She shrugs and takes a sip. “More for me.”
Parker doesn’t look happy about it, but he lifts me up over the railing with a nod to the bouncers. I wave goodbye to my friends as the attendant leads me around the ring toward the doors where the fighters are waiting in their separate locker rooms, getting geared up. Just before the crowd swallows us, I look back… straight into Parker’s eyes.
I see the worry there, in their depths. But also trust. And maybe, if I look a little deeper, I see love, too.
He loves me.
I hang onto that feeling as I hurry after the Scythe guy, cutting a path up the fenced-off walkway toward the back rooms and trying to ignore the screaming crowd. We leave behind the mass of fans and step into a secluded hallway, the heavy doors swinging shut behind us with a bang, blocking out the roar.
“Damn, that was loud,” I mutter, ears still ringing. I shake my head to clear them as I follow the man down the hallway. “How do you stand working here, on fight nights? Aren’t you worried you’ll go deaf?” I joke.
The man doesn’t answer; he just keeps walking down the deserted hall.
I’m starting to feel uneasy about this.
“…Or maybe you’re already deaf,” I murmur, eyeing the space around me. There are no locker rooms back here. I stop walking.
“Where’s Luca?” I ask, my pulse picking up speed.
The man turns to me, and I see the remorse on his face a second before I see his fist swinging out to clip me across my temple.
“I’m sorry,” he tells me, a second before his blow makes contact and everything goes black. “I didn’t have a choice. He’s got my family.”
* * *
When I wake up, my wrists are bound with a zip-tie and my head feels like someone used it as the ball in a game of ping pong. There’s also the fact that I’m being carried like a sack of flour over the shoulder of the guy who bashed my brains in.
I’m not sure if it’s the blow to the head or the fact that he’s holding me upside down, but I think I might vomit down his back. Which, seriously, would serve him right. I try to struggle, but none of my limbs are cooperating. The most I can manage is a weak kick against his shins as he hauls me from the backseat of his car across a parking lot. I see cracked asphalt passing beneath his feet and wonder vaguely if there’s a chance this man kidnapped me by accident.
Maybe he was looking for another Zoe.
I’ve never even seen this guy before. Who would possibly arrange for me to be accosted and abducted?
Lancaster.
The thought creeps into the back of my mind and lodges there, until it’s unshakably entrenched.
But he’s in jail, a voice of reason reminds me. There’s no way he’s behind this.
My foggy theories don’t matter, because we’re suddenly moving up a set of dilapidated stairs and into what looks like an old office building, judging by the stained beige carpet. My head jostles roughly as he carries me through the space, and nausea stirs to life in my gut again.
I’m definitely going to puke.
Unfortunately, before I manage to vomit on him, my captor bends forward and deposits me on a stainless steel table, the kind you find bolted to the floor in a crappy doctor’s clinic. Grunting in pain as he drops me, I fall to my side on the cold table, unable to keep myself upright with my head spinning.
He hit me really fucking hard, the bastard.
“Why are you doing this?” I moan as the man stares at me, both hands fisted in his hair. He looks more distressed than I feel, which is really saying something.
“I didn’t have a choice.” The man swallows nervously. “I’m just a part-time worker at Scythe. I don’t even usually work on fight nights. But this guy… he showed up in my fucking house last night.” He swallows again, Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. “I have a wife. I have a three-year-old son. He said if I didn’t help him…”
I try to breathe. “Who? Who are you talking about?”
“I don’t know his name, okay? All I know is, he said I had to go to the fight, somehow get you away from the crowd, and bring you here.” He leans back against the opposite wall. “And if I did that, he’d let my family go.”
“Call the police,” I hiss, struggling into an upright position.
“I’m not putting my family in danger.” He runs his hands through his hair, breathing heavily. The whites of his eyes flash as he looks around the run-down doctor’s office. It’s clear he’s spiraling quickly into panic. The guilt and the worry are eating away at him. He’s probably not a bad guy, under normal circumstances.
Considering nothing about this circumstance is normal, it’s safe to say he’s not exactly my favorite human on earth, right now.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
He glances at me, wild-eyed. “Steve.”