Takedown Teague (Caged #1) (3 page)

Her eyes went wide, and she dropped whatever she was holding onto the pavement.  She quickly scrambled after it while I ran my hand through my hair and tried to get myself back together.

“Sorry,” I muttered again.  I closed my eyes and rubbed my fingers into the sockets before looking back at her.  “I think, all in all, you’re better off with me than you are by yourself.”

“Better the evil I know?” she responded with a smirk.  The look and the tone of her voice didn’t match her eyes, though—there was fear there.  It was entirely possible I was a bit too blunt, but that shit was also true.

“Something like that, but you don’t know me, either.”  I smirked right back.

“You’re my hero,” she said but seemed to immediately regret the words.  She looked away from me, and her throat bobbed as she swallowed.

She had a beautiful neck—long and pale.  I could see the outline of her carotid artery as it pulsed just under her skin.  Her heart rate was still a little higher than normal, and I wondered if I was the cause of her current fear.  I tried to put her at ease, at least as much as she could be at ease in the dark street with a guy she didn’t know minutes after she was attacked.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I told her.  She nodded but didn’t look up.  “I’m just going to make sure you get home safely, okay?”

“Okay,” she said flatly.

I wondered if she was going to go into shock or something.  I definitely needed to get her behind a locked door as quickly as possible so she could relax again.  I hoped, since she was walking, she wouldn’t have too far to go.

“Where do you live?”

“Just around the corner,” she replied as she collected the last few items from the pavement and added them to the collection in the monster-bag.  “A few blocks to the left.  You don’t have to go out of your way—”

“I know the area,” I interrupted.  “I’m walking you home.”

I wasn’t asking anymore, and she didn’t try to fight it.  I picked up my gym bag, and she picked up her purse.  I thought about putting a shirt on, but then I remembered I had dropped it back at Feet First.  Considering Yolanda’s comment about how it smelled, maybe that was for the best.  Besides, I was still warm from the exertion, and it wasn’t more than a ten-minute walk home.

I grabbed a couple of the other items that had been hanging out near my feet—packets of salad dressing, a tube of lipstick, and something else round—
shit
, a fucking
tampon
—and handed them to her without meeting her eyes.  She took them quickly, mumbled a thank you
,
and shoved them into the huge, practically overflowing handbag.

She stood up and looked at me, and her eyes got big again.

“You got hurt!” she said as she lifted her fingers up toward my temple and then pulled away without touching me.

I reached up and felt the little cut above my eye and snickered.

“They didn’t touch me,” I assured her.  “That was from work.”

“Work?”

“Yeah, I’m a fighter.”

She paused and her eyebrows screwed together.

“A what?”

“A fighter,” I repeated.  “You know—two guys in a cage beating the shit out of each other.”

“In a cage?” she asked with disbelief.

“Yep.”  I stated it simply and without making a grandiose noise out of the final consonant because that would just sound stupid.

“For real?”

“Yeah, for real.” I laughed.

“I thought that was just on TV.”

“We all have to start somewhere,” I muttered.

“Sorry,” she said.  She wrapped the strap of her bag around her neck and shoulder.

“What for?”

“I didn’t mean to be…insulting.”

“I’m not insulted.”

“Oh…well, okay then.”  She ran her teeth over her bottom lip and looked down the dark street.  I was pretty sure she shuddered a little.

“Let’s get you home,” I commanded as I started walking.

She nodded, and I walked next to her as she headed off in the same direction I usually walked home anyway.  She kept her fingers wrapped around the strap of the huge bag and continued to stare at the ground as she walked.

“Don’t do that,” I said.

“Do what?”  Her eyes met mine for a moment.

“Look at the ground,” I said.  “You aren’t paying attention to your surroundings, so it makes you an easier target.”

“Oh,” she responded.  At first she looked right back to the ground again, but then she seemed to process what I had said and held her head a little higher.

“Where are you from?”

“What makes you think I’m not from here?”

“You aren’t from the city,” I stated.

“Is it that obvious?”

“Yes,” I snickered.  “Girls from around here know better than to walk alone, except the hookers, but that doesn’t seem your style.”

She glared at me out of the corner of her eye.

“I’m from Maine,” she said with a tone that told me I had just about reached my question quota.

“You’re a long ways from home,” I said.  “How long have you lived here?”

“Two weeks,” she answered.  “I’m going to school here.”

