“Fifteen thousand dollars.” The man talking was dressed in a suit that probably cost at least that much. It was quite the contrast to the old converted barn he was standing in. Another man, somewhere in his fifties and dressed in a flannel shirt, boots, and jeans, that probably cost less than the other man’s tie all told, sat on a stool a few feet away. His brow was covered in sweat and his lip was split. A few drops of blood covered his chin and the front of the white t-shirt that poked out from underneath the flannel one. He looked like he was trying to decide if he should say anything or not, especially because the two young guys that stood behind him had split his lip and maybe broken one of his ribs the last time he opened his mouth. “Well?” the rich, impatient man asked. “Where is my money?”

The sweating man wiped his brow with the back of his hand and with a lisp he hadn’t had before he said, “I used it, Eddie, to set all this up.”

“You used it?” Eddie’s voice sounded quiet and smooth, yet menacing all the same.

“Yes,” the older man said, excitedly. “By the time tonight is over we’ll have it back tenfold. We’ve got some big spenders here from Dallas and Houston and that MC just set up in town, the Head Hunters or some shit…”

“And your fighters, they’re here too, right?” Eddie’s tone indicated he knew the answer to that and he wasn’t happy about it.

“Well, Red Crow is here…”

“True, that’s true. I saw the big Indian down the hall; that motherfucker looked ready for a fight.” There was a creepy tone in his voice. “My people are out there taking money on that guy left and right. Money they might have to refund if nobody shows up to fight his big ass. See, the story I got was that your boy… Gunner, is it? Story goes that the boy you staked all this on, Kinley…your very life even…hasn’t even shown up yet. I do hate rumors, messy things. I’m hoping that’s all this is, a nasty rumor. The Puerto Rican boy is in the back somewhere fixing that long, pretty hair of his and he’ll be ready to go any time now, right?”

“Well, not yet, Eddie, but…”

Eddie took a step toward Kinley and lowered his voice so he could barely be heard above the sounds of breathing in the room. “You have exactly one hour to find that little pretend biker prick and make sure he understands he’s not only going to fight tonight, he’s going to win…that is, if he wants to live.”

“He’ll win, Eddie. You saw the video of the last fight, right? This kid is undefeated. He’s an animal in the ring. He’s going to make us a killing.”

Eddie snickered. “Yeah, he’s going to win, if he shows up. You know how I know that? Because I made sure of it. If he doesn’t show up…” Eddie let that hang in the air for a few seconds and then said, “I’m leaving here tonight with my money either way.”

Listening quietly from underneath the floorboards Gunner looked at Billy and said, “What the fuck is going on?”

Gunner had shown up fifteen minutes before the fight was supposed to begin. He was surprised Billy and Patty hadn’t seemed happy to see him. Before anyone else saw him, Patty told Billy to get him the hell out of the bar while she pushed his Harley out of sight. Gunner was confused, but didn’t have any time to ask questions before Billy was urging him out the back door and they were running across the field that stretched between Patty’s bar and Kinley Bonner’s farm. The big old barn was already surrounded by cars and trucks and motorcycles, but the two boys had grown up sneaking on and off the properties in the county, and even in the dark they knew where they were going. Billy led him to the double doors in the ground behind the barn. They pulled them up and took the narrow stairwell down to the cellar below. It was dark but Gunner saw the finger that Billy put to his lips. He pointed at the floor above them and then at his ear. They’d been listening for over ten minutes by the time Eddie walked out and when Billy didn’t immediately answer his first question Gunner said:

“How did Kinley get mixed up with Eddie?” Kinley Bonner was a third-generation farmer. Sure, he had been the one to start the Saturday night fights, but to the men in the small farming community it had been as harmless as a friendly poker game: a way to relax after a hard week of working sixteen-hour days. It was nowhere near on the scale of anything Eddie Martini should be interested in.

Eddie Martini was born Edward Martin. He changed his name right out of high school when he started running books for some guy in San Antonio. By the time he was in his twenties he was running his own small but successful gambling operation. He was also pimping out some of the neighborhood girls. One of those girls was Gunner’s mother, and that was how he first came to be in Gunner’s life.

Gunner knew Eddie as the guy who came by once a week or more to collect money from his mom for years. Sometimes he’d spend the night behind his mother’s closed door, and sometimes he’d even bring candy or a toy for Gunner. Eddie was never mean to his mom, at least not in front of him, so Gunner had a hard time understanding why his mother seemed so afraid of the man, until after she died and Gunner was on the streets. He found out quickly that her fear had been well-placed. Eddie’s sharp clothing and handsome face housed a monster inside, and the kids that worked for him referred to him, behind his back, as “Eddie Munster.”

Eddie had a small army of kids working for him. They were mostly runaways or junkies that he supplied and then demanded payment with whatever the kid had to offer. Gunner heard stories about how some of those kids went missing when they refused to do something Eddie asked of them, or talked about him to anyone. No one ever saw them again unless it was on a slab at the morgue. He steered clear of Eddie and his “business” for as long as he could, but after almost a year on the streets, cold and alone and only eleven years old, he gave in. Billy was already working for him and that was how they met. The first job Gunner did for Eddie was simply carrying a package across town and picking up another to bring back to Eddie’s guy. He made enough cash to eat real food for a couple of weeks, and to a street urchin that was a windfall. The draw to make more was just too tempting, and before long he and Billy were running packages all over San Antonio. It was all good at first and even when the two boys found Patty and a safe warm place to sleep every night, the temptation to keep making that money was too great to give it up.

For a while, Gunner didn’t know exactly what was in the packages, and he didn’t care. He only found out what he was carrying when he was about thirteen and got caught up in a sting the police had set up. He delivered a package to an undercover police officer. As soon as he took the package full of money from the cop he was arrested. Gunner found out fast that they didn’t want him, they wanted what he could tell them about Eddie. He was streetwise enough by that time to know that spending time in juvenile hall for running illegal guns would be a lot less dangerous than talking about Eddie.

When he got out eight months later he was released into Patty’s custody. Gunner never knew how she managed that, but her one condition to not turning him over to social services was that he stop working for Eddie Munster. He wasn’t smart enough to heed her warning, however, and at fifteen he was arrested again for carrying drugs. He did two years on drug trafficking charges. He still didn’t give up Eddie as his supplier, though, and when he got out at seventeen, Eddie seemed to have forgotten all about him. Patty let him come back and he slipped into his role of handyman at the bar in the tiny town of Lincoln, and started fighting in the Bonner barn on Saturday nights. It wasn’t a great life, but it was comfortable. At least he didn’t have to worry about getting arrested, unless he did something stupid like he had the week before. Most of all, he didn’t have to worry about Eddie Munster. He stayed out of the city and although life in the little town as a bartender and bouncer in the only local bar had been boring at times, he had to admit that it was a lot more peaceful without Eddie in it.

“Patty says Kinley ran into some financial troubles a while back. He’s been gambling a lot. He’s not just setting these fights up, he’s betting on everything and playing in poker games—he was about to lose the farm.”

“And he went to Eddie for a loan?”

“Yeah, Eddie has a few guys working around Lincoln. Kinley got the loan