Page 7 of Ghost’s Awakening

I moved into the crowd at its own pace, because confidence was camouflage. If I walked like I belonged, eyes would slide off me. Two heavyweights were grinding it out in the ring, one leaking from a gash over his eye. Money waved at the ropes.

"Fifty on Dawson! Who's holding?"

"He's done, man. Look at his legs."

"Legs don't matter if the hands still work."

I let the voices wash over me and mapped the room without landing on any piece of it too long. Main door at my back. A rolling steel door on the southwest corner, padlocked, chain swaying when a drunk leaned near it. A corridor mouth on the northwest side with an enforcer planted in it. A staff door behind the bar. Twelve enforcers, counted inside thirty seconds, each one a pin dropping onto the map in my head. Flanking the ring. Holding the exits. Two at the bar, one at the bookmaker's elbow. All in black. No patches. Spaced on a pattern, not by accident. Trained.

And riding the north wall, the mezzanine. Glass panels, a steel rail, dark. Empty, for now. My eyes slid past it, but a thread in my head stayed hooked on it. Always check the high ground, hermano. Arrogant meatheads like to watch from up top. Blade's first-recon rule, still running in his voice.

The heavyweights finished, a knockout dropping the room into a murmur, bets settling, glasses refilling. I tucked into the third row, bodies on every side. Nobody.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" The announcer buzzed through speakers built for a smaller room, splitting on every hard sound. "Your next bout! Standing six foot five, two hundred and five pounds, with a record of eleven wins and six losses, the Jackal!"

The crowd lunged forward, whistling, hungry.

I was reading the flow of the room when the second fighter came out of the backstage corridor, and my hands went still.

Everything went still.

Tall. Tanned, black hair buzzed close, lean and packed with muscle that didn't come from a mirror. It came from years of the body doing one thing. He took the steps easy, set his feet in his corner, and went quiet, and the quiet of him hit harder than the heat and the noise of two hundred people put together. Every other body in that room was moving, shouting, feeding the air, and he stood in the middle of it like a nail driven flush. Hands loose. Eyes forward. Gone so far into focus the room had stopped existing for him.

"Undefeated! Sixteen wins and zero losses! Six foot three, one hundred and ninety-five pounds, Monk!"

The room answered him differently. Quieter. Watchful. Behind me, one guy leaned into another.

"He's boring. Just stands there."

"Boring? He put Ruiz out in nine seconds last month."

"I'm saying he doesn't give you a show. No trash talk. No⁠—"

"Two hundred says he ends it under a minute."

"You're on."

I watched the fight and forgot I was working. Not all the way. The frame held, exits mapped, enforcers counted, the mezzanine still under a thread of my attention. But the fight itself pulled the rest of me clean out of the job.

Monk didn't move until the Jackal committed. The Jackal feinted and taunted and bounced, throwing words and air, and Monk stood dead still, hands at his sides, watching with a focus that made the space around him feel pressurized. Then the Jackal threw something real, and Monk dropped under it and answered with two kicks I felt in my own body from fifteen feet back. A shin to the flank that folded the man in half, then a heel off the spin that whipped his head sideways with a crack that cut the crowd.

The Jackal hit the ropes, came back, charged like a bull. Monk took the tackle, planted both feet on his chest, and threw him off the platform. Bare concrete.

The room lost its mind. The guy behind me grabbed his friend's arm. "Under a minute! Pay up!"

I let out a breath. My fingertips were buzzing. My pulse was up and I hadn't moved an inch.

Focus. The operation. The exits. The money. But my eyes kept dragging back to him. The way he stood after, breathing hard, fists opening, no satisfaction on his face. He turned for the steps.

The speakers crackled. "Hold up, hold up! Don't put your money away, bonus bout for our undefeated champion!"

The room changed. I felt it in the bodies around me, a tightening, a shared breath held.

Two enforcers hauled a beaten man into the ring and dumped him. Barely conscious, face swollen, mouth-breathing.

The crowd went uneasy.

"The hell is this?"