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  Chapter Two

  “Ham! Ham! Ham!”

  Like those losers that show up at every ball game imploring the crowd to start the wave, that lone prick somewhere nearby has finally gotten his wish. The repeated chant rings out, bouncing between the two sides. Said in an even cadence, one no more than drifts away, floating out toward the sand, before the next comes in right behind it.

  As far as pacing goes, it is probably a perfect match to the waves depositing themselves onto the beach nearby.

  One after another, I can feel them pass over my skin as I maintain my position in the corner. With my eyes closed, I imagine to those watching from the outside it might look like I’m deep in prayer. That I’m taking a minute to focus, to find some bit of peace and centering before the bout begins.

  The reason is much simpler.

  I don’t believe in prayer. Or God. Or destiny. Or anything I can’t see with my own eyes and touch with my own hands. I don’t believe in much of anything beyond myself and my training, my answer to everyone that dares utter the word faith to me exactly the same.

  Try seeing half the shit I have in this world, and then explain to me how there could possibly be some sort of greater plan to any of it.

  What I’m actually doing is watching the entirety of the fight that is about to take place play out in my mind. Blow by blow, I’m working through it, choreographing it in real time, superimposing everything I know into a cohesive sequence.

  Despite the gross exaggeration from the announcer, the woman across from me is still enormous. I’ve seen her fight twice before, each confirming that she is a brawling brute that relies on mass and power to overwhelm her opponents.

  Her strategy is to basically end a fight before it begins. Like some sort of soldier, she marches right into the center of the ring, using her enhanced gravitational pull to lure her opponents in, where she pummels the hell out of them.

  I have no intention of making that mistake. This isn’t a boxing match, and there are no extra points awarded for standing toe-to-toe and letting these people see us slug it out.

  The objective here is to win, by whatever means necessary.

  Both of which happen to be my specialty.

  Popping my eyes open, it’s as if each of my senses have somehow become enhanced. Not to some comic superhero level, but just enough to make me acutely aware of my surroundings.

  The feel of the cooling ocean air on my skin. The smell of beer and meat grilling nearby. The harsh yellow glow of the overhead lights bathing everything in an unnatural hue.

  The calls of the crowd, that damn chant continuing, even as I now consciously push it away, the sound little more than a buzz in the background.

  Rising to full height, I turn and for the first time see my opponent standing across from me. Two inches taller than I am, she has a good twenty pounds on me, the last few years having stripped away any extra weight that my previous life up north might have allowed.

  The announcer was right. We are about as different as two women can be.

  The most obvious examples of this are easy to see, her being a bit pudgy, myself all planes and angles, ridges and sinew bulging out. Her Latina heritage gives her skin an amber glow, whereas my Caucasian birth has been beaten back by years of exposure to the sun, the result a mahogany sheen and a texture resembling leather.

  Her hair is long and dark, pulled into a simple ponytail. My blond hair has been shaved into a Mohawk the width of my brow, the sides buzzed to a quarter inch, the top woven into a braid running halfway down my back.

  Electric pulses run the length of my body, the faint sound of the chanting still present on the periphery of my consciousness. The combination buoys me, making it impossible to stand still. Barely realizing it, I bounce from one foot to the other, feet barely touching down before pushing me up into the air again.

  Seeing my movement, Rosales begins to pummel the air with heavy punches, silently challenging me into her vision of a gladiator battle.

  Not a chance. But she’s welcome to go right ahead and wear herself out over there.

  Having seen similar situations play out before, the ring announcer stifles a smile. Giving me a wink, he climbs from the ring, sliding out between the second and third ropes and dropping to the sand below.

  In his place, the same man that’s been overseeing the ring since I first showed up almost three years ago appears. In his forties, his hair is buzzed a uniform length all the way around, bits of salt popping up at the temples. Thick forearms and a mangled nose suggest he was once a fighter himself.

  Dressed in a plain white T-shirt, he is again forced to wear the black bow tie the kid outside demands, one more tiny unnecessary detail added to the mix.

  Like me, I imagine the only reasons he’s here are that the place doesn’t ask questions and always pays in cash.

  Except for the ridiculous bow tie they make him wear, he is all business as he steps into the center of the ring. Rotating his head at the neck, he extends a hand to either side.

  Beginning with Rosales, he asks, “Blue corner, ready?”

  A dip of the chin is the sole response, the shadowboxing coming to a momentary break.

  “Red corner, are you ready?” the referee asks, casting his hound-dog eyes my way.

  I know it’s standard, the same thing that every referee in every form of combat sport in the world has to ask, but it seems painfully stupid to me. No fighter ever steps through the ropes without knowing exactly what can happen.

  And they damned sure don’t face that without being ready.

  My weight continues to shift from side to side, the tail of my braid slapping lightly against my exposed shoulder blades, as I nod in response.

  Bringing his hands together before him, the man pauses just briefly. The chanting mercifully dies away, my weight balancing evenly on the balls of my feet.

  Ready doesn’t begin to describe what I’m feeling right now.

