Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,55

was on a loop, bouncing between the grease-stained deposit slip and the rat-faced crazy fan. Logan, sitting at that table eating a sandwich over stolen millions. The pathetic need of that stalker, starving for Logan’s touch, for any scrap of her. My stomach began to turn. Sweat broke out on my forehead. I needed a distraction. I needed to become someone else.

I raised my arms, palms open, like I’d strapped the pads on already. Nora tilted her head in surprise. Her chest rose and fell, rippling the silk of her shirt.

“Jab, cross.”

I took a step toward her. Nora’s eyes flashed with something beyond this case, beyond Atlanta, a simmering need I didn’t understand, but that’s always the unknowable part: what compels each of us into the ring.

Slowly, miraculously, she fisted her hands and raised them to an on-guard position. I braced my legs, anticipating the blow; I’d never wanted to be bruised more than I wanted Nora’s fury at that moment. I wanted her to take everything, to see more with that penetrating gaze than Logan had ever been capable of seeing, to hit me until we both forgot why we’d started.

“Please.”

Nora jabbed, a scissor of fist and elbow, striking me in the opposite palm.

“Harder.”

She sent a cross into my other hand, slapping flesh against flesh, then pivoted back into a jab. We began to circle each other as her punches beat steadily faster, knocking my arms back. I coached her, taunted her, said anything I could think of to make her drive into me. Then, without warning, she delivered a front kick to my thigh that sent me into the wall.

“Again.” I pushed away, shaking out the bright blooming numbness in my hands, desperate to feel it everywhere.

But she didn’t. She lowered her arms, stepping back. “I can’t. I need to …” she trailed off, until what she needed to do contracted in her blazing eyes.

Without considering the consequences, I stepped forward and wound my hand through her hair, the damp strands coming loose from the knot, and kissed her.

NORA

WHEN GREGG raised his arms and told her to hit him, something inside Nora flared.

All morning, she’d been ignoring her anger, keeping herself and her team working at lightning speed to uncover everything they could find about Magers Construction—the company that had been tricked into diverting almost twenty million dollars of Strike’s money—but she couldn’t completely bury the emotions from last night. Her surreal vStrike fight had already brought up more issues than she could handle, but it paled in comparison to what she’d seen afterward.

Mike kept insisting, even as she was getting ready this morning, that it might not have been Corbett in the alley.

“It was dark. You’d had a few drinks, and you were—apparently—upset.” Her husband’s amusement at her emotional turmoil did nothing to calm her down, and Corbett’s phone was going straight to voice mail now, making it impossible to find out what had actually happened.

She left the house without a word and accelerated too fast out of the neighborhood, almost not braking in time when Henry and his friend biked over to wave goodbye. They both swerved to the sidewalk, narrowly missing her bumper as she screeched to a halt.

Adrenaline flooded her chest, but she forced a smile and a wave, trying to act normal, as though she hadn’t almost run over her own child. The boys hesitantly turned around and returned to wherever they’d been playing, Henry looking back over his shoulder like he was scared she would try to follow them.

She needed Strike. All morning, as her team dove into the company’s headquarters records, her muscles had twitched from lack of use. They’d demanded to be on the other side of the wall, in the gym, driving her fists and feet into the bag. So strange, for someone who’d spent her life running, to feel this craving for the fight.

Which was why, when Gregg raised his hands in the Northeast neighborhood apartment and said “please” in that quiet, desperate voice, her pulse leapt, her hands clenched in anticipation, and she’d let loose every bit of confusion and rage from the past twenty-four hours.

He took it, each punch, each shot of violence, and urged her for more. Her knuckles burned as his palms turned raw and red. His eyes glowed as she pushed him back, advancing.

“Faster, Nora. You can do better than that. Hit me harder. Hit me like you mean it. Hit me—”

She drew back, shifted her weight, and kicked him into the wall.