Chapter 1

Was that the first ring or the second? Four until it went to voicemail, right? I raced down the stairs from my bedroom to the kitchen where I’d left my phone. I misjudged the last step and landed hard on the tile floor. A jolt of pain shot through my right heel. Just a stinger. I’d be fine. Another ring. Where was my phone? It wasn’t on the kitchen counter where I thought I’d left it. The first time I hadn’t carried it with me in days, and she calls.

There. Sitting on the coffee table in the living room. But when I got to the table, the name on the display read G. Kittredge. This wasn’t the Kittredge I’d hoped and prayed it would be. Like it was a Moray eel ready to strike, and I was a scuba diver, I backed away from the thing. Whatever my mother had to say, I didn’t want to hear it.

Once it made the little sound that indicated a voicemail had been received, I snatched the phone from the table and dialed Ashlyn’s number. Four rings and voicemail. Just like every time I called her.

“Ashlyn, it’s me again. I don’t know where you are or what’s going on, but you need to call me. Seriously. Mom just left a message.” My voice caught, so I cleared my throat. “Where are you? I’m so worried. Please, call me. Or send a text. Something.”

“Ashlyn?” The scratchy, squawky voice came from Hulu, Ash’s African Gray parrot. The bird was Ashlyn’s pet, but I was enormously grateful for his goofy company when she was gone. Sadly, though, this was the first time he’d said her name in days.

I looked to my right to find he’d flown over and was sitting next to me on the sofa. “Sorry, buddy. I wasn’t talking to her. Just leaving another message.”

He put his taloned foot over his beak and made a sound like he was crying. Was he really sad? Or could he sense my emotions and was merely reacting to them?

“I’m going to the gym,” I told him. “This day is messing with me.”

My college was closed today, so I tried to study but trying to study during hours when I was supposed to be in a classroom didn’t mesh with my obsessive sense of order. Maybe hitting something would help. After putting Hulu back in his cage by the big picture window, I grabbed my gym bag and headed for my motorcycle.

An hour later, I was dripping with sweat and almost done with my warmup. I’d run five miles on the treadmill, did some light stretching, and was now finishing up an intense session of hanging crunches. My goal was one hundred, but I’d lost count right at the end. Six more to be safe. I contracted my abdominals and lifted my knees with the six-pound medicine ball clenched between them, first to my left then slowly to the right.

“Last one.” I let the ball drop to the gym floor, pulled out of the ab straps cradling my upper arms, and dropped to the ground next to it. Once my breathing evened out, I mopped off my face and neck, then sanitized the straps.

A pair of feet appeared next to me as I wiped up the floor mats. I looked up to see a blond guy with wide shoulders and a narrow waist. Ross Donnelly. About six weeks ago, he and I had come to an agreement on our “relationship.” He wanted to date. I wasn’t interested. And not only because he sometimes came across as a chauvinistic idiot. My non-interest in dating extended to all men, not just Ross. I finally agreed, however, that if he could go a week without offending any of the women at No Mercy gym, we’d go out for a drink. That meant a smoothie for me. I didn’t drink anything with caffeine or alcohol. We’d had drinks twice now, which meant he thought we were a couple.

“You warm now?”

I ignored the sarcasm in his voice. “I’m good.”

“I’ve been watching you. Not in a creepy way. Promise. Your workout today seems a little”—he searched for the right word—“extreme?”

He followed me from the pull-up bar to the water cooler. “Gemi? Is everything okay?”

I didn’t feel like talking about Ashlyn with him. Ross could be as persistent as a riptide, and only one thing was sure to send him down a different path. Well, one thing I was willing to do. “Want to spar with me?”

I’d come here planning to hit something after all. Hitting someone would work just as well.

“Then you’ll tell me what’s wrong?” He used his puppy who only wanted to please its owner expression.

Riptide. That should be his nickname. I refused to give him the grin he was trying to charm out of me, but my tight shoulders did relax a fraction. “Doubt it.”

He clapped his hands once. “That’s better than a no. Let’s go.”

“Wear headgear.” It was an order, not a request.

Ross, for reasons known only to him, refused to wear protective headgear while sparring. Trying to prove how macho he was? MMA, or Mixed Martial Arts, regulations required the equipment during official fights, but nothing prevented him from going without one on his own time. Nothing except for Salomon Kahumoku, the gym owner. Two weeks ago, I’d given Salomon an hour-long presentation—including PowerPoint slides—on chronic traumatic encephalopathy, CTE, a condition where the brain started to degenerate after repeated blows to the head. I’d heard about the condition years earlier but recently became passionate about it when a neurologist chewed me out for allowing myself to get hit in the head for a sport. Salomon listened silently, asked a few questions, and by the end of my mini seminar, made headgear mandatory for any No Mercy member sparring in our gym. It had only been strongly recommended before.

“Ready,” Ross declared.