“You got a name?” I asked.

“Of course I have a
name
,” she replied, rolling her eyes.  “It’s Tria.  Tria Lynn.  You?”

“Liam Teague,” I told her, and I held out my hand.  She took it, shaking it briefly before she nearly tripped over her own feet on the flat ground.  “I hope you don’t chew gum.”

I laughed at my own joke.

“Very funny,” she snapped back.  “I’m not overly…coordinated.”

We walked the next block in silence.  I felt kind of bad for picking on her, so I tried another approach.

“So what are you studying?”

“Economics.”

“Really?” I narrowed one eye at her.

“Why is that so surprising?” she asked, obviously displeased with my reaction.

“I dunno,” I responded with a shrug.  “Just not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Um…teaching?  Maybe nursing or physical therapy—something like that.”

“Why, because I’m a woman?”

“Uh…um…”  I didn’t really know how to respond to that.  I wasn’t really sure why I thought she would say something else; economics just didn’t seem to fit.  “Well, why economics?”

“Because I don’t understand why some people have a ton of money and others don’t have anything,” she said simply.  “It doesn’t have anything to do with how hard they work.  I thought if I learned more about it, it would help me understand.”

I laughed again.

“I’m not a comedian,” she growled.  “Stop laughing at me.”

“I’m not.”  I shook my head.  “I mean, I am, but…not like that.  It’s just…weird.”

“I am not weird!” she yelled as she stopped in her tracks and snarled at me.  “It makes perfect sense, and maybe you have just been hit in the head too many times to understand anything other than punching people, but I really don’t see how your opinion ought to matter to me!”

“Whoa!” I called out, stopping and turning to face her and holding my hands up in surrender.  “Easy there!  I just…shit…I just never heard of anyone wanting to study something like that.  It’s cool.”

Her look softened but remained wary, so I turned it around on her.

“And now you have insulted me,” I told her.

“What?  How?”

“I have not been hit in the head too many times—I fucking win.”

I grinned at her before I started walking across the street.  She rolled her eyes again, but continued on beside me.  We were quiet now with her speaking up only when we made a turn to the right and crossed another dark street.

“This is my street,” she said.

I felt an odd tingle run through my arms but didn’t respond.

Tria stopped in front of a three-story apartment building with faded brown paneling that tried to give it some sort of Tudor flair but failed miserably.  There was a barred door painted black with one of those keypad security systems attached to it.  The windows on the ground floor also had bars though the ones higher up didn’t.  I glanced up the fire escape stairs next to the door and saw a black-haired girl swinging her legs and smoking a cigarette.  The ash flicked out into the air and landed beside me on the chipped sidewalk.

“This is where you live?”  I tried to stop from smiling too much.  I mean, what were the odds?

“Yes,” she said.  Her tone was dark.  “It’s not as bad as it looks from the outside.”

“Heh.” I snorted.  “Yes, it is.”

I reached forward and gave the barred door a good yank.  It opened immediately, even without entering a code or anything.  Bullshit security system hadn’t worked in at least eight months.  Tria kind of glanced at me sideways as I held it open and made a grand gesture with my arm.

“After you,” I said.

“It’s supposed to be a secure building,” she said.  “They said they were going to be getting that fixed soon.”

“Yep,” I replied, “that’s what they tell ya.”

“I’m not really supposed to let anyone inside the building.”  She looked off to the side, like she was afraid to send me away while looking me in the eye.

I chuckled.

“You aren’t home yet,” I told her.  “I said I would walk you home.”

“It’s just inside,” she said.

“First floor?”

“Yes.”

“What number?”

Her jaw tensed and she continued to look away from me.  It looked like she was focusing on a stack of broken up pieces of brick lying in a haphazard pile near the entrance to the apartments.  She glanced up at me before blowing out a big gust of breath.

“Fine,” she grumbled.  “Come on in.”

Tria led me to the fourth door on the right, which had faded, not-really-brass numbers tacked up on it.  Number 142.

I laughed in one quick burst.

“You live here?”

“Yes,” she said as she fished around in her purse for keys.

I had been wondering if my nights were going to be a little quieter, and now I had my answer.  I chuckled softly to myself.

“Why is that funny?”

I shook my head as she glared at me.

I started to consider the reasons it was funny, but the reasons that all of this was
not
funny popped into my head instead.  They were especially obvious as she continued to fumble around for her keys with her head practically buried in her monstrous over-the-shoulder bag.

