CHAPTER 1
“I’m not feeling it.”
Henry Kowalski, the hustler with a heart of gold, rakes his blond hair to one side—a sign I’ve come to recognize as a nervous tic—as I track two men hurrying through the dark across the parking lot of the NightStar Canning warehouse. They knock on a rusted door marked “Employees Only,” and after a quick exchange with a big, burly bouncer, disappear inside, just like the dozen others that came before.
“You’ve got this,” I tell Henry, pulling him behind the corrugated metal wall of NightStar’s smoke shack, a free-standing structure twenty yards from the back entrance. “Just follow my lead.”
He shifts, the leather jacket he got for tonight creaking against my shoulder. It’s faded at the stress points. I know this, because he pointed it out no less than six times. It’s supposed to make him look tough.
Now he just needs to act that way.
“No, I know,” he says, smoothing down the wild waves of my dark, chin-length hair and absently straightening the collar of my coat. “But what if instead of me being your cousin, I’m a young entrepreneur who’s gotten rich off developing this app—”
“No.”
“Just listen. It connects athletes with personalized eating tips and hot new workout attire trends—”
“No.”
“And I’m looking to blow my tidal wave of cash in a seedy establishment with sweaty men who like to wrestle.” He wiggles his eyebrows, and leans closer to whisper, “I’ve even got a name. Dolph Müller. Good, right?”
A bitter December wind rattles the roof of the smoke shack.
I step closer. Take his warm hands. Try to smile so it doesn’t look like I’m about to kill him. I’ve timed our entrance so we aren’t here too early—don’t want to draw unnecessary suspicion—but Henry’s change of heart is threatening to put us behind schedule. “What if Dolph doesn’t speak English and lets me do all the talking?”
He pouts. “You don’t like it.”
“I like the strong but silent angle more.”
He lifts the collar of his jacket, giving me his best tough guy pose, and waits for me to change my mind.
I don’t.
With a sigh of resignation, he heads toward the warehouse, and my hesitance evaporates with the confidence in Henry’s stride. Soon, we’re standing in front of the rusted door, my fist poised under the faded “Employees Only” sign.
I give Henry one last look. His green eyes find mine. For a moment, the weight of this mission presses against my chest. Every day that Dr. O is still playing puppet master at Vale Hall is another day that we’re in danger. Charlotte and Sam are depending on us. Margot and all the students before her that Dr. O has erased from existence need this to work.
Caleb needs this to work.
Henry nods.
It’s go time.
I knock. The door pulls inward, and a man the size of a school bus hulks in the yellow ring of light above. He takes one look at our faces, ten years younger than the last guys he let in, scoffs, and begins to shut us out.
“Wait!” I cram my foot in the jamb, the rubber sole of my Chucks blocking the exit. “We’ve got money.”
Slowly, the door swings back open. My ears tune in to the raised voices somewhere down the dark hallway behind him.
“What do you want?” The school bus has a cross tattooed on his neck, and a lump of chewing tobacco in the pocket of his cheek. For a moment, I’m back in Devon Park, standing outside Pete’s apartment, waiting for his bouncer, Eddie, to let me in.
I imagine they’re pulling the same drug-selling routine in prison, thanks to a narcotics bust I kindly set up on their behalf.
“I want to bet on a fight,” I tell the school bus.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The door starts to close again. My worn-out Chuck stays locked between us.
“Girl,” he says, clearly annoyed, “you don’t move that foot, this door’s going to take it off.”
Before he can act on that promise, I pull a fold of cash from my coat pocket and wave it through the crack.
Now I’ve got his attention.
The door opens wide again, and the man’s gaze moves from the money to Henry, who wilts under his hard stare. So much for the confident young entrepreneur.
“My dad’s out of town,” I say with a guilty smile. “He left my cousin and me some pizza money.”
The bus’s brows flatten. “That’s a lot of pizza.”
I force a laugh when he doesn’t step aside. “So what’s the cover? Twenty?”
We both know there’s not a door charge, but if a little green is what he needs to let us in, so be it.
“A hundred. Apiece.” He smirks at Henry’s leather jacket, the zipper of which Henry is nervously jerking up and down.
My face paints a portrait of disgust.
“That’s extortion,” says Henry, before catching himself. “And I should know. Because I’m kind of a businessman—”
I flatten a hand on his chest to stop him.
