the adjoining thoroughfares, waving off the occasional rubbernecker on their way to work.
At the opposite end, the assigned pair has given up the task, instead retreating inside their vehicle, their heads silhouetted behind the windshield.
Not that I harbor any ill will toward them. They are right. There isn’t anything more they can do.
Between the two cruisers, the quartet of fire engines that first showed up has shrunk to a single unit. A small cluster of men in oversized fire-retardant pants and suspenders stand near the back end of it, their bare arms and faces smudged with soot. Spooled out alongside them is enough hose to ensure that the last dying gasps of the home don’t somehow spring back to life, but it is clear at a glance that they expect nothing of the sort.
At this point, the fight has been fought and lost.
Just as has almost every earthly possession that remained of my Mira.
When the sun last set, it did so on the definition of a bucolic suburban Southern California neighborhood. Single family dwellings butted up tight to one another, both sides of the street filled with lots of equal size. Containing all the usual trappings, each had front lawns, side garages, a car or two parked outside.
A few had pets. A smaller handful even had the mythical white picket fence.
Only a matter of hours has passed since then, but already the sun is beginning to rise on a much different scene. No longer does the street look like it once did, an enormous black divot gouged into the center of it.
What was once my home, the first house my wife and I owned together, the place where we were seriously considering expanding our family, is now nothing but a pile of cinders, each passing moment further reducing all that remains.
By noon, I suspect it will be nothing more than ash, the Santa Ana winds carrying it into the distance.
I can feel the concrete curb beneath me biting into my tailbone as I sit on the opposite side of the street and stare. Disbelief, terror, shock, nostalgia, all run through my mind in equal measure. All so fierce, all so prescient, I don’t know which to seize on first, my body numb.
For only the second time in my life – both coming in the last week - I have no idea how to process something.
“Here,” a voice says, arriving a split second before a foil package taps against my shoulder. On contact, I can smell sausage and cheese, my hand reaching up to accept the intrusion without my mind truly grasping what it is.
“Breakfast burrito,” Wendell Ross says, stepping down onto the street beside me and settling onto the curb.
A fellow Petty Officer, Ross has been by my side since we first went into SEAL training almost a decade before. A bit shorter than me, he is cut from corded muscle and sinew, his arms and chest broad plates achieved through hours of bodyweight calisthenics.
Dressed in gym shorts and a long-sleeve neoprene shirt, he places a brown paper bag between his feet as he settles in, though makes no move to open it.
Where he went or how long he’s been gone, I can only guess at, the last several hours a menagerie of sights and sounds and thoughts, all of it contorted into one unending nightmare.
Just as the last week since my wife’s death has been.
“You should eat something,” Ross says, his voice low and composed. He doesn’t bother looking my way as he says it, both of us staring at the shattered remnants of the last tangible vestige I had of my marriage.
Of course, he is right. Just as he has been a dozen times before over the years when we were together out in the shit. Moments when he would ensure the rest of us got the food or rest we needed.
A direct result of being one of the few among us that was also a father, the paternal instinct ingrained.
“Thanks,” I manage, not knowing what else to say at the moment.
I do need food. And water. And sleep.
I need to push rewind, and go back to sitting in the corner booth at The Cartwright with Mira and Ross and our friends Emily Stapleton and Jeff Swinger. I need to take her directly home afterward, avoiding Balboa Park and the Wolves and anything else that might endanger her.
I need a lot of things right now. But just like every last one of them, I’m not sure my body can even handle the thought of eating at the moment.
“Jeff and Emily take off?” I whisper.
“Yeah,” Ross replies. “They were both going to call in today, but I told them to go on. There’s nothing more they can do here.”
Again, he is right. There is nothing anybody can do here. In a couple of hours, the fire department will determine that there is no risk of reignition and the police will string crime scene tape across the front. Tomorrow, or the next day, an arson investigator will come out and take a look.
Not that I need to wait that long to know what happened here.
“Sonsabitches,” I mutter.
Beside me, Ross grunts slightly. “Wolves?”
Just hearing the name draws my hand up into a fist. My jaw clenches as I stare straight ahead, the burning in my eyes becoming more pronounced.
“Who else?” I whisper.
This time, he doesn’t bother to respond. There is no need to. We both know who is behind this, the bigger question being the one I’ve spent much of the last week trying to determine.
Why? Why had one of their members killed my wife in cold blood? Why were they targeting Fran Ogo and her granddaughter Valerie? Why did they search my house six days ago only to come back and burn the place to the ground now?
Why?
The smell of wood char hangs heavy in the air, overpowering even the breakfast in my hand. I haven’t caught a glimpse of myself in hours, though I can only imagine how I must appear, with ash and soot staining my cheeks, rivulets streaming vertically through
it, revealing where my tears have fallen.
Almost certainly my eyes and nostrils are both red-rimmed, all stinging in the aftermath of the fire.
At this point, I am well past caring.
“What are you thinking?” he asks.
He doesn’t expound further, though I know exactly what he is trying to say. He wants to know the plan I’m putting together, wants to make sure I’m not about to do something incredibly stupid.
What he can’t possibly understand is, I haven’t even made it that far yet, my focus still on the remnants of my home before us.
“I have to go in this morning,” I reply. “Another one of those damn sessions with the doc.”
Pausing, I smirk slightly, the fact that every last thing I have to wear just burned up occurring to me. “Think she’ll write me up for appearing out of uniform?”
Look for Ships Passing , My Mira Book 4, in late 2019!
Free Book
As thank you for reading, please enjoy a FREE copy of my first bestseller – and still one of my personal favorites – 21 Hours!
Bookshelf
Works Written by Dustin Stevens:
Reed & Billie Novels:
The Boat Man
The Good Son
The Kid
The Partnership
Justice
The Scorekeeper
The Bear
Hawk Tate Novels:
Cold Fire
Cover Fire
Fire and Ice
Hellfire
Home Fire
Wild Fire
Zoo Crew Novels:
The Zoo Crew
Dead Peasants
Tracer
The Glue Guy
Moonblink
The Shuffle
(Coming 2020)
Wild Fire: A Suspense Thriller (A Hawk Tate Novel Book 6) Page 37