Gary shot him. Then he shot the three at the bar, including the bartender, moving fast enough to catch the first one as he fell. Gary lowered him to the floor, wincing when one of the others toppled sideways and upset a bar stool.
We stood there for a moment, listening to the continued roar of a crowd, which I was now realizing could only be coming from beneath us. There was a small second story, but that sound was definitely coming from below. The building had to have a basement.
I cracked the front door, only to see the boat full of fishermen pulling up. “We gotta go,” I said, starting across the floor. “That boat just pulled in.”
Gary dragged his guy behind the bar while I went and peered in the mysterious doorway. It opened onto a dark hall that quickly right-angled into a set of stairs. The air was cool and smelled dank, like the room they’d held me in.
Gary hid the other two unconscious fishermen behind the bar, and Helly swiped one of their beers.
“C’mon,” I hissed, expecting the newcomers to walk through the door at any second.
Gary was pushing fresh darts into his rifle even as he hoofed it to me. I shook my head in wonder, noting he wasn’t even out of breath. He had the gun back up and ready by the time he ducked into the dark hall, taking point.
I’d made a mental note not to get into a gunfight with Gary. Now I amended that: Don’t wind up on the other side of a dispute with Gary. Ever. And definitely don’t grow a thin, used-car-salesman beard.
Helly pushed me in in front of her. As the door closed behind us, leaving the hall illuminated by a single bare, flickering bulb, she took a long draught of her stolen beer.
“Seriously?” I hissed at her.
She shrugged. “Makes us look more legit.”
I eyed her blonde hair, which seemed almost to glow in the dark under that bulb. There were very few people on the river with hair that blonde. “We should have dyed your hair,” I said.
She looked affronted, and then dragged her hood up. “Better?”
I nodded, then concentrated on not falling down the dimly-lit metal stairs. The cheering was getting louder. Screaming, really; a rabid-sounding roar.
I had no idea what was going on down here, but I hoped we didn’t find something really bad. I didn’t want to see something that would scar me for life, and I didn’t want Ed to be wrapped up in anything truly horrible. I liked Ed, dammit. More than liked Ed.
I stumbled as the last step came up quicker than it was supposed to, and I knocked into Gary’s back.
Backs. That’s all I saw. Dozens and dozens of people all faced away from me toward the brightly-lit center of the room. The crowd roared again, responding to something going on there. But of course, I couldn’t see shit because I was barely five feet tall.
“What’s going on?” I asked Gary, and then had to repeat myself at a yell before he heard me.
“Looks like a fight,” he said, grinning down at me. “C’mon, I want a better view.” He began pushing his way into the crowd.
I frowned. A fight? I swear to god, if Ed’s running dogfights…
Somebody jostled Helly, making her spill some of her beer. She shoved that person back, and then grabbed me. “C’mon,” she yelled, and dragged me into the press.
I am a little person. I’ve said that, right? So when she dragged me into a crush of excited nut-to-butt men, I was truly fearing for my life. I could barely breathe in the foul miasma of fish-smell and B.O., and I certainly couldn’t see. My boonie hat was jostled off within about two seconds, and then it was gone. Somebody stepped on my foot. Somebody else jabbed an elbow into my boob.
I fared a little better when I started pushing and elbowing them back, but I was still mad as a wet cat by the time Helly got me to the front of the press. Grimacing, I peered up at a raised platform with a tall chain link fence around it. A cage, I realized.
As I gazed up, a man came flying out of nowhere, and slammed into the fence in front of me. I could only blink in shock as I was spattered with sweat and what I hoped to God wasn’t blood. My stomach churned at the very idea.
The man had hit the barrier parallel to the ground, and gravity quickly claimed him. He fell the three feet to the floor, landing with a thump on his side.
The crowd behind me roared. Beside me, Helly did the same. “Get him!” she yelled. “Kick his ass!!” She waved her fist around, looking like she was just about ready to climb up in there and help the guy.