I mean, she had just led a perfect stranger—hero or not—right to her door.

“Tria…” I shook my head a little to try to keep my cool.  I started counting on my fingers.  “One, stop being so trusting—this ain’t the small town you grew up in.  Yeah, I’m not one to rape you in the street, but that doesn’t mean I’m not the kind of guy who would get you back somewhere private and do the same.  Two, get your keys out
before
you get to the door.  Hold them in your hand—like this.”

I grabbed her wrist before she could move and pushed a little, rubbery, lobster-shaped keychain against her palm.  Then I positioned the keys on the ring between her fingers.

“Go for the eyes,” I said.  I raised her hand up with mine and wrapped her fingers into a fist.  The keys jutted out between her fingers, turning her hand into a fairly impressive weapon.  “Third, don’t fucking walk on that street at night by yourself.  Get a fucking ride.  Someone where you work has to have a car.  Fourth, look where you are going, for Christ’s sake.  Get your head up like you know where you are going and what you are doing even if you don’t.  Fifth and final—let me know if you need anything.  I’m right above you in apartment 242.”

With that, I turned and left her, mouth agape, in front of her door while I headed for the stairs at the back of the hall.  I could feel her eyes on me, and found myself compelled to look back one more time and grin at her before I headed up the stairs.  She pursed her lips, but they quickly spread into a smile just before she entered her apartment and closed the door.

I was never one to get attached, but I had the feeling I’d be seeing her again.

My apartment was way too quiet, and I had too much pent-up energy to even consider going to sleep.  I took a quick shower and pulled on a pair of sweats, commando style.  I was just about out of clean underwear, and I fucking hated doing laundry.  The refrigerator called to me, but when I opened it, I was not particularly impressed with the contents.  The only thing that interested me mildly was the six-pack of Guinness, but I wasn’t in the mood for beer.

My hands began to shake a little.  It was probably the pent-up energy from the brawl.  I wished it were easier for me to calm down after such things, but any change in my routine usually ended up being a little dangerous for me.  Though it has been years, the desire to slip up never really goes away.

I shut the door to the fridge and looked over the small, four-room apartment.  Every room could be seen if you stood between the kitchen and the living room and looked past the small opening to one side that led to the single bedroom and bathroom.  It wasn’t pretty, but…

Well,
but
nothing.  It was a dump.  The whole building was.  It did fit the unique qualifier of being a place I could afford though, which wasn’t much.  Most of the apartments in the building were advertised as furnished, which was an overstatement.  I had gotten a deal on mine because the previous dude took most of the furniture with him the night he disappeared.  I had to supply my own, but the rent was lowered to make up for it.

Most of the living room furniture came from Freecycle.

The mattress had been new when I got it, at least.  I’d splurged a bit on it when I moved in, deciding I could make up for its cost by eliminating the box spring and a frame, so it’s not actually a proper bed.  It just sat on the floor of my bedroom next to a little nightstand made of cinderblocks and plywood.

Still, it was better than squatting in an abandoned building or living out of car.  I tried to remind myself of that on a regular basis.

I walked over to the gym bag I had discarded by the door and pulled out my cigarettes.  Clambering over dirty laundry on the bedroom floor, I hauled the window open and threw my leg over the sill.  Right outside was a ledge of decent width, so I could make my way over to the fire escape.

On one side of the three-foot by six-foot platform was a miniscule woman of completely indeterminate age.  If you just looked at her size, you’d think she was about twelve, but her eyes were a whole different story.  They were deep and dark and gave the impression they’d seen a lot of deep and dark shit.  If you judged her by her eyes, you’d think she was a hundred.  If someone asked me to really guess, I’d probably say she was in her thirties, but that was still a guess.  Her hair was a mess of spiky black tangles, and I kind of doubted she owned a hairbrush.

“What’s shaking, Krazy Katie?”  I wasn’t expecting a response and didn’t get one as I dropped down on my ass next to her and lit my cigarette.

Krazy Katie lived in the apartment next to mine and had been in the neighborhood longer than the nine years I had been here.  She didn’t really say much of anything, let alone talk about herself, so I didn’t really know much about her.  The assumption was she was on disability for whatever the hell was wrong with her head, living here in the half of the apartments dedicated to Section 8 housing.  She spent almost all her days and nights sitting on the fire escape and chain smoking.

