Full Contact (Redemption #3)(94)

Ray wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, and it comes away covered in blood. “I was trying to protect her.”

A fight official clamps a hand on my shoulder and tries to pull me away, but I won’t let go of the ropes. Even if they won’t stop, I can’t leave them like this.

With a howl, Tag launches himself again at Ray, this time sweeping his leg. Ray goes down. On purpose. I know this because I’ve seen him defend this move a hundred times. If he doesn’t want to go down, he won’t.

The moment his back hits the concrete, Tag is on him, pummeling him with elbows and punches. The crowd goes quiet. There is no sport in beating a man who is down, especially when he’s made it clear he won’t defend himself.

“Enough, Tag. He’s down.” I slide a leg through the ropes, but one of the fight officials pulls me back.

“Rules say no one goes in and no one goes out until someone yields.”

“You don’t understand.” I pull at the official’s blue shirt. “He won’t yield. That’s not who he is.”

“Nothing I can do.”

“Fuck you.” I shove him aside and step into the ring.

“Tag. Stop. Please. You’re going to kill him.” But Tag doesn’t stop. He sees me, but he doesn’t. Eyes glazed with bloodlust, he swings his arm back and pushes me away.

I stagger and hit a massive chest. “It’s okay,” Torment says. “I got this.”

The crowd boos. The fight officials holler. But Torment stalks across the ring, grabs Tag from behind, and rips him away. The fight zone descends into chaos. People shout and curse. Rampage joins Torment, and they drag Tag away. I run over to Ray. He has pulled himself to sitting and is leaning against one of the pillars. His face is cut and one eye is swollen shut.

“Oh God. Ray? Are you okay?” I kneel beside him, running my hands over his body, checking for breaks.

“I’m fine. Just go.”

“You’re not fine. Look at you. I’ll take you to the hospital.”

“Go, Sia. Please.”

He winces when I touch his forearm, and I suck in a breath. “At least let me get the medic.”

Drawing in a deep breath, he shouts, “Sia. Go.”

His words echo through the parking lot, stilling the crowd. Shaking, I push myself to my feet and take one step back and then another.

“Okay,” I whisper. “I’m gone.”





Chapter 27


Don’t go

Sunday morning after the fight, I go to Tag’s apartment, determined to find out what the hell has been going on with him. I push the buzzer. No answer. I call and text his cell. No answer. I go around the back and find his car parked in its spot. Then I return to the front and hang around until one of the tenants who knows me lets me in.

Minutes later, I’m banging on Tag’s door. I shout and holler that I’ll keep it up and disturb his neighbors until he lets me in. Tag has been brought up too well to allow me to disturb the neighbors. It only takes a few minutes before he opens the door.

Before he can protest, I push my way inside. Then I freeze. Usually highly organized and meticulously clean, Tag’s apartment looks like a hurricane just blew through. His clothes are everywhere. Papers, books, and old CDs are strewn across every surface. But it isn’t the mess that makes me gasp and step back, but the photos pinned to every wall.

Women. Young. Sixteen, maybe eighteen. Their faces and bodies battered and bruised.

“I didn’t want you to see this,” he says, his voice flat. “I didn’t want you to know about it, especially now.”

“Who are they? What happened to them?”

Tag sits heavily on his couch. He’s wearing a pair of pajama pants and a T-shirt, a pen stuck behind his ear. His right hand is bandaged over his knuckles—knuckles that hit my Ray.

“The same thing that happened to you.” He twists his hands in his lap, then meets my gaze. “By the same man.”

My stomach clenches and my mouth goes dry. “Luke? He raped all those women?”

“I’m pretty sure it was him. Some were before you and some after.”

I sink down onto his paper-strewn couch. “How did you get involved?”

Tag rubs his hands down his thighs, just like our father does when he’s stressed. “The night you met Ray, I was assigned a new case. The victim was an eighteen-year-old student he’d met at a bar—he’d drugged her drink, but she was so drunk she threw it up when she went to the bathroom and he didn’t know. She remembered most of the details but not his name, and filed a police report. At first I didn’t know it was him. But then she started getting the threats…”

He rubs his thighs harder now and stares at the floor. “God, Sia. It was so hard to watch. I knew exactly what she was going through. So many times I wanted to talk to you about it, but I didn’t want to put you through it all again. It took a long time to trace the threats, but when we did and I realized it was him, it was worse than I imagined. Our local DA said there wasn’t enough evidence to run the case without a witness, and the girl changed her mind and refused to testify. Not only that, but at the time of the incident, he was out on bail after being arrested last year on a similar case in a different jurisdiction.”

“Oh God.”