Beyond her, I spotted Gary. But he wasn’t looking at the fight. Instead, he was looking down at his bloodthirsty girlfriend with unconcealed love.
Damn it, I thought as my chest tightened with emotion. I want someone who looks at me like that when I’m at the absolute height of my own personal brand of crazy.
That, and: Their babies are gonna be so damn cute…
My eyes burned as I swiped the dampness from my face. Luckily, there were no dark stains on my sleeve when I pulled it back to look.
Past my untainted sleeve, I saw the man in black shorts climb to his feet, presenting me with his profile. I blinked as recognition niggled. He was medium height, well-muscled, his hair a dark blond, and despite having just been thrown, he pushed lithely to stand.
Helly screamed particularly loud, and the man glanced over. His bright blue eyes locked on hers, and then I knew.
It was J.D. Helly’s youngest brother, the one who wasn’t one of the two idiots that’d blown up my cabin. The one who was supposed to be fishing.
While he was standing there, staring at Helly with shock, his opponent rammed into him from behind. I winced as J.D. was smashed up against the fencing by the biggest guy I’d ever seen.
I mean, I’d seen him before. He was a guide that came back every year, one of the pair of extra-large twins. And I knew he was big. But, in nothing but a pair of shorts, easily twice the breadth and a good foot taller than the man he was doing his best to extrude through the chain link? The guy was fucking huge.
I grabbed at Helly, because she was starting to climb. Gary wrapped his arm around her waist, and pulled her away. She was cussing, snarling death threats at the beast of a man. I was torn between watching with horror as her hood began to slide back, and watching with horror as her brother got squished.
To my surprise, J.D. managed to slip away. Despite being thrown like a bad romance novel and then rammed like a castle gate, his movements were spry. He danced away, and I didn’t know a lot about fighting, but I knew J.D. looked good while doing it. He moved like the proverbial butterfly, dashing and feinting, leading his personal Goliath on a merry chase.
I was actually sort of getting into it, getting right up against the fence. I was yelling almost as loud as Helly, when he did it.
In a move that defied the laws of physics, like a ballerina or somebody that hadn’t been told they had bones, J.D. jumped gracefully up, and up. And up. And then he hovered there like something straight from the Matrix. The crowd took in a collective breath, and his opponent’s face wrinkled up and squinted, seeing the hit coming just as surely as the rest of us did.
And then he did it.
J.D. broke Goliath’s nose.
Blood gushed.
It had to be at least a cup. No, a pint. No… a quart.
I pressed the back of my hand to my forehead, feeling the sudden cold sweat that had sprung up there.
Helly had suggested to me after I’d flirted with the older two brothers that J.D. was more my age, and more my speed, and pretty much a better human being all-around. Sure, I hadn’t remembered him and all, but… this right here, this was why it never would have worked between us. Quite simply, J.D.—who, I was just remembering, was a professional MMA fighter—made people bleed way, way too much.
I swayed, looking around in wonder. In the ring, the fight continued, but the blood now appeared black. Everything was in shades of gray, and the bloodthirsty cheers of the crowd echoed in my head.
I stumbled a bit. Then my eyes rolled up, one of my knees gave out, and I
spun around as I collapsed.
I tried really hard to hit the floor in a dead faint, but somebody prevented me. Somebody in a flannel shirt with really nice, strong forearms. I wound up with my nose pressed up against his very firm chest, and I took a nice, long, delirious whiff.
“Ed,” I sighed, knowing who it was without having to look up. I didn’t do the polite thing and step away. Instead, I wrapped my arms around his waist and let him take my weight.
He tapped my shoulder. I finally looked up. Seriously, when had he gotten so handsome?
“What are you doing in my fight club?” he asked.
“Uhhh… mmm?” I smiled up at him with an expression that was probably more sleepy than innocent. Damn people for always bleeding in my presence. I couldn’t come up with intelligent speech, let alone clever comebacks, with all the blood drained outta my brain.
I turned my head to look over at my friends. They were watching us.