“You sure?” I bit back a grin as he struggled with the Velcro straps. One behind his head, which I’d repeatedly explained he didn’t need to adjust every time, the other beneath the chin. Not that difficult.

With his two straps secure, he panted like he’d just run a fifty-yard dash and mumbled around the already in place mouthguard, “Yep. What are we doing?”

“I just want to hit something.”

He sounded disappointed as he clarified, “So upper body only? No leg sweeps.”

“Tell you what.” I took a few steps closer, gaze locked on his. “Anything is fair game.”

Crinkles formed around the edges of his eyes when he smiled. We lifted our gloved hands to tap them together.

“Hang on,” came a booming voice from the front of the gym. My coach, boss, and fill-in father Salomon burst out of his office. “If you’re gonna go at it, you need a ref.” He climbed the stairs and slid between the ropes like the seasoned pro he was. “You sure you want to go all out?”

Ross pulled his mouthguard out and dripped saliva on the ring floor. Gross. “There isn’t a match for another six or eight weeks.”

“Right,” I agreed. “He’ll have plenty of time to recover from his injuries.”

Laughter and oohs at my verbal jab rose from the crowd that had gathered ringside. Since it was one-thirty in the afternoon, there weren’t a lot of gym rats present. Regardless of why they attended the gym—MMA training, bodybuilding, or a simple workout—most members loved to watch a sparring match, and as a top-ranked MMA fighter on the island, I tended to draw a larger audience than others. Fact, not ego.

“All right.” Salomon waved his hand between us. “Tap gloves.”

We did and then backed away, eyes locked on each other. I shoved in my mouthguard, bit down, and it was like flipping a switch. Like all of No Mercy’s lights had gone dark except for a spotlight on us. I saw nothing but my opponent and had one goal for the next five minutes: win. Even though this was meant to be a friendly sparring round.

We danced around each other for a good thirty seconds, exchanging occasional body blows and kicks that didn’t really do much damage. Finally, Ross tossed harder shots at me. I kept one hand up, protecting my face, and blocked his uppercut with my other. The only problem with sparring with Ross was that because of his feelings for me, he’d never go all out and make it a real challenge. He was afraid to throw anything that might hurt me.

“You gonna make a move, Kittredge?” Salomon hollered at me. “No time like now. Unless you just want to dance with him.”

I told Salomon that since I now understood the permanent damage brain injuries could inflict, my approach to fighting had to change. For years, my close-the-fight move was a right cross to my opponent’s left temple. A definite CTE-inducing blow that knocked the person out cold. Now, I focused more on my second strongest move, the armbar. Setting it up with a leg sweep first was highly effective, and Ross was the gym’s best sweeper. Salomon waved me over one day. We stood ringside and watched Ross use the move over and over while sparring with another member. Salomon pointed out what worked and what needed tweaking, and then during practices I worked on perfecting the sweep.

I stepped closer to Ross and, using his hesitancy to hit me against him, began throwing punch after punch at his upper body. Then, like I was tired, I stepped back and bounced side to side to catch my breath. His eyes shifted between my hands and feet, waiting for the moment to knock my legs out from under me. I lowered my arms and leaned in and out, in and out, goading him to toss a punch or kick at my head. The next time I leaned forward, he took the bait.

As though in slow motion, I watched him lift his right leg, preparing to send a roundhouse kick at me. When his foot came toward me, I hooked an arm around it and reached in with my right leg to sweep his left. As he dropped, I followed him to the mat and scrambled into position near his head. With my legs draped over his torso and his right arm between my thighs, I pulled his arm toward me and torqued hard on his shoulder. He slapped the canvas, signaling for me to back off and let him up. Match won. No brain injury necessary. I loved the armbar.

Ross shot to his feet, ripped off his headgear, and threw it down. Next, he tugged off his sparring gloves, tossed them to the mat, then yanked the mouthguard out, a string of saliva dripping from it, and added it to the stack. He didn’t look happy. His chest heaved, and he winced as he put his hand to his right shoulder.

“Crap. Did I hurt you?” Must’ve pulled harder than I realized.

“Not sure.” He slowly lifted his shoulder in a shrug and rotated it forward and back. “Ice and Advil should fix it.”

“I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention.”

“I know. You don’t know your own strength.”

I held out a fist, and he bumped it, accepting my apology. “I used your taunt against you. Worked well.”

He frowned. “My taunt?”

“You don’t even know what you do, do you?” I demonstrated. “You lean in, lean in, lean in, then you back off. You do it over and over, watching for your opponent to take the bait, then you drop them.”

With hands on his hips, breath still coming hard, he looked down at his feet, and then up at me. A smile turned one corner of his mouth. “You’ve been watching me?”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“You done?” Salomon asked me. “Or do you want to go again? With a different partner.”

“I’m good,” I announced and winked at my coach. “Don’t want to hurt anyone else.”

The burly Hawaiian jabbed a finger at me and then flung a hand across the gym. “My office, then. Now.”