Every once in a while, she’d start yelling predictions about the future at people on the street, and the police would get called.  That always stirred shit up and had even been pretty damn entertaining more than once.  Most people just ignored her, but I sometimes kind of liked talking to someone who almost never said anything back, and she didn’t seem to mind me sitting out here with her.

I never knew what she would be doing when I crawled out the window.  Sometimes she’d make a lot of strange sounds.  Sometimes she’d spend the afternoon pushing her finger into each and every hole in the fire escape grate, one-by-one.  Sometimes she’d take off her clothes and just lie up there in her underwear until the landlord or police made her put her clothes back on.  Sometimes she ditched the underwear, too.

Tonight she was stacking cigarette butts into a little pyramid of sorts.  She had done this before, and at least her timing was a little better.  When she did it during the day and a door in the building slammed shut, they would all tip over, and she’d go ballistic.

“Pretty,” Krazy Katie said.  She took a long draw on her cigarette, which brought it all the way to the filter.  I cringed a little at the smell, knowing what that tasted like, and shook my head.

“You saying I’m pretty?” I asked with a quiet chuckle.  “I didn’t know you were into guys.”

She didn’t respond, and I didn’t try to get her to do so.  I had been around her enough to know that random shit just came out of her mouth for no particular reason.  I used to try to figure out what she was talking about, but I never got very far, so I didn’t try any more.  She could have been talking about me, the stack of butts, or the crabgrass growing in the gutter, for all I knew.

I leaned back against the brick wall behind me, then hissed and pulled away.  It was damn cold.  I decided to sit up with my knees against my chest instead.  I took a long draw on the smoke and watched the ash fall between the holes in the grate below me.  Krazy Katie lit up another cigarette off a little butane lighter she kept shoved in the center of her bra and actually looked at me for a minute.  As soon as I looked at her, she looked away.  She never looked me in the eye.

I shivered a little, wondering if it would be warmer inside than it was outside.  I concluded it was probably about the same.  At least inside, there was a blanket on the bed and no wind.  I sucked down my cigarette and started to climb back inside.

“Don’t stay out here all night, Krazy Katie,” I said on my way in.  “And eat something, for Christ’s sake.  I’m afraid you’ll fall right through the grate.”

She didn’t respond or even look at me.

Rubbing at my eyes, I clambered onto the queen-sized mattress and dropped onto my back.  I sighed heavily and pulled the sheet and blanket up to my chest before I rolled over to my side.  It was too cold to sleep comfortably but too warm to actually crank up the heat.  I had already had the electricity turned off once when I couldn’t cover the bill.  Now I tried to economize as much as possible on heat and lights.

Physically I was exhausted, but my mind wouldn’t turn off.   Images of the girl in the street with her ridiculous purse-slash-Bag of Holding ran through my mind.

Tria.

She just didn’t seem to be the kind of person who would be living in this area, working at that nasty bar and grill, and having a bunch of guys ogle her for tips.  And studying economics?  Really?  Who does that, other than the Northsiders and their high society business and bullshit majors?  People didn’t study economics because it sounded interesting—they did that because Daddy told them that’s what they needed in order to take over as CEO.

“Just your yearly reminder that you don't have to live like this.”

“Fuck you, Michael,” I mumbled into my pillow.  I told my mind to shut the fuck up as I brought the blanket up a little higher and dropped off to sleep.

*****

Still bleary-eyed, I laced up my running shoes and carefully locked my apartment behind me.  I couldn’t help but glance at apartment 142 as I went by and realized I was kind of hoping to run into the new neighbor as I took off for my mid-morning run.  It had been a week since we met in the street, but I hadn’t seen her again.  Sometimes when I would get home, I’d see her lights on but never actually saw
her
.

I took off running across the street, checking for cars as I went.  It was good weather for running, at least.  It wasn’t as hot as it had been just a few weeks ago.  I turned left and headed out of the neighborhood on my typical route.

My usual three-mile run took me out of the slums and into an industrial district.  There were a lot of warehouses and factories that had shut down in the recession, but a few were still open.  I knew at least a couple people in my building who sometimes got work in one of them, but the layoffs were frequent, and they’d be right back on welfare a few months later.

At least I wasn’t that bad off.