I take that back. Gary was watching us. My best friend was still screaming at the guy that had dared take a swing at her brother.
“There was no miscarriage, was there?” Ed asked.
I winced, dared to meet his gaze, and shook my head.
He made a frustrated sound—kind of a growl, actually, a deep vibration that had me hyper-aware of the hard body I was pressed up against. Ed transferred his gaze over my head to glare at Gary. My skin prickled with the amount of testosterone suddenly being pumped into the atmosphere. I stared, fascinated, because this was Ed. Ed didn’t straighten up to his full height and glower at someone until they backed down. Ed didn’t tersely order Gary, the trained killer, to follow him.
And Ed most certainly did not toss me over his shoulder. Again.
I shrieked and beat at his back a little, and when that didn’t work, I pinched his ass. It was a rather unsuccessful pinch, as his butt was extremely firm. He ignored my struggles, and carried me through the crowd. Like the Red Sea, they split apart to let him pass.
Pushing up, I saw that Gary and Helly were following, though Helly was being dragged more than anything else.
Ed carried me across the room, up a couple stairs, and into a dimmer, quieter space. This room reminded me of his house, with its polished wood floor and custom touches. At the far end sat a huge, throne-type chair. It had been carved out of a whole stump, and was shiny with lacquer, yet dark with age. In the shadows next to it stood a beast of a man, the other twin in the extra-large duo—Paul, my memory supplied, recognizing this one from the long white scar stretching back from his eye.
Walking to the center of the room, Ed set me down. Gary and Helly stopped just inside the door with a grim-faced fishing guide right behind them.
Ed took a step back, and when he gently grasped my chin, I was forced to look up at him. Ooo, he looked kinda upset. I felt smug, having found out his secret. Fight club. Ha!
“What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded.
“Uh…” I really had no idea what he was talking about.
“I called you at least a dozen times today, and you never answered. I called Helly at least as many times. No one returned my calls. Not even a text. I flew to town, Suzy, looking for you. I checked at the hospitals.” His eyes were dark, his face drawn.
My mouth dropped into an ‘o’ as I took in his expression. The brothers hadn’t bothered Ed with their needling, but I sure as hell had with my lie. I hadn’t thought he would follow me to town…
“Ed,” I said quietly, tentatively, “it’s too early for me to miscarry your baby.” But maybe telling that particular story hadn’t been the best idea.
He squeezed his eyes shut a second. “I know,” he rasped. His fingers stroked down my cheek. His eyes opened again, and I saw that I’d really freaked him out. “It didn’t matter if it was mine,” he muttered.
My lips stretched into a gentle smile.
His expression started to soften as he gazed down at me, but then his gaze flicked to Helly and Gary, and his eyes shuttered. “Furthermore,” he said, louder, “you faint at the sight of blood, and yet you just had to let yourself into my fight club. Not only that, but you went ahead and pushed your way up until your face was practically pressed to the chain link. You could have been crushed when you went down. Trampled!”
I opened my mouth.
“And what’s more,” he continued, “you’re a damn gossip who’s not supposed to be in here in the first place. You’ve officially seen too much. Now what am I supposed to do with you?”
“A spanking seems like a good place to start,” Gary suggested.
“And you,” Ed said.
Gary stood there with his tranq rifle held loosely, and it surprised me that no one had taken it from him. At the same time, I wouldn’t have volunteered for that job.
“Did you shoot anybody with that thing?” Ed asked.
“Well, yeah, but it’s non-lethal. The couple guys upstairs are just taking a little nap behind the bar.”
Ed rubbed the spot between his brows. “Dean,” he said, “could you go check on them, please?”
The scowling guy nodded and disappeared from the doorway, leaving the three of us alone with Ed and Paul, the scarred giant.
Ed started to pace. He moved to my right, and then back across to my left. He combed his fingers through his hair, disheveling it even further.
