Page 57 of The Vigilante's Lover

The arena is smaller than the ones in Vegas I’d been to back in my Vigilante days. The fighter culture was huge, but here it seems people don’t know quite what to expect as the crowd filters in and finds their seats.

Down on the floor is the octagonal fighting ring. Installed overhead are Jumbotrons that will give close-ups of the match.

Mia and I sit on the second tier near the back. It was easy enough to pick up a pair of scalper tickets, all cash and no trace of our arrival. I peer through a pair of binoculars at the crowd, scanning for Klaus or Jovana. No sign of them yet.

“Can I try those?” Mia asks. She’s vibrating with excitement to be doing something other than being on the run. She bought a black “Strong Man” T-shirt without knowing a thing about the fighters and pulled it on over the silk number Armond sent. She’s a country girl through and through.

She made me pick up a matching hat. Probably a good call. I don’t blend in well with the locals, even though I did put on jeans.

I hand her the binoculars. “Don’t push any buttons,” I say. “Particularly that red one there.” I point it out.

“What does it do?” she asks.

“Poison dart.”

Her eyes get big. “Maybe I shouldn’t.” She tries to hand them back.

“No, no. We’ve got antidotes in the car.”

She frowns, probably remembering coming out of her own poisoning after we escaped the silo. “Is there a safety or something?”

“Vigilantes don’t believe in safety locks.

Safe isn’t what you’re going for.” I consider the entrances and exits while Mia fiddles with the binoculars.

There are many all around the arena. I chose these seats because they would be behind wherever Jovana would likely sit, hoping to be near her brother.

But not at the far back, where it is easier to be spotted.

An announcer comes out and begins talking up the fight. There will be six matches on the card. I thumb through the program. Jovana’s brother, Lukov, is third.

I spot a familiar figure down low. Colt McClure. He’s the one who told me about this match in our helicopter ride from Vegas. He’s with another fighter I remember, Parker. His girlfriend, Maddie, is the one I helped recover after another fighter snatched her.

I should have realized Colt would show. He can’t know about the altercation with the Vigilantes after I left his chopper. Although he might know that I destroyed his father’s car. I should wire The Cure some money for that.

Colt scans the crowd but doesn’t spot us. I’ve chosen our location well.

The announcer starts shouting into his microphone as the first fighter comes out of the tunnel and toward the center cage.

A giggling woman in a sparkle-laden shirt, pushup bra, and at least a gallon of drugstore perfume plops into a seat near me. She’s followed by a guy in a ball cap. He looks like he may have had a beer or two in his lifetime. His gut hangs over a big silver buckle like it’s a knapsack.

Mia glances over at her, sees the ten miles of cleavage on the woman, and her face contorts in a “whoa” expression. She looks at me to see if I’ve noticed. Ah, these relationship games. I lean over. “Switch that green dial to MMW and take a look at her,” I say.

Mia looks at the binoculars and finds the control. Then, casually, she aims them at the woman. I can hear the mechanism adjusting from distant to close-up view.

She jerks them from her face. “I can see her implants!” she hisses into my ear. She looks at the binoculars again. “What is this thing?”

“Millimeter wave scanner. Been in airports since 2012.”

“They can see through everything!” she says. Then she picks them up again and points them at my groin.

“I think I like this,” she says and grins up at me.

Then she frowns, aiming the binoculars at her own lap. She yelps and pulls them away again. “It’s like those ads in the back of comic books when my parents were young! They used to talk about them!”

“X-ray vision, yes,” I say, amused. “I remember them.”

Now she’s all curiosity, scanning around the arena. The first fighter strips off his sweats and enters the octagon in his fighting shorts.

“I think he does steroids,” she says, and I have to cough into my hand to keep from laughing.

She hands them over to me. “You should get back to business,” she says, then takes them back and switches them out of MMW mode. “Okay, now.”

My lips twitch as I’m about to smile again. This girl is going to ruin my reputation as a menacing man.

The lights suddenly dim and the music increases to ear-thumping levels.

“And now it’s our homeboy, Jason ‘The Meatgrinder’ Jamison!” the announcer shouts over the din.

Spotlights crisscross and focus on the boy, early twenties at best, as he heads up to the cage. I scan the seats ringing the stage. Colt and Parker stand and clap for him. There’s still a number of empty seats down low.

Maybe she won’t come until Lukov’s match.

I settle back in my seat. Might as well just watch the show.

The ref brings the boys together and says something unintelligible, just a mumble of reverberating speaker noise. I glance over at Mia, who is rapt, sitting forward in her seat. Color washes over her as the lights pulse and move around.

This feels so normal, so civilian, sitting in an arena attending a public event with a crowd. Beer guts, pushup bras, and all. I shift in my seat. It’s almost like she said last night, forgetting about the vendetta and Klaus and just living a life.

I have more than enough money to last ten lifetimes, no matter what I do. We could do anything.

She looks over at me and pats my leg. I take her hand and bring it to my lips. I can’t see her blush, but I know it’s happening by the way she casts her eyes down.

Pushup-bra woman leans over the empty seat between us. “He’s a keeper,” she says to Mia.

I’ve been exposed to a lot of toxins in my career, but her overdose of cheap perfume makes my head rush. Mia catches it too, as she absently brushes her hand across her nose.

“I think so,” she says to the woman, or shouts it, rather, as the music has gotten crazy again now that the ref has stepped back.

A buzzer sounds and the two men begin their patterns. One slams a hard kick into the other and the crowd roars in appreciation.

I watch Mia’s reaction. I’m curious to see how she feels about violence, if she’s a shrinking violet who will look away.

But she’s up, out of her seat, jumping up and shouting, “Kick him again!” The crowd all gets to their feet as the action in the cage gets more aggressive, the two men tearing after each other.

Mia can’t stand still, hands in the air, yelling in chorus with all the voices around us.

No shrinking violet here, for sure.

The flying arms and legs slow down when one fighter gets the other in a submission hold, elbow locked around his neck, one leg wrapped around the other guy’s. They fall to the floor.

Then suddenly the ref is on the ground, looking intently, and one of the guys jumps up, arms in the air.

“What happened?” Mia asks. “I don’t get it.”

“The other one tapped out,” I say. “Submitted.”

I scan the arena one more time. Still no Jovana or Klaus. With the unexpected lengths of these matches, some ending in less than a minute, like this one, she should be here.

She must have bowed to the pressure not to come, not with everything going on. She did, after all, try to kill us just yesterday.

If they don’t show, I’ll have to decide on a second plan.