I had a good deal working for Dordy and Yolanda.  I got paid a hundred a fight, win or lose.  If I won, I got more.  Fighting twice a week put me at just enough to live on and not much more.  I could make rent on my crappy apartment, feed myself, and pay for the utilities.  I usually had a little left over for smokes and weekly pizza delivery.

I did better than a lot of people I knew, and having any extra money was dangerous for someone like me.

Thinking about my own livelihood made me wonder just how Tria was doing.  She had only been around a few weeks; she had told me the night I met her.  I wondered how she was adjusting to school, work, and living in a shit neighborhood that was probably very unlike whatever she had at home.

There was a scrawny little tree surrounded by the only patch of real dirt for a mile in any direction.  It was the spot that marked my halfway point.  I circled wide and then at a slightly faster pace headed back in the direction of my building.  Once I crossed the street, I checked my time and walked around the block to cool off before going back inside to down three large cups of water.

I looked over at my hand-me-down rowing machine in the corner of the living room and sighed.  I didn’t work out much on fight nights.  I’d run early in the day to loosen up but keep myself from doing too much right before a fight.  Tonight was going to be a challenge night, too, which always took a lot out of me.

There wasn’t shit to watch on television, and I wondered why I even bothered to steal cable from Krazy Katie.  Not that it was really stealing from
her
; we just kind of…shared it.  I brought her smokes when she ran out, and she didn’t respond when I asked her if she minded if I strung another line through our windows.  She let me in to do it, so I figured it was okay with her, at least.

Boredom set in, and I was starting to sweat just a little.  I ran my hand over my face.  My fingers were trembling, and I glanced down at the aging marks on my arm.  Boredom was a dangerous mindset, and I had to get myself moving before temptation became more than just an itch in the back of my head.  As long as I kept moving, I wouldn’t go searching.

I grabbed my gym bag and headed to the bar early.  Dordy and a kitchen chick named Stacy were there, serving a single customer whose name I couldn’t remember, but he was a regular and always hammered.  Phil?  Peter?  Some “P” name, I thought.  It was still too early for the after-work crowd to start showing up yet, so he was on his own, muttering bullshit about the upcoming presidential election.

“Hey, Teague!” Dordy called out as I walked in.  He rubbed at the inside of a pint glass with a towel.  “You’re early.”

“Bored,” I announced.  “Figured talking to you was better than talking to myself.”

“You ordering?”

“If you’ll spot me from tonight’s take.”

“No problem,” he said.

Dordy didn’t carry anyone on credit—no fucking way.  He let me get by with it on the day of a fight, though, since he would see enough at the door to make it worth his while even if I didn’t show up and he had to jump in the cage himself.  The day before a fight, I’d be shit out of luck, but fight days were okay with him.

“Scotch?” Dordy asked.

“Veggie Burger?” Stacy asked.  The large, grandmotherly woman stocked them just for me.

“No scotch—just the burger and a beer.  Thanks.”  I sat down on one of the stools nearby while Dordy drew a Guinness from the tap.  I hung out and had a couple drinks while people slowly began to trickle in.  The early ones knew who I was and would come over to make small talk before the crowd arrived.  A couple hours before the fight, Dordy’s bouncers, Gary and Wade, waltzed in.  Gary was just freaking huge height-wise.  He had long, grey whiskers hanging from his chin down to his collar and was shaved bald.  Wade was a little older, also bald, and used to train for MMA.  He wasn’t as physically intimidating, but he was definitely the more dangerous of the two.  Gary couldn’t fight for shit, but he was big enough that he rarely ever had to do anything other than stand up straight to get a patron to behave.

“Takedown fights again!” Gary roared in greeting.  I fist-bumped him, then went back to nursing my beer.  A few minutes later, Wade cocked his head to one side to point at the door, and I followed him out for a smoke.

“Word on the street says you fucked up some guys on your way home the other night.”

“Oh, yeah?” I said, raising my brow as I lit up.  “Who said that?”

“One of the guys you fucked up.”

I laughed and took a deep drag.

“He came in here last night saying Takedown Teague broke his nose,” Wade told me.  “He thought that as his employer, Dordy ought to pay for it.”

“Oh, yeah?” I said again.  “What did Dordy do?”

“Had me break one of his fingers.”

That had me nearly in tears.

“So what’s the deal?” Wade asked.  He blew smoke out of his nose as he talked.  “You don’t get enough fighting as it is?”

“They were fucking with some girl,” I told him.