Page 77 of On the Edge

“Um. Yeah.” I stowed away my phone. “Did Rick tell you what tonight is all about?” I asked as Narisa and I trailed behind the others.

“Rick just said that his brother knows of some secret spot that is always rotating from place to place. I assume it’s a club or something,” she answered.

“Oh.” The same brother who worked at the bar last night? I could only imagine what we were getting ourselves into.

“It’s just ahead.” Rick pointed to a building tucked away at the end of the street. It looked like a condemned factory building, with boarded windows, bricks lying in piles out front, faded paint, and no sign.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” Kate rubbed her hands over her black leather jacket as we stopped in front of a massive brown door.

“This is the place. I promise.” Rick reached for the handle.

As the door creaked open, I took a cautious step back. “You sure about this?”

Rick nodded, his eyes gleaming like a schoolboy’s.

I had a bad feeling.

Strike that—I had a gut-wrenching, gaping hole in my stomach.

Yet, I followed Rick into the building. A faint roar of sound filtered up from beneath the floor as we walked down a narrow, dimly lit hallway. Were we stepping onto the set of a horror film?

The noise grew louder, but it wasn’t music. It was people—cheering and yelling.

“Just down these steps and we’re in.” Rick pointed to a stairwell.

“No secret password?” Kate crossed her arms, scowling at Rick. Even the easygoing Kate looked nervous—if she was scared, what should I be?

“Apparently, there’s no need. This place is only known to a select few.” Rick waved his hand at us girls, who were huddled together like he might be leading us somewhere to have our bodies hacked into little pieces.

“Sounds like more than a few,” Narisa quipped before we began down the set of wooden stairs, which were lit only by a soft glow at the bottom.

Rick opened the door at the bottom of the stairs and a cold chill brushed across my face. My body grew stiff.

“What the hell?” Craig looked as surprised as I did when we entered a room filled to the max with people. It took me a minute to get my bearings. There were so many people, and they all appeared to be crowding around something in the middle of the room.

“What is this place?” Kate yelled at Rick as we were shoved and elbowed by the crowd. We squeezed tighter together as people brushed past us, moving toward the center of the room.

“It’s an underground fight club.” He smirked, and Narisa slapped his arm. Then her chest slammed against Rick’s as some guy with tattoos spiraling down both his naked arms bumped into her.

“You’re for real?” Narisa gasped, and my stomach turned.

No. God, no. Fighting was the last thing I wanted to see. “Why would you take us here?” I asked, panicked. I looked back around for the door that we’d come through, but several layers of people now stood between us and the door.

Rick probably couldn’t hear me over the noise.

There was a man holding a microphone at the center of the room inside a tall, angular cage. He was shouting something, but I could barely hear what he was saying.

I’d seen the movie Fight Club, but this looked more intense. A lot more organized, for one thing. And I didn’t anticipate I’d see Brad Pitt anywhere down here.

The guy at the mic, well, his voice was too accented for me to quite understand. The slang words were coming out so rapidly they started to blend with the murmurs and shouts of the crowd surrounding me. Not that I cared what he said. At this moment, all I cared about was getting the hell out of there.

I’d lost contact with my friends. I glanced around, seeking them out, but I was surrounded by men. On one side was a gentleman in a well-tailored suit that screamed money, and the other seemed to have stepped out of a catalog that sold athletic and biker wear. Every inch of skin covered in ink.

I spotted the group and shot my hand up in the air as I was scuttled around. I pushed and shoved, making my way to the center. I wanted to go the opposite direction more than anything, but I was also afraid to be alone.

As I neared my friends (although Rick was about to be booted to the enemy column after this stunt), I heard the people around the room begin to chant “McGregor! McGregor!”

Well. It was a common name, right?

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