Two streets from Renato’s gym, Mia stopped.
A sedan sat dark at the curb ahead, and a man on the corner held a phone to his ear while staring in the direction of the gym.
Neither meant anything on its own, but together, they were enough.
She stayed in the shadow of a shuttered storefront.
The wound along her ribs had opened again somewhere between Cruz’s office and here, blood working warm beneath the tape, but that could wait.
Renato’s gym couldn’t.
Renato had vouched for her under a false name and that meant trouble.
Mia kept watching.
The sedan’s engine was off, but the exhaust wasn’t cold. Heat still shimmered above the tailpipe beneath the streetlamp. The man on the corner hadn’t said a word in the two minutes she’d been there.
The front of the gym looked the way it always did in the evening. Light behind the mesh-covered windows. A kid’s silhouette skipped rope, shoulders rising and falling in a steady rhythm. Someone laughed inside, short and surprised, the kind of laugh that meant a sparring joke had landed.
Mia backed away from the corner. If the man was watching the front and the sedan had a view of the street, she couldn’t walk straight to the gym without being seen.
She doubled back and took the next side street, coming at the block from behind. A narrow service alley ran behind the row of businesses, cluttered with bins, stacked crates, and delivery cages. She kept close to the buildings as she moved along it, using the dumpsters and parked delivery vans to break up the sight lines from either end.
Renato’s back door came into view beyond the restaurant’s overflowing bins. Mia waited behind a dumpster while a car passed the mouth of the alley, then crossed the last stretch quickly.
Before she’d gotten a knuckle to the metal, the door opened.
Renato stood there, like he’d been leaning against the door with his ear pressed to it.
He pulled her inside by the wrist and had the door shut and bolted behind her in the same motion.
The back hallway was narrow and dim, the single bulb above the supply shelf throwing hard light across Renato’s face. He looked worse than when she’d climbed out of his car earlier. Gray beneath the eyes and a sheen of sweat along his hairline.
He looked her over the way he used to look over a fighter coming out of the cage, fast, top to bottom, eyes catching the injuries in one pass.
“Cruz?”
“Not my problem anymore.”
He didn’t ask her to clarify.
“Treatment room. Let me look at that.”
“No time.”
“There’s always—” He stopped himself and looked at the clock on the wall above the bench, an old plastic thing with a second hand that stuttered.
Then back at her.
“Fine. Stand still.”
“They’ll come here looking for you.” He said it while reaching into his pocket for gauze.
“Then why are they still here?”
Renato glanced through the doorway leading from the back corridor into the main gym. Two boys sparred lightly on the mats, gloves up, feet shuffling, while Nico stood nearby correcting one of them between exchanges. Nico was 20, one of Renato’s better students, and seemed to spend half his life at the gym, training when he could and helping out when he wasn’t. A girl stood by her open locker, wrapping her hands, while Tomas swept loose tape wrappers nearby.
“Sending them home before 9 would look like something’s wrong.”
He glanced at the clock again.
She’d seen Renato scared before. A young fighter whose eyes wouldn’t focus. A kid on the mat taking too long to come back to himself.
Every time a car passed outside, Renato went still and listened until the sound was gone.
The clock was twenty minutes short of nine. She watched him check it a third time, and this time he didn’t try to hide it.
“You need to go,” he said. “Now.”
He started toward the rear exit, one hand already reaching for the door she’d just come through. She put herself between him and it.
“You’re nervous, Renato. What’s happened?”
“You can’t stay here.”
“Neither can you.”
His eyes flicked toward the door.
“Renato.”
Renato just looked at her.
“You don’t even know what happened tonight. You don’t know if anything happened.” She held his gaze. “So why are you acting like you know someone’s coming?”
Something shifted in Renato’s expression.
Mia caught it.
Her eyes moved past him.
A duffel sat against the wall, packed and zipped, his jacket folded neatly on top.
He’d been getting ready to leave.
“What’s going on, Renato?”
“Two men arrived around five past eight, not long after I got back to the gym. They wanted to know where you were. I told them I didn’t know.” His hands worked at the strip of gauze, folding and unfolding it.
Mia reached out and caught his hands, stilling them. She could see he wasn’t telling the whole truth.
“What did you tell them?”
“That you were coming back.”
Mia’s eyes stayed on him.
“When?”
He looked away.
“So you gave them a time.”
“They gave me a choice.” His voice cracked. He cleared his throat once. “Tell them when you’d be back, or they start on people here until I did.”
Mia looked at him. “What time did you tell them?”
“Ten o’clock. I thought it gave us room,” he said. “The gym closes at nine. The kids would be gone, and we’d have an hour to get out before they came back.”
“They drove off. I watched them go.”
“They didn’t leave.”
Renato looked at her.
“There’s a sedan across the street and a man watching the front. I saw them before I came in.”
Renato’s face tightened. “You sure?”
“I watched them for two minutes. They’re waiting.”
His eyes went to the clock.
Whatever time he thought they had was gone.
“Get the kids out,” she said. “Now. All of them, together. Go.”
He didn’t argue.
Renato moved into the gym.
“All right, that’s it. Training’s over. Everybody pack up and head home.”
The sparring stopped.
One of the boys lowered his gloves. “What?”
“Gas leak next door. Whole block might have to clear.” Renato pointed toward the back. “Leave the gear. Take your phones and get out.”
A couple of them looked at each other.
“Now,” he said.
Gloves hit the floor. Bags came off hooks. The girl in the corner abandoned the wrap halfway around her hand and grabbed her things.
“Back way,” Renato said. “Stay together until you’re outside.”
Mia went to the door first. She carefully unbolted the door and cracked it an inch.
A man stood beside the parked car across the alley, half-hidden by the dark. Another was tucked beyond the dumpster, only one shoe and part of a trouser leg visible from where she stood.
Then came the brief squelch of a radio from farther down the alley.
She shut the door without opening it any farther.
“They’ve got the alley covered,” she said.
Renato turned to Nico. “Keep the kids here. Nobody moves until I come back. You understand?”
Nico nodded.
Renato looked at Mia.
“Come on.”
He and Mia crossed the gym and went up the stairs to the small office. The monitor there was old, wired to a couple of cameras Renato had put up years ago after a break-in. The picture was grainy black and white, jumping every few seconds.
The sedan Mia had spotted earlier had moved to the far end of the street, angled across enough of the road to make getting past it difficult. A second car now idled at the other end, and two men stood near the front entrance of the gym.
They weren’t watching the gym anymore.
They were closing it in.
“They’re clearly not waiting for ten,” Mia said.
Renato leaned closer to the screen. “Front’s gone. Alley too.”
“What’s left?” Mia asked.
“There’s a service corridor leading from the storage room. Goes across to the next building.”
Mia nodded.
They went back downstairs and rejoined the group.
“Everybody to the storage room. Now.”
“Nico, keep them together. Don’t let anyone wander.”
Nico nodded and started ushering them down the narrow route to the storage room.
Renato opened a small cabinet on the wall, took out an old licensed pistol, and checked the magazine.
His phone rang as he slid the magazine back into place. He looked at the screen, looked at Mia, and hit speaker. His hands shook too much to hold it to his ear.
“Is she back?” the voice said. Calm. Male. Bored in a way that felt worse than anger.
“No,” Renato said. “Told you. Ten.”
“Ten. Right.” A pause. “Funny, because one of my guys just saw a woman who looks a lot like Mia slipping around the back of your gym.”
Renato’s mouth opened, and nothing came for a second. “Wasn’t Mia. One of my fighters came in through the back.”
“This is disappointing, Renato. I thought we had an agreement.”
The line went dead.
As Renato was putting the phone back in his pocket, the lights went out. A weak amber glow kicked on near the ceiling, battery backup, barely enough to cast shadows. Outside, car doors slammed and voices rose.
The back door handle jerked up and down from the other side.
Then it stopped.
A second later, something heavy slammed into the door.
Renato drew the pistol.
The front shutter screamed as a vehicle struck it, shaking the building. The engine revved, the car reversed, then screeched forward again.
Concrete cracked beside the frame. Part of the wall gave way in a burst of dust and broken block, leaving a jagged opening beside the twisted metal.
A man stepped through the breach.
He carried a plastic container in one hand.
Liquid sloshed inside it.