Montaine (14 page)

“What?” My hands flew to
my waistband. Sure enough, my skirt not only sat askew on my hips but also
backwards. I quickly adjusted it, spinning the zipper to the rear. A surge of
heat overtook my face. I was sure that I had turned a telltale shade of red by
this point, much to Kill’s mocking delight.

“You should be more
careful when you get dressed,” he said in a droll tone.

“Yeah.” I laughed to
disguise my embarrassment. Blood pounded in my temples. Beads of sweat broke
out around my hairline. “I need to check these things before I leave the house
in the morning!”

“Riiiiiiight.” He drew
out the word with a sarcastic flourish. “In the morning.” He reached a hand toward
me. His cold fingers skated along my bare forearm, raising a trail of
goosebumps. “Maybe you can give me a hand with some…umm…research one of these
days.”

I recoiled from his touch
and saw a flash of anger momentarily light up his pale gray eyes. Without
another word, he edged around me and strode down the hall, the thumps of his
footfalls a steady percussion behind my head.

His touch lingered on my
arm like a layer of ice. His words echoed in my brain with a hissing threat. I
shuddered involuntarily, my body trying to shake free any trace of that brief
instant of unwelcome contact.

I thought for a moment
about returning to Trent’s office and telling him about this unpleasant exchange.
But I couldn’t go tattling to Trent every time Kill decided to mess with me.
Sure, he was a big bucket of sleaze. So what? I was a big girl. I could handle
him.

Besides, a peal of
snickering laughter from Trent’s open doorway told me that Kill had beat me to
it. He was already in Trent’s office.

I returned to my desk amid
the soothing murmur of voices and typing fingers. Lowering myself into my
chair, I realized that I was too distracted to continue working on my story. I
switched to the subject of this unknown fighter, Hades. Trent had turned up a
solid blank so far, but maybe I would be able to locate new information.

I replayed my conversation
with Trent. He said that Hades looked like someone from a past life. An idea
sprang to life – a ridiculous and improbable idea – but one that I could not
simply dismiss out of hand.

I logged into my laptop
and ran a search for “Peter Haverford.”

Most of the results
pertained to Peter’s father, the former New York State Senator, William
Haverford. There were a few older articles about the Haverford family with
photos of Peter as a child, round-cheeked and innocent under a mop of tousled
dark hair. I even found one article from the
Leidensburg Register
dating
to the time of Rosie’s murder. Peter was mentioned in passing as a possible
suspect, but the newspaper stopped short of any direct accusations, clearly
wary of treading on the toes of his powerful father.

More recently, the press
office of the State Senate had published a piece about William Haverford’s
retirement after three decades of government service. The piece claimed that he
was leaving the Senate in order to spend more time with his beloved family.

Another more forthright
article from one of the Albany newspapers noted that William Haverford’s
supposed retirement actually coincided with an embezzlement scandal that had
taken out his top lieutenant and left William tainted with an aura of
corruption. His departure was not so much a voluntary retirement as a forced
removal.

This article was accompanied
by an updated photo of the entire Haverford clan. The caption identified Peter
in the front row. When I raised my eyes to Peter’s image, my heart nearly
stopped with shock. I heard a rushing in my ears. My throat turned dry as a
desert.

The hulking figure in the
photo clenched one iron fist at his side. His hair was shorn to the scalp. His light
eyes were turned menacingly on the photographer. His thick, muscular arm was
exposed beneath the seam of a short-sleeved shirt. On that arm was a familiar tattoo
of a bleeding skull surrounded by curling barbed wire.

Peter Haverford and Hades
were one and the same.

“Care for a
reconnaissance mission?”

It was Friday night at
the
KTFO
offices. Trent stood beside my desk, tossing his keys in the
air and catching them with an overhand grab.

“What are you
reconnoitering?”

I rubbed my eyes. They
were strained from staring at the computer screen all afternoon. I was nearly
finished with my story and planned to spend the weekend polishing up the finished
product for submission on Monday.

“I’m heading to the
warehouse in Brooklyn to do some on-the-ground research. Maybe our friend,
Hades, will be there tonight. Or maybe I’ll get lucky and find someone who
knows him.” Trent rapped his knuckles on the cold metal desk. “Are you in?”

I flipped my laptop
closed and popped it into my large purse. I had not told Trent about my
previous day’s discovery regarding the true identity of Hades. I struggled with
the knowledge, internally debating whether to tell Trent and wait for the
terrible consequences of that revelation or to keep it from him in the hope
that I might thereby save him. I was sure that Trent would seek revenge once he
discovered the truth. I was also convinced that one of them, either Trent or
Peter, would not survive the resulting showdown.

I simply couldn’t take
the risk. Maybe Trent would find out about Peter on his own, but I couldn’t
bear to be the source of that awful discovery and the destruction it would undoubtedly
unleash.

“Sure, I’ll come with
you.” I pressed my lips together in a thin smile and hauled the strap of my
purse over my shoulder.

“Great.” He lifted his
duffel from the floor.