  Chapter Three

  One hundred and forty miles north of Shakey Jake’s, Los Angeles Police Department Lieutenant II Jensen Spiers sits staring down into his glass. Hunched over in his seat, both forearms rest on the lacquered bar, most of his weight pressed atop them.

  A deep crease bisects his brow, his vision blurred as he stares down at the cheap whiskey and the melting ice cubes beneath him.

  This isn’t where he’s supposed to be. Tonight is supposed to be a celebration, another victory lap in what seems to have been an unending parade for him and his partner — and by extension their unit — over the better part of the last year.

  Together, they’re all supposed to be sitting in one of the favored watering holes of the department. Regardless what attire those in attendance wore, there would be no doubt that every last person was on the force, men and women crammed in like sardines, everybody smiling.

  As well they should be. The bust that he and his partner had orchestrated four nights prior was enormous. It was the sort of thing that made headlines and won medals.

  Turned heads at the state legislature. Affected how future funding was allocated.

  Which was the point.

  When the Special Investigations team was first established within the Gang and Narcotics Division, the goal was to separate out those major offenses that were perpetrated in the name of drug violence. To parse them off from other major crimes, where they were fast becoming overshadowed by the rapidly increasing murder rate in the city.

  Tough to care much about who’s moving new product when on any given corner people are being gunned down.

  For the first few months, the unit had done little but paperwork, a daily onslaught of requisition forms for everything from desk chairs to office supplies. Just the two of them perched on the very case files they were trying to work, squirreled away in a closet deep in the underbelly of the Hollenbeck precinct house.

  About a year ago, the needle had started to move. They got their first bust, a modest cocaine sting that netted several kilos and a few th
ousand in cash. Shortly thereafter, heroin.

  The big get, the one that finally started shifting opinions on their project, came in the form of more than five million worth of fentanyl — the latest buzzword in the nationally burgeoning opioid epidemic. People took notice.

  Spiers was promoted from Lieutenant I to II. The clouds opened up and mythical things he’d only heard about such as discretionary funds became available.

  They were given space on the second floor, replete with desks and even windows. A receptionist to answer the phone and help file the tremendous volume of paper they were pushing through.

  A second, and then a third, team to work with them.

  For ten solid months, life had been a whirlwind. An unending stream of leads and arrests. Of responding to information requests from the brass downtown at headquarters and the press asking for a few minutes of their time.

  For a man that had cut his teeth working the streets in the West Hollywood precinct, it had been the proverbial dream come true. A shift away from investigating overdosing starlets to getting out and actually working in from the back end.

  Focusing on the how, instead of always the why.

  “You still good down here?” the barkeep asks, pulling Spiers’s attention up.

  A middle-aged woman with curly auburn hair, she smiles his way. Leaning forward, she presses her palms against the edge of the bar, her triceps muscles flexing slightly beneath the sleeves of her black T-shirt, the scoop neck hanging just low enough to show a tiny bit of cleavage.

  As if a woman isn’t already the reason Spiers is now hiding in this bar.

  Lifting his drink, Spiers cradles it in both hands, tapping the underside of his wedding band against the side of his glass.

  “No, thanks,” he replied, forcing a smile. “All set here.”

  Shoving herself upright, a bit of the congeniality the barkeep had just a moment before dissipates. The corners of her mouth turn downward as she glances to the drink, and the espoused hand holding it.

  “One of those nights, huh?”

  “Seen your share, I’m sure,” Spiers replies.

  “Ha,” the woman replies, her head rocking back slightly. “You should stop by on Tuesdays. There’s a support group and everything.”

  Feigning a laugh, Spiers watches as she moves off in the other direction before flicking a disinterested gaze up toward the television behind the bar. For a moment, he considers the college football game, a local power conference school kicking the holy hell out of a no-name early season opponent.

  Leaving it at that, he returns his focus to the drink in his hand, adding the conversation to the tangle of things working across his mind.

  As he does so, a thought occurs to him, a smirk lifting back one corner of his mouth.

  Regardless what this woman thinks she might have seen, he can guarantee it is nothing like this.

  Chapter Four

  The ring announcer’s name is Brent Jacobson, though he insists on going by the name Jake. Probably some nickname one of the cool kids in high school gave him and he’s clung to ever since, even slapping the moniker on the establishment we’re now in.

  Reclined behind a desk in the back room of the place, the Aloha shirt is stripped off, as are the sandals. Bare feet with sand clinging to calloused heels are propped on the corner of the desk. An elbow rests on the arm of his chair, his hand directly above it clutching a hand-rolled cigar.

  Based on the sweet smell of the smoke hovering in the air, barely shoved around by the three paddles of the fan above, I’d guess it is Cuban. At least a hundred bucks, if not more.

  In the corner sits the referee, the bow tie gone, the white T-shirt as well. In its place is nothing but bare torso, a series of lash scars crossing over it, intimating at a past life spent in the fields.

  Like me, he is openly sweating, the overhead light shining off his skin.

  “Thanks for making it go to the second tonight,” Jake says, a faint smile on his face. “Increased the house’s take by quite a bit.”