“Fifty apiece,” I tell the bus. He wants to play? Fine. We’ll play.
“Sixty,” he counters, and I can see in his hard eyes he’s not budging. “And the jacket’s mine. It’ll look good on my nephew.”
He tilts his chin at Henry, whose hand stalls on his zipper midway up his chest.
“My jacket?” Henry asks weakly.
“Deal,” I say, tugging it off Henry’s back. He resists for only a moment, then gives in.
“It’s vintage, so you’ll want to be—”
He makes a sound like he’s dying when the bus snatches it out of his hands. I drag Henry down the hall before he can make a scene.
“That was my lucky coat,” Henry laments, looking over his shoulder.
“We all have to make sacrifices, Dolph.”
“Got to keep your coat,” he mutters.
With the bouncer behind us, my pulse quickens, bringing a grim smile to my lips. I know I shouldn’t enjoy this as much as I do—too much hangs in the balance—but running game feels right in a way few other things do. Maybe I’m an adrenaline junkie.
Maybe I was born to be a con.
The linoleum beneath our feet is yellowed and warped around the corners. When we reach a metal staircase, our gazes follow the noise downstairs.
In the center of the room below, two men, already shirtless and bloodied, face off with bare knuckles. One has a tattoo across his back of a coiled rattlesnake. The other is a head taller, with a forehead the size of a three-car garage. Their makeshift ring is marked by orange traffic cones and rope, and behind the rows of jeering fans, cardboard boxes marked with NightStar’s logo have been shoved against a conveyer belt.
Snake Tattoo strikes, and a spray of crimson erupts from Forehead’s nose.
“I’m positive there are at least five health code violations happening right now,” Henry says, wincing.
My chin lifts toward the opposite side of the catwalk, where a group of guys hover near the railing. Two of them are muscle, meant only to guard the bookie—a short man dressed in black, sucking on the end of a toothpick. The rest are pointing at the fight below.
On the fringe, a guy in a red baseball cap chews his thumbnail.
“Hello, James,” I say under my breath.
James Rolo—at least that’s the name he gives the bookie when he places his bets—has been here three times in the last year. In between, he’s made a killing at the Brick Barrel in Amelia, and the Tulane Auto Parts Factory in Sycamore Township—big street-fighting venues on the south side.
I know this, because I’ve been following him since we bumped into each other—something I made certain didn’t look deliberate—on the train two weeks ago.
James always wins. It was just a matter of time before someone figured out how.
Below, the fighter with the snake tattoo is pummeling Forehead into the dirty cement. It’s a knockout match. No fouls. No refs. The fans on the catwalk are cheering, fists in the air. They’ve got big money riding on this. Last I heard, the minimum bet was five large.
“Ready?” I ask.
Time’s ticking. I can feel the rush in my blood, urging us to hurry.
“I was born ready,” Henry says, then gives a small fist pump. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”
We make our way around the far side of the catwalk, pushing through the small clusters of people watching the fight below. As we approach James, I feel an old swagger take hold. My hips sway. My mouth curves into a grin.
A few feet away from James, we stop, and I lean over the railing.
“You’re right,” I shout to Henry over the noise. “You can see better over here!”
The comment, purely for James’s benefit, isn’t a lie. From this side, a smear of blood on Forehead’s jaw is visible. The crack and slap of skin on skin echoes off the floor.
I pull back, and do a double take when James’s gaze darts away.
“Oh, hey!” I slide toward him. “We met on the train a couple weeks ago, right?”
He crosses his arms over his chest, recognition lighting his eyes even while suspicion pinches his features. “What are you doing here?”
His gaze slides over my fitted jeans, my sharp gray coat, and the clean lines of my wavy hair, hanging just below my chin thanks to Charlotte’s latest inspiration.
He’s making judgments—maybe he thinks I’m too young to be here. Maybe he thinks I’m rich and naive.
He has no idea who I am.
“Same as you, I guess.” I give him my most reassuring smile. “Who’ve you got tonight?”
His eyes dart back to the ring, and he frowns. “McCann.”
That must be Forehead, who is now weaving from side to side like he just failed a Breathalyzer. My eyes land on the other fighter, dodging skillfully to avoid McCann’s wild right hook. He’s in his twenties. Older than the picture in the file I stole from Dr. O’s safe.
Copyright © 2021 by Kristen Simmons