I watched him, helplessly fascinated. This Ed acted like a completely different man than the one I’d originally talked to over a week ago. This one stood straight, moved decisively. When he glanced my way, he met my eyes dead-on, and his gaze was full of emotion—censure, mostly. His clothes were still baggy, but now I knew just exactly what he was hiding under them.
He finally stopped in front of me. “Can you swear to me,” he said, “that you won’t speak of my operation with anyone?”
I frowned. “Two questions: Why are you trying to keep it a secret, and who’s left to tell? It looked like the whole population of the river in there.”
“The first rule is, you don’t talk about fight club,” Gary said from the doorway. He grinned as he got both of our attention. “Fight clubs are illegal. There’re usually assault charges, disturbing the peace, and the authorities will also get you for illegal gambling.” He shrugged, looking unperturbed as he glanced back through the doorway. “I wish I’d gotten here soon enough to bet on J.D.”
Somehow, I didn’t think the ex-hitman would be tattling on Ed.
“The women don’t know,” Ed said.
“The women don’t know?” I asked, instantly irritated. Yet another shining example of sexism on the river. “None of them?”
Ed shook his head. “Only you two, now.”
“Well, that’s just rotten,” Helly said, turning away from the doorway. “What if we want to break up the monotony of bush life and watch a fight?” Helly demanded. “Hell, what if we want to participate?”
Gary chuckled. “I’m sure there’d be demand for women fighting, but it’d probably involve very little clothing and a kiddie pool full of mud.” She glared at him, and he grinned down at her. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’d bet on you.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said to Ed. “Everybody on the river knows about this illegal operation, except the women?”
He nodded, then hesitated. “Well… and your dad.”
Which made sense, so I didn’t question it. But, “Did Gary know?” If the ex-hitman had pulled the wool over our eyes so thoroughly, I was gonna kill him.
“Nope,” said Gary, even as Ed said, “No. We were planning on waiting a year, feeling him out before seeing if he wanted to join.”
“And the brothers?”
“Just J.D. The other two…” Ed shook his head.
I nodded. Again, made total sense. “And you’ve been operating how long?”
Ed’s eyes narrowed on me.
“Years?”
He said nothing.
“You’ve been here for years, beknownst to most of the males in the community, and yo
u haven’t been reported yet. What makes you think the women knowing would make any sort of difference? Hell, my guess is they wouldn’t even care.”
“The women would care,” Gary drawled. “Helly, hon, how would you feel about me coming here tomorrow night and getting my face all messed up?”
She glowered over at him. “You’d be the one messing up faces, but for the sake of argument, if you came home all busted up, I’d be pissed.”
“Boss, we’ve got a complaint,” a voice interrupted.
We all turned toward the door, where the guides were shoving a sandy-haired man into the room. He was wearing fisherman duds, state of the art ones with an extra helping of snaps and mesh, made of material which probably ‘breathed’ better than an Olympic athlete. His grooming and near-orange tan set him apart from the locals in an instant. Mr. Carrot, I immediately dubbed him.
He strode right up to Ed, ignoring me as though I didn’t exist. “I want my money back,” he hissed. “Your little operation cheated me out of five grand.”
“Cheated you?” Ed asked.
“Your fights are rigged. There is no way that little guy should have won. I want my money back,” Carrot repeated. He looked at Ed expectantly, as if he was just going to dig into his pocket and slap the money in his hand.
I was still pissed off about the sexist thing, so I guess the orange tourist was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That, and he was interrupting my confrontation with Ed.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I demanded.
The sandy-haired fisherman blinked at me, just then realizing I was there.
“You gamble, you lose. That’s how it works. That’s why there are casinos out there, big, sprawling operations with million-dollar gold nuggets on display like just another trinket,” I said, remembering that little tidbit from my internet search. “Because gambling is a losing proposition designed to relieve you of your money.”
“If you don’t give me my money back,” Carrot said, looking between me and Ed now, “I’m going to tell everyone about this little operation of yours. You’ll be shut down and sent to jail. Is that worth $5,000 to you?”
Two Captains, One Chair: An Alaskan Romantic Comedy Page 26
