“We’ll start with tape. If it hurts badly enough you’ll beg for gloves.”
More pain. Terrific.
Malcolm walked her through the basics of how to shape her fist, how to swing through the punch, how to hit the bag with maximum impact. With her right and then her left hand, she hit the bag repeatedly, first jabbing it, then hooking it, then uppercutting it. She hit it until her fingers were swollen and her knuckles were scraped. Until the tape began to fray around the edges.
“Enough with the bag,” Malcolm finally said.
Cass agreed thankfully. She didn’t doubt the usefulness of the workout, but her hands were numb and her shoulders and arms protested.
“We’re done?”
“Do you have a little left in the tank?”
Unfortunately, Cass was the type who, even if she didn’t, wasn’t going to admit it.
“What next?”
“Something more important than hitting. Ducking.”
The taut wire that ran the length of the wall behind the punching bags was expressly for that purpose. Cass ducked and weaved over and over again, moving from one side of the thin rope to the other. Making her legs move forward. More often than not she misjudged and came up directly under the wire. One time she came up so hard the wire snapped her back and sent her tumbling to the mat. She was pretty sure she heard a few chuckles from the other side of the gym.
But she got up and she kept going and after a while the motion became almost effortless. Until she was ducking and weaving in a fluid motion. When Malcolm swung his arms at her, she moved underneath one, underneath the other and landed a gentle jab to his midsection.
Granted, his arms weren’t moving very fast and his intent wasn’t actually to hit her so it wasn’t a great test, but she did feel more confident.
“Good start,” he congratulated her. “I think that’s enough for today, but we’ll come back tomorrow. For now you can hit the showers.”
Cass glanced down at herself. Her sports top was damp with sweat and there was a fine sheen of it all along her skin and she knew her hair was plastered against her neck. Turning her head, she caught a glance of herself in one of the spotted mirrors. With the tape still around her hands, and her muscles more pronounced through both the effort and the gleam of sweat, she looked rather tough. Almost indomitable. For a woman of her size, that was quite a feat.
Malcolm stood behind her and she could see the intensity of his gaze reflected in the mirror. “Like I said before. There’s steel underneath. We’ll come back again.”
Yes, she decided. She would come back again.
“You ready for a shower?”
She looked at him over her shoulder with a dubious expression. “Oh, I know you don’t think I’m taking a shower here.”
Malcolm smiled. “No. Mostly because they only have men’s facilities. We’ll take you home and get you cleaned up.”
The word
The next morning when she came downstairs, there was a pair of boxing gloves waiting for her on the kitchen table next to her toast, orange juice and a plate of scrambled eggs. They had gone grocery shopping together the night before. Technically speaking it had been their first date.
“You’re going to spoil me.” She smiled, looking down at the small, red, overly cushioned gloves.
“Please don’t say anything as corny as ‘you couldn’t possibly,’” he teased. “It would make me happy if you accepted them.”
Cass considered the state of her knuckles. They were red and still slightly swollen from yesterday’s activities. Which meant today was only going to get worse. “I’ll take them,” she said. “So long as you understand that my affections can’t be bought.”
“Absolutely.”
“Especially with boxing gloves.”
He chuckled and they headed out again to Hank’s Gym. This time, there were a few more men lifting weights, but none spared Cass more than a cursory glance. She had no doubt that a woman’s presence in this gym was a strange thing; she just got the impression that very little rattled these men. Malcolm worked on her technique and added a few basic kicks to her repertoire of moves. Within an hour, she was making him miss and making him gasp anytime she connected with his midsection.
The door to the gym opened, sending a bolt of light inside, reminding everyone it was a bright fall morning. An immediate tension filled the place. Two of the men who had been simultaneously curling a fifty-pound weight while staring at their bulging muscles in the mirror suddenly stopped. Cass watched their attention stray to the door.
She turned, curious who the new visitor was and was surprised to see Dougie’s tall frame. That explained the tension. She had no doubt that several of Hank’s regulars would rather stay clear of the law. Dougie’s badge, clipped to his belt, shone like a beacon of light throughout the space. Johnny went so far as to head for the shower room.
Dougie spotted Malcolm and raised his chin. He walked over to where they were standing and saw that Cass was sweating profusely.
He saw the gloves and shook his head. “Going for the super lightweight class?”
“Funny.”
“I thought it might help,” Malcolm told him.
“It might.”
“You have news?” Cass wanted to know. Dougie had called Malcolm’s cell earlier looking for them.
“Not great news. The New York connection didn’t pan out. The DNA found at that scene didn’t match our guy. Or I guess I should say our girl. The lab came back on a hair sample we found. There was a trace of a strawberry extract, probably residue from shampoo. I don’t know a lot of guys who use a strawberry-scented shampoo so for now we’re going to work that angle. The fact that it is in all likelihood a woman trigger anything with you?”
Cass used her teeth to untie the laces on her gloves, then pulled them off by wrapping her arm around the opposite hand and tugging. “No. Should it?”
“Maybe you heard about someone asking for you. Maybe down at the coffeehouse.”
Cass shook her head. “No. Nothing. But then I’m never really sure how my name gets around. It just does. Either way, the coffeehouse would be the last place anyone would look now. I was fired a few days ago.”
“Why?” Dougie asked.
“You were fired?” Malcolm asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Not much to tell.” Cass shrugged, not understanding why Malcolm was so annoyed at the news. “An upset widower, who turned out to be a murderer, came looking for me. He scared some customers before I could disable him with a stun gun. The manager figured it was bad for business.”
“That’s not right,” Malcolm said. “It wasn’t your fault. I can fix that.”
“No, you can’t, because it wasn’t wrong of the manager, either,” Cass stated. “He’s got a business to run, and I freaked out the help. It’s not the first time it happened.”
Dougie, however, seemed especially annoyed. “This isn’t good.”
“I’ll find another job. Seriously, it’s not that big of a deal.”
“That’s not what I meant. I was hoping…”
His voice trailed off and Malcolm stared at him, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. “You were hoping what?”
“Look, we have no more leads. We know this girl is probably not from around here if the train ticket is any indication. You’ve got Cass tucked away in the mansion and that’s great. But our killer is going to do one of three things-track down some other psychic somewhere and kill her, give up and leave, in which case we might never find her, or eventually she’s going to find a way to get to Cass. Let’s not wait for her to act. Let’s bring her to us instead. We do it this way and we’re the ones in control.”
