Page 3 of Liar & Champion
“What are you talking about?” I asked, getting in and nodding at Horse before slamming the door. It wasn’t easy to slam that sweetheart. She was smooth as silk.
“Your compound. I’m standing across the street. They’ve set up a perimeter blockade, like for gas leaks or something. If anyone touches my babies, I’m going to—” She hung up.
Horse was still standing there, but he had his phone out and was frowning at it. I took off, tires squealing as my heart pounded.
The last Three-Hundred had been scary even for me, with someone shooting a rocket at Trixie’s truck and Pinkie of allpeople taking over at the end. She’d learned to drive from Nitro, the most insane street driver I’d ever met, so, yeah, heartburn. Some authorities without clear department info had come down hard on regulations, getting Bulldog’s team banned. It didn’t matter. Teams popped up as fast as they faded away, only a few able to keep up with Horse. Not me. I was the Champion, or I was before that wreck, and I’d be there again as long as I was in the game.
It took me two weeks to get my compound up and running again, two weeks of Trixie seething and Jezebel threatening the city. That wasn’t the kind of stress I’d signed up for. The worst thing was the way all the problems vanished like a mirage in the desert, like someone had put in a call on my behalf, likely the same person who had strung up my business in the first place.
She was toying with me. Ever since the last Three-Hundred, when Haversham’s mercenaries joined the table-top brawl, and my mother’s House of Beast joined in, making it possible to survive to fight another day, I’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop. She didn’t help for no reason, but this game of hers was a new kind of torture.
Two months later, I was dealing with another call from the Las Vegas precinct of safety about the lights on my compound, because when you’re a fighter and a cross-country driver, throw in some camels and a mountain lion for madness sake, you’re worried about the motion sensor lights on the driveway.
“You need me to come down there and fill out a form? Can you add the next five forms to it at the same time? No? Oh, sure. No problem.” I hung up and tossed my phone on the desk. Jezebel was sitting on said desk and caught my phone in her gaudy nails, blood red with silver studs.
“If you don’t want to be harassed next season, you need to take care of this now.” She smiled bright, her mega-watt smile that did nothing to hide the crazy shark in her eyes.
“Did you need something?” I asked.
Her patience was running as thin as mine, but she didn’t have to face my mother to take care of it. It wasn’t what the Crocodile could do to me that made me hesitate, but what I might do to her. I didn’t hurt women, but that woman needed to hurt until she had some kind of humanity.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why as a matter of fact, I do. I need a job, and the payoff for the investment I’ve made in your little old company, so you have to put aside that ego of yours, and deal with whoever you’ve pissed off.”
I ran a hand through my hair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Truly, I had no idea why my mother would choose now to interfere with my business, first to save, then to throttle.
She rolled her eyes and recrossed her legs in their tight denim. “Honey, if you’re going to sell a lie, you’ve got to feel it. It’s a woman. You pissed her off. Fix it or I’ll fix you.” She made a snipping motion with her hand, winked at me with her long false lashes, and then hopped off the desk. “I’m going to China to deal with those investors who didn’t get any of the footage of the brawls you haven’t been able to star in, sugar. I’ll be gone one month. That’s as long as you’ve got to clear up the tape for next season. I have the funds for my retirement ranch in this company. You sink it, I’ll sink you. Ciao.” She walked out, leaving me with nothing to do but accept Jezebel’s delicate suggestion. It wasn’t the threat, but the reminder. She’d invested in my company with loyalty I had to respect, like I respected her knife skills.
I called Daniel, because I didn’t technically have my mother’s number except for the emergency one I’d never use.
He picked up after a dozen rings. “Nix. It took you long enough.”
I scowled at the pile of notices on my desk. “I really hate her.”
“You called to say that? I’ll let her know.”
“What does she want?”
“Oh, I think she’ll want to tell you directly, face to face, and besides which, I wouldn’t want to miss out on the show. I’ll bring popcorn.”
I rubbed the back of my neck and considered how I could possibly survive a meeting with my mother without turning into a raging berserker. She’d been carefully picking at my self-control for the last few months leaving me with a very short fuse. Still, I’d matured in the decade since I’d last seen her. I was responsible for more than myself, and she was slowly but surely suffocating my business to death.
“I’ll be on the next plane.”
“A chopper is on its way. The jet’s already waiting along with a nice cold beer.”
“As if there’s enough alcohol in the world.”
“As if. See you soon, cousin.” He hung up leaving me seething until the sound of chopper blades alerted me to my ride.
It was first-class all the way. I wasn’t in the belly of a plane with a pack strapped on my back, on some covert mission that I’d never hear about again. This was prodigal son returning to the family home nonsense. I didn’t drink the cold beer, even if there was a seal on it. I wouldn’t eat or drink anything she offered me until I got back into my own world. Was this some kind of reunion for a final reckoning or something equally dramatic? Maybe the old lady was dying. One could only hope, because she was probably one of the immortal blood-sucking undead by now.
The beautiful and professionally friendly stewardess smiled at me and directed me off the jet, like I might get lost. It was big, but not that big.
On the tarmac, Daniel, my blond cousin who looked so much like me, was waiting with a little red car that was as pretty as it was dangerous. “Good flight?” he asked, tossing me the keys.
“Nice ride.”
“It is. Drive fast. Get some of that rage out of your system before you meet the Croc. Do you know how many people are betting that you lay waste to the parlor? Basically everyone.”
