instantaneous.”
I put my head back on the cement.
“You royalty?”
“Second tier.”
The way he talked, I had him pegged for tier one. Tier two meant he sold his ass to the man. His folks hadn’t bought him up yet. There was no way his pretty face would ever see a real fistfight, never mind a firefight.
“Good for you.”
“Luis Valle?” a guard called.
Still looking me in the eye, the college prick smiled. “That’s me,” he called back.
“You just got posted,” the guard said. “Let’s go.”
He winked at me. God, I felt like hitting him.
“Your people will get you out of here, right?” he asked.
“I don’t have people; I have Eddie,” I said. “If I’m still in here when the next fight comes, he’ll get me then, but I’ll get docked.”
“Valle, let’s go!”
He got up and went with the guard. Marko shot him a look when he went by, and like a little bitch, he smiled and gave him a wave. Dipshit didn’t even know where he was. He was a cat in the dog pound and so were his dumb friends, but at least they knew to sit still and shut up.
The cell door banged shut and it got quiet again, except for the TV. They were still going on about revivors; should they work, should they fight, and all that. It was the same shit as always. Who cared? At least so far, they couldn’t take you without your signing up, so why bitch? Those bastards took your money and got to say how much you counted and what you could do. They took down all there was about you, from your ID to your DNA, and they never asked once and no one ever said shit. Now people cared? Stick me up the ass all you want while I’m here, just don’t screw with me when I’m dead—what kind of sense did that make?
You didn’t have to sign up. The way I saw, if it bugs you, don’t sign. I hadn’t.
The guys in the other cell were off in a bunch by then, laughing and talking shit like how hard and in what way they’d bang the newswoman who had come on if they had the chance, which they never would. It was stupid, but the bars made me mad, like even though we were all in jail I had to be in the girl cell. They were all in there, and I was stuck on my side with two high- class bitches who cried the whole time. The guys didn’t want to look soft, so the only one who came over at all was the pretty boy who I didn’t even know. Perfect.
My eyes drifted back to the TV. A reporter stood near a black car parked on a side street. The camera cut and showed some rich Asian woman dead behind the wheel, covered in blood. “The suspected serial killer has struck yet again,” a voice on the TV was saying.
“Flax,” a guard called, and I looked up through the bars. He was a big guy, on his way to fat.
“That’s me.”
“Let’s go,” he said. I looked at the guys in the next cell, but no one was calling them out and they looked as clueless as me.
“What for?” I asked.
“Today.”
Things I might have done went through my mind as I got up and went to the guard, who slid open the door. No way would Eddie come for me and not them. It must have been something I did, which was a lot of things.
“Out,” he said. I went through the gate and he slammed it shut behind me. He didn’t look at me twice, and just walked down the hall with me in back of him.
“Nice shiner,” he said when we got out of holding.
“Thanks.”
“You get that in the ring, or at the bar after?”
“The second one.”
The night before was a blur, but it didn’t happen at the fight. I got the cut over my right eye there, but not the shiner on my left. Someone caught me good at the bar.
“Well, Ms. Flax, it’s your lucky day,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Yup. The guy you jumped dropped the charges, and in all the resulting bullshit of the little war you started, even the cameras couldn’t pin anything too bad on you.”
I shrugged at his back. That was pretty lucky, actually.
“Here we are,” he said when we got to the main entryway.
“Huh?”
“You got posted,” he said. “What’d you think, I was giving you a tour? You’re free to go.”
He handed me my leather jacket and I put it on.
“I left what I found in the pocket. Consider that a gift.”
He held out a big yellow envelope like I should take it, so I did. I ripped it open and saw my cell phone and keys inside. When I looked back, he was pointing like I should get the hell out.
“A couple of your buddies dropped your bike off last night so it didn’t get towed; it’s in the lot out back.”
“Who bailed me out?” I asked. He jerked his thumb toward the wall.
“Nice fight, by the way,” he said. “The first one, not the second one.”
When I looked at where he pointed, I saw pretty boy from inside the cell standing there, arms crossed and back against the wall like some kind of pimp. When I turned back, the guard was gone.
I looked back and pretty boy was still smiling that smug smile I was going to learn to hate in about five minutes. If he’d really bailed me out, I’d almost rather have gone back in, but not enough to actually have done it. When people did things for you, they wanted something back.
“You do this?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, still smiling. He tailed me out. The sun was almost up.
“Why?”
“It wasn’t a big deal.”
Bail, even for a back-lot brawl, was a big deal, but maybe it wasn’t a big deal for him. Maybe he was a fan, or maybe he did it just to pat himself on the back. Maybe it was to show off.
“What do I owe you?” I asked.
“I just—”
“Don’t screw with me. What do I owe you?”
“How about a ride home?” he said.
I still didn’t know what his game was, but a ride I could do. If that was all it was going to take, I could do that. A ride on the back of my bike in the cold might wipe that look of his face, even.
“A ride? Sure. Okay. You got it.”
His shit was so slick, I even bought it a little.
What a crock of shit.
Nico Wachalowski—FBI Home Office
Whenever I was put under for maintenance, my mind always went back to the same place.
I never found out what knocked me down back then. Later I was told it was probably a concussion grenade. The last thing I saw was Sean turning from the radio as if he’d heard something; then everything turned to white noise.
I could see before I could hear; when I opened my eyes I was on my back, being dragged by one foot through the brush. Wet grass and branches whipped across my face, and I could see the night sky above me. I lifted my