  It’s been half an hour since the fight ended, the crowd having drifted away from the makeshift stadium while I showered and changed. Most headed inside to the bar. A cacophony of noise can be heard through the wall, promising another typical Saturday night.

  My thumbs hooked into the back pockets of my jeans, I reply, “You promised me a grand if I drug it out.”

  The smile fades only slightly as Jake flicks his eyes to the referee. “You didn’t have to break her arm.”

  “I know. I didn’t want to, but she wouldn’t tap.”

  Whether I had to or not, I don’t really care. I just didn’t want to have to fall asleep tonight with the sound of her humerus snapping still echoing through my head.

  “I even told her to tap,” the referee says, his English so accented it is barely understandable. “Thought she could make the bell.”

  There was no way she was making the bell and pushing it to the third round. Not with almost a minute to go and me having the kimura lock on tight.

  She was lucky it had gone as long as it did, her movements so slow and stilted I practically had to drag her ass into the second round.

  If it had gone to the third, she likely would have passed out from lack of oxygen.

  “You promised me a grand,” I repeat, my tone and the look on my face both letting him know this is a conversation that doesn’t need to be taking place. We aren’t friends, and I have no interest in becoming as much.

  I am here to get paid and then get on the road.

  “That I did,” Jake replies. Reaching into the top drawer of his desk, he takes out a roll of bills held together by a rubber band doubled over. Tossing it my way, I raise my hands to catch it just before it hits my chest.

  Peeling back the top corner, I rifle through a series of fifties and hundreds, all in American currency.

  “It’s all there,” Jake says, returning to his cigar. “I’m no fool.”

  The truth in that is debatable, though on this particular topic, he is right. Not once has he ever tried to stiff me, that being one of the few reasons I keep making my way back.

  For all the kid’s faults, knowing how and when to pay certainly aren’t among them.

  At least not with me, the reason for that left open to speculation.

  “Maybe next time, get me to the third?” he says.

  “Maybe next time, get me a better fighter to go up against,” I reply, tucking the wad of bills into the front of my jeans. A small lump presses against the top of my thigh as I wrench my hand free, flicking my middle and forefinger up in a slight wave.

  I’m halfway to the door before his voice calls me back.

  “Well, now, wait,” Jake replies, dropping his feet to the floor and leaning forward. Resting his elbows atop the desk, he asks, “Speaking of that, when do you think we can expect you again?”

  Flicking his gaze to the referee, he adds, “I can promise you a G again. Gate goes up at least that much every time you step inside.”

  A thousand dollars for fifteen minutes work is good money. It’s not like I’m not always training anyway, so getting paid for it is a nice bonus.

  At the same time, letting anybody think they can control me with something so trivial is something I will not allow.

  Pretending to consider it for just a moment, my response is cut short by my phone vibrating in my back pocket, a single pulse and nothing more. Even without sliding it out or bothering to check the screen, I know exactly what it means.

  And it isn’t good.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  Chapter Five

  The car isn’t a cruiser, but that makes it no less conspicuous. Parked along the curb outside of some bar named On Tap, the paint job is black, the roof adorned with three antennas of varying heights. The frame of the body is square, the tires thick and durable.

  To anybody that’s spent even a couple of years in East Los Angeles, it is obvious at a glance that the driver is law enforcement.
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  For someone that has spent his entire life there like Hector Lima, it is almost an insult, as glaring as a neon billboard.

  “You sure that’s him?” Bocco asks from behind the steering wheel. Parked on the opposite side of the street from the unmarked sedan, he lowers his head a few inches to get a better view.

  A few inches away, Lima doesn’t bother. He’d know the vehicle anywhere, no matter how many times they tried to swap out the license plates.

  “Positive,” Lima says.

  “You want me to go with you?” Bocco asks. Returning to upright, he glances over to Lima, the glow from the sodium lights lining the street flashing across his skin.

  At thirty years old, time and gravity haven’t quite started to pull yet. His hair is still thick, free from gray and shorn down tight to his skull.

  The only markings of time at all are a scar cleaving his right eyebrow down the middle and a single tattoo on his left forearm.

  Lima was there when he got both.

  Which is why Bocco is the man here with him now.

  “Naw,” Lima replies. Reaching for the passenger door, he wrenches it open, warm evening air swirling into the chilled interior of the car. “I’m not going to push up on him.”

  “Just a friendly reminder,” Bocco replies in understanding. “I got you.”

  How friendly the reminder will be, Lima hasn’t yet decided. Not that the tone of what he’s about to say is the important part, the key being the message he is here to deliver.

  Pausing to allow a pair of cars to slide past, Lima crosses the street to the sedan. Going the long way around it, he spies a short stack of coffee cups wedged into the middle holder, the floor of the passenger footwell littered with napkins and wrappers.

  In the back is a handful of clothing and toiletry items.

  If there had been even a single doubt as to who the ride belonged to before walking over, it no longer exists.

  “Damn slob,” Lima says, giving his head a disgusted shake as he walks around the rear bumper and assumes a position against the passenger side of the car. Folding his arms over his chest, he stares in through the windows lining the side of On Tap, unable to see past the darkened glass or the glow of the bright bulbs behind it.