“Are you fighting
tonight?”

He glanced at the bag.
“If I get the urge. I figured we could stop by the hospital afterwards.” He
spoke over his shoulder as we headed through the glass doors and toward the
elevator. “I spoke to Ezzie earlier today. Oscar is still the same. I have some
money to give her.” He patted a front pocket of the duffel.

I nodded.

“Are you ok, Kat? You’re
awfully quiet.”

“Yeah, I’m totally fine.”
I gave another unconvincing, thin-lipped smile.

Trent raised a skeptical
eyebrow. “You would tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course.” The lie tore
at my heart. There was so much that I was not telling him.

“I’m glad to hear that.”
He circled an arm around my waist as we descended in the creaking and clanging elevator.
“I need my best researcher on her A-game tonight.”

 A few minutes later, we
sped through the pedestrian-clogged downtown streets on our way to the solid immensity
of the Brooklyn Bridge and its string of fairy lights over the black and silent
water.

***

“Hey, Kat!”

I recognized Tanya’s smoky
voice in the crowd. She waved us over to a couple of open seats in the
bleachers.

“You’ve made friends?”
Trent eyed me with amusement.

“I sure did. You’re not
the only popular one around here.”

The spectators milled and
chatted during a lull between fights. Tanya’s husband, the lumberjack turned
software engineer, sat next to her. She wrapped me in a strong hug, her armful
of bangle bracelets clinking against my back.

“Y’all know each other
already.” She pointed between Trent and Eugene.

They shook hands firmly.

“Sorry about that, man,”
Trent said.

“No need to be sorry. It
was a good fight. You won fair and square.”

They both nodded in
silent acknowledgment.

“Is there anything new
with Oscar?” Tanya plunked onto the bench and slapped the open space beside her.

“No, nothing at all,” I
lowered myself to the bench with a sigh.

“That’s kind of why we’re
here, though.” Trent sat on my other side and placed the duffel bag between his
ankles. “I want to find that Hades guy. Do you two know anything?”

Tanya turned to Eugene,
who shook his head sadly. “I wish I did. I’ve never seen him before.”

“I’ve been watching for
him tonight,” Tanya added. “He’s not here. At least, not that I can tell. I
even checked the list of fighters when we arrived and didn’t see his name.

Trent gazed thoughtfully
in the direction of the ring, where two ripped and tattooed fighters joined in
a pre-fight handshake.

“I’m going to go have a
talk with Len,” he said. “Watch this.” He set the duffel between my feet and
tenderly kissed the top of my head before he set off through the stands.

“He sure is dreamy.”
Tanya poked me in the ribs with her elbow.

“Come on, I’m right
here,” Eugene grumbled.

“Not as dreamy as you
are, my love,” she fluttered her eyelashes.

“Yeah, right,” Eugene
grunted. “He’s way dreamier.”

Tanya laughed with a
full-throated guffaw, smooshed her husband’s meaty face between her red-taloned
palms, and kissed him on the nose.

Trent returned a few
minutes later. His serious expression and a quick shake of his head told me
that he had not learned anything new about Hades.

“At least I can get in a
good fight tonight.” He reached into the duffel for equipment and a change of
clothes. “I’ll work off some tension.”

The fights continued at a
rapid pace. Eugene won his bout handily. Tanya pocketed a wad of bills with a
relieved sigh.

Trent sat bolt upright,
his knees jouncing in a way that reminded me of Oscar. His head turned in a
quick swivel as he surveyed the crowd with an eagle eye, seeking in vain for
Hades.

When his number was
called, his fingers brushed my knee, bare under the hem of my short pencil
skirt. He jogged toward the ring without a backwards glance.

I next spotted him
climbing into the cage and shaking hands with a sinewy fighter covered from his
neck to his waist in a swirl of black tribal ink. Trent seemed distracted,
pacing the ring and scanning the crowd.

I thought about my conversation
with Esmeralda. She said that Oscar had lost his fighting edge once the
pressures of life settled onto his shoulders and stripped him of his confidence.
The version of Trent who now paced the sideline was no longer the brash, devil-may-care
fighter that he had been only a week ago. He was preoccupied. He was wary.

The fight began with a
grasping, whirling fury from his opponent that knocked Trent off balance and
sent him careening and bouncing against the boundary cage. Trent took a mighty
punch and knee to the jaw and fell to his knees. A trickle of blood from his
mouth pooled onto the mat below him. He angrily flicked away the string of
blood, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and rose to his feet.

He squared up, fists at
his sides. His opponent leapt into a roundhouse kick, but Trent was ready this
time, grabbing the other fighter’s leg and flipping him onto the mat with a
thud of pounded flesh and muscle. They continued in a tense see-saw battle of
strength and will. Each change in momentum elicited a throaty roar from the
crowd. Trent delivered a vicious slam to the side of his opponent’s head. The
other fighter staggered backwards and bent double as the final bell sounded and
the spectators whistled and shouted their approval.

The outcome was a
toss-up. I perched on the edge of the bench, wringing my hands and eagerly watching
as the referee marched the fighters to the center of the ring and took a wrist
in each hand. He paused for what felt like an eternity before raising Trent’s
arm to a rumbling chorus of cheers. Only once I exhaled did I even realize that
I’d been holding my breath. My palms were sweaty with nerves. I smoothed them
over my skirt and closed my eyes.

When I opened my eyes
again, a hand with tattooed finger joints held a stack of money in front of my
face. I lifted my head to a woman with dark arched eyebrows and a neckful of
chains that fell into the deep cleavage of her leather bustier top. She dropped
the bills into my lap, turned and melted into the crowd before I had a chance
to say a word.

“That was closer than I
would have liked.” Trent yanked a towel from his bag and pressed it over his
split lip. His chest and arms glistened with a sheen of perspiration.

“Is your face alright?”

He plopped onto the bench
beside me, his knees spread wide.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.”

“Hey, I heard you were
looking for that guy who calls himself Hades?” We turned simultaneously at the
sound of a gruff voice with a Scottish accent. A young man, obviously a fighter
judging by his bruised and scarred knuckles, sat on the bench behind us. He
leaned forward expectantly.

“I am,” Trent said. “You
know him?”

“Nah, I don’t,” the
Scotsman said in a rolling brogue. “But I think he might know you.”

“What do you mean?” Trent
turned fully around to face the stranger. My heart jumped into my throat. My
stomach roiled itself into knots.

“Well, you’re Trent
Montaine, right? The guy with the magazine?”

“That’s right.”

“My name’s Finnegan, by
the way. Anyway, get this.” He bent forward and rested his hands on his knees,
tilting his head to the side as he spoke. “I saw your man come into the warehouse
last Friday night. He wasn’t alone. There was another fellow with him. Kind of
tall and skinny, light hair, goatee.” Finnegan rubbed his chin for emphasis. “I
heard them talking by the garage door. This Hades guy says, ‘Are you sure I’ll
be fighting Montaine?’ The skinny guy nods his head and says something like, ‘I
got you this far. The rest is up to you.’ Then he gets in a car and drives away.
Hades goes into the arena. The rest is history.”

“You’re sure you heard
that? You wouldn’t bullshit me, would you?” Trent clenched and unclenched his
fists, the muscles in his forearms rippling under the skin.

Finnegan held up his
hands, palms outward. “Nah, brother, I wouldn’t. Heard it plain as I’m talking
to you now. And I’d never seen either of them before that moment. Haven’t seen
either of them since.”

Trent’s jaw tightened. He
stared hard at the filthy cement floor.

“Anything else you can
tell me?” He raised his eyes to Finnegan.

“I wish, but no. Oscar is
a good man. I knew him back in our boxing days. I’d like to find the piece of
shit who put him in the hospital just as much as you would.”

“Thank you. I really
appreciate it.”

Finnegan nodded with a
quick downward jerk of his head and popped up from his seat.

“Wait. One more thing,”
Trent stood and grabbed him by the elbow. “What color was the car? The one that
the skinny guy drove?”

Finnegan squinted for a
few seconds, as if replaying the scene in his mind.

“Red,” he said with a
sudden flash of memory and a snap of his fingers.

“Red? Are you sure?”

“Sweet little red racer,
it was. I do remember that.”

“Ok. Thanks.”

With another parting jerk
of his head, Finnegan disappeared into the crowd.

“What the fuck is going
on, Kat?”

My pulse beat loudly in
my temples. I opened my mouth to speak, trying to find proper words.

“Is it just me,” he
continued, “or did the skinny guy he described sound an awful lot like Kill?”

This hadn’t even occurred
to me. “I suppose maybe he did.” My voice was hoarse.

Trent turned in my
direction and placed a hand on my knee. “That’s why I asked him about the car.
Kill drives a red sports car. I mean, am I nuts?”

“No, I don’t think you’re
nuts.”

Given what I already knew
about Hades, a connection to Kill did not seem altogether improbable.

Trent shook his head. “It
can’t be. That just wouldn’t make any sense. Why would Hades be looking for me?
And why would Kill be helping him?”

I pursed my lips together
and shrugged.

“Come on.” He picked up
the duffel and reached for my hand. “Let’s get out of here. We won’t find out
anything else tonight.”

***

The machines beeped and
blinked with robotic regularity. Oscar lay unnervingly still, one of his closed
eyelids swollen and purple with bruising. Esmeralda slept in a gray upholstered
armchair, an open paperback steepled on her thigh. She jumped awake at the
sound of our footsteps and the soft thud of Trent’s duffel hitting the floor.

“Oh, hey.” She stretched
her arms out wide and rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. “What time is it?”

“Almost eleven.” Trent
stood beside Oscar’s bed, staring down at his friend with a look of helplessness.

Esmeralda jerked upwards
in her seat, her head swiveling quickly to Oscar’s bed. She exhaled slowly, her
shoulders sagging with a strange combination of relief and resignation.