She thought about how gently Damon touched her sometimes, and how hard he pushed her other times. She chewed at the end of a strand of hair, an old habit revived from its grave. She rolled the window up and thought about a movie she'd seen once, about a party trapped on an island by a storm. Then she thought about how nice everything felt after a storm had passed.
Kennick watched the storm from the driver's seat, where he kept a steady pace towards Miami. They broke through Pompano Beach and into Fort Lauderdale. If they were lucky, they'd be there in less than an hour. But the storm looked like it would make them unlucky.
In the back, Kim and Ricky stared out opposite windows, and Mina sat with her knees nearly touching the divider between the driver and passenger seats. She had a hand on each knee, her green eyes dead set ahead. Cristov ground his teeth in the passenger seat. He'd told Ricky not to come. Just like Kennick had told Kim not to come. But they'd known from the start it was a losing battle. They should never have told the girls at all.
No one talked about how ugly the storm looked. What would be the use of talking about it? It was coming, whether they wanted it to or not.
Jenner didn't know about the storm. He was locked up tight in the back of an unmarked van, and had been for days – at least, it seemed like days. He knew that the few times he'd seen daylight, the sky had looked like morning and then afternoon and then morning again. They'd chosen to bring him along, after all, instead of trusting him with the few young recruits left behind at the clubhouse.
He was as much a prisoner as he'd ever been, but he was closer to freedom than he'd ever get. The variables, though – they were a nuisance. What if's spiraled through his mind in a dizzying array. He had all the time in the world to consider each and every one of them, too.
The men driving the van stayed a safe distance behind the bikes up front. They wouldn't crowd their brothers in the Miami traffic. They knew where they were going. They worried about the storm, though. Riding in the rain was a bad time. Their numbers were small enough without adding this kind of risk to it all.
Roper rode forward, towards the clouds, towards the storm, not caring about what conditions he'd have to ride through. He was going to get revenge for Rig. He was going to show that gypsy fuck and his inbred family what happened when you fucked with the Steel Dragons.
Curly Gottlieb glanced out the window. He saw the storm, grunted at it. Another day, another fucking thunderstorm. He hated Florida. But it was cheap, and there were enough scumbags that he didn't feel like he stood out, walking down the street. He fingered the switchblade sewn into the waistband of his shorts; the threads would give easily when pulled. At the right moment. Always at the right moment. Curly needed to trust himself to find the right moment. He needed the money. That was all he cared about.
Slowly, all the parties began to converge. The location of the fight was not the center of the storm, as poetry would want it to be. It was actually quite a ways south of the center of the storm. But life and poetry rarely converge. And when they do, that's when things are at their most dangerous.
31
Tricia watched the door to the gym until she saw Damon emerge, then started the engine. She kept her distance as she followed him through the strange streets; he kept checking his phone, presumably for directions, which meant he didn't notice the car moving just a bit too slowly a block or so behind. She hoped that he wouldn't make any sudden turns, and to her relief, he didn't. She followed him until he turned down an alleyway beside a boarded-up building with no signage on it.
The other side of the building had a pull-through for cars. She turned down it, saw a parking lot stretching out behind the building. There were plenty of cars there, so Tricia felt confident speeding up and pulling into a space, hoping that Damon wouldn't pay it any mind. He glanced in her direction as she parked, but nothing registered. He was focused on the fight.
Tricia, for that matter, was too focused on watching Damon enter through the back door to see the car pulling up beside hers. She was still looking in the opposite direction when she opened the door and began to slide out; one foot had just hit pavement when she finally noticed the five sets of eyes staring at her.
"What the … " she said.
"Where is he?" Cristov asked through the rolled-down passenger side window. "Where's that dumb meathead fuck?"
Ricky, in the backseat, leaned forward and gently smacked the back of Cristov's head.
"What are you doing here?" Tricia asked, one hand still on the door of her car. "How did you … "
"It took a lot of calls, and a lot of money, for us to find you guys," Cristov said, opening his door and getting out of the car. "Where's Damon?"
Tricia rose to meet him, watching as Kennick, Kim, Mina, and Ricky all piled out of the car, vaguely reminiscent of clowns – minus any semblance of jolliness. She didn't get a chance to answer Cristov's question before Ricky lunged at her, wrapping her in a skinny-armed hug.
"We were so worried," Ricky said. "You can't just go gallivanting off into … "
"Ricky," Tricia said, returning the hug. "I'm sorry you were worried."
She pulled away, though, and looked her friend dead in the eye.
"But I can just go gallivanting off," she said. "I'm an adult, not a pound puppy."
Kim joined the two girls in their embrace, pulling Tricia away from Ricky to hug her.
"You have to tell us where next time," Kim said. "That's what Ricky means."
"Alright, alright," Cristov said, growing more agitated by the moment. "She's safe, she's fine, great. Damon's not, though. Where is he?"
"What do you mean Damon's not?" Tricia said, her tone sharpening, looking at Cristov with her arms still around Kim.
"This is a set up," Kennick said, stepping in front of Cristov. "Whoever Damon's here to fight is on the Steel Dragons' payroll, and he's going to fight dirty. Damon doesn't know, right?"
Tricia's eyes widened, her jaw falling slack. She shook her head; she couldn't imagine that Damon did know. Steel Dragons. Those men. Those men who'd …
She swallowed her fear. She wasn't the one in danger this time. Damon was.
"So where is he? We need to get to him before he goes out there and gets himself killed," Cristov said.
Tricia's stomach felt like a cold, icy pit. She'd had a bad feeling about this fight, but for far different reasons.
"He went in the back," she said, pointing to the metal door that Damon had knocked on and then disappeared into.
"Let's go," Cristov said, pushing past the small crowd and stalking across the parking lot, Kennick quick on his heels. Tricia made to follow them, but felt Kim's hand on her arm, pulling her back. Mina was following Kennick, but looking back over her shoulder at the three women.
"We should let them deal with it," Kim said softly. "They know how to deal with him best … "
Tricia shook herself free, smiled softly at Kim.
"I don't know about that, Kim," she said. "I don't know if that's true anymore."
She trotted off behind Mina, leaving Kim and Ricky to look at each other in surprise.
"Fucking gypsy magic," Ricky said, shaking her head slowly. "How do they do it?"
"If you figure it out, let me know," Kim said, leaning back against the hot metal of the car. "We can bottle it, make a fortune off love potions."
Cristov banged on the metal door, relentlessly. Kennick watched Tricia approach, wondering what had happened between her and his brother on their long trip down the coast. If you gave him three guesses, he'd be right on the first try. Good, he thought, if we can't get through to him, maybe she can …
"I'm going around the front," Mina said, backing away from the door. "If we can't get in through the back … "
"Be careful," Kennick warned, not entirely comfortable with the idea of his little sister walking, solo, into an underground fighting crowd. But she was already around the corner and gone. There was still no response from the other side of the metal door, despite Cristov's unrelenting pounding. He shouted Damon's name to punctuate each bang, his fist reddening at the same rate as his face. The storm was almost on top of them, a strong wind now blowing stray papers across the parking lot.
"Did he tell you what this was all about?" Kennick asked, turning to Tricia. She opened her mouth, feeling compelled to tell the truth. Kennick had that way about him that inspired honesty. But she knew the story wasn't hers to tell. She shook her head.
"I was just along for the ride," she said, looking away quickly. Kennick narrowed his eyes, sensing her dishonesty, but just at that moment, the door opened. Cristov nearly fell forward into the dank, sweat-scented room on the other side.