Outlaws by Matt Rogers (phonics books TXT) 📕

King simply caught Maurice’s hand in the choke itself and used brute force to crank it tight.

Maurice tapped.

Either to stop himself going unconscious, or to prevent his hand from breaking.

King rolled off, panting.

Maurice said, ‘What the fuck, man?’

King stared at his feet.

Maurice said, ‘What was that?’

‘I won.’

‘We were rolling,’ Maurice said. ‘You’ve been coming here for years. You’re a black belt, for Chrissakes. You know what rolling is. You almost broke my ribs with that nonsense.’

‘What nonsense?’

The older man scoffed and levered up to his feet with the dexterity of a cat. ‘When you leave today, sort your head out. And don’t come back until you do.’

King made to retort, but cut himself off immediately as a spear of rationality lit him up from the inside. Maurice had considerable influence in the gym’s operations. He wasn’t asking a question, or offering a suggestion. It was a demand. And King would do well not to get himself kicked out of a gym like this.

Objectivity had always been his greatest strength. He used it now.

You’re impulsive. You’re angry about Slater. Don’t let it bleed over into the rest of your life.

He said, ‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’

Maurice paused a beat, thrown off by the sudden change in demeanour. Then he nodded, and walked away with his injured hand held close to his chest.

Guilt stabbed at King.

He headed for the showers, rinsed himself off, changed back into casual clothing and threw his sweaty possessions into the duffel bag he’d carted over from his penthouse. He raised the bag vertically and slipped it onto his back with the help of the attached shoulder straps.

Then he left.

There was half an hour of the session left.

But he was compromised. And he knew it.

It was a cool afternoon when he resurfaced at street level — the late morning had bled away underground, time passing amidst a montage of sweat and blood. Jiu-jitsu involved no striking, but at King’s level the stakes were higher. The flabby hesitance of white and blue belts was a world away, replaced by competitors who were made of hard sinewy muscle, who could use their hands and fingers like weapons, who could crank chokes impossibly tight in milliseconds. He was bruised and battered and sore and depleted, but that was normal.

He shrugged a jacket over his broad shoulders and blended into the masses of pedestrians on the sidewalk for the trek back to the Upper East Side.

Objectivity.

Now was the time to use it.

He pulled his phone out and dialled the number he knew he needed to dial.

Slater said, ‘Yeah?’

‘Fuck our feelings. We need to talk properly about this.’

‘I was going to say the same.’

‘Change of heart?’

‘I didn’t need to be alone for long. I just needed time to digest. Where are you?’

‘I was rolling.’

‘How’d it go?’

‘Average. I’m a little distracted.’

‘I’m at home.’

‘Where else would you be? I’ll be there soon.’

He ended the call before Slater had the chance to misinterpret the rhetorical question. He’d meant, You’re effectively on house arrest until the government decides your fate, so where else would you be? Not, You’re a loser with no hobbies besides training, and everything you need to train is in your penthouse, so where else would you be?

He wasn’t sure which way Slater had taken it.

He set off for the Upper East Side, and on the way home he realised what drew him to New York City: it had the highest population of a major metropolitan area in the U.S., all condensed into a small collection of boroughs. There were over eight million people here. No matter how infamous he became, it would still be close to impossible to identify him in such giant crowds. It was the reassurance of anonymity.

In a world where he’d made hundreds if not thousands of enemies, that was something at least.

But now he would have to either side with Slater, or not.

And if he did, he’d make a whole new class of enemy.

Again.

Then not even New York would be safe for him.

He crossed the street with his shoulders slumped and his insides constricted.

28

Slater had been alone for several hours.

Ordinarily, that would be nothing out of the ordinary.

He’d spent most of his life alone — self-reliant, self-driven, self-motivated.

Now he hated it.

He worked out, because that’s all there was to do. Sure, there were probably more poignant ways to master his current mindset, but right now meditation was about as appealing as going rogue. So he switched to athletic-wear and hammered punches and kicks into the heavy bag suspended from the ceiling of the spare room until he’d seemingly sweat out half his bodyweight and depleted his energy reserves. It’s hard for uncertainty and unease to survive that amount of physical exertion. Sure, it was the equivalent of telling a clinically depressed person to “just go for a run,” but in his case it worked.

Maybe because he’d spent a decade inching further along the spectrum of self-torture, increasing what his body was capable of tolerating, so that now what he classed as a “decent workout” was probably the equivalent of a civilian running a marathon with no training.

Exhausted, he showered and changed back only minutes before there was a knock at the door.

He let King in without checking.

It wouldn’t be Violetta — not this soon — and he’d firmly warned Alexis to stay away from his building. He still planned to spend the night at her loft in the Bowery, but he’d make sure to get there discreetly, employing a lifetime of espionage training to make sure there wasn’t a soul alive that knew his location.

As King entered, he said, ‘You’re making me paranoid. You know that?’

Slater sipped from a gallon jug containing a mixture of chilled water and electrolyte powder. ‘Why?’

‘Suggesting that the government is going to force my hand. I spent half the walk back from the BJJ gym looking over my shoulder.’

‘I’m the one who should be paranoid,’ Slater said. ‘And I’m not. So cool it.’

‘Neither of us are addressing the elephant in the room.’

‘Which is?’

‘You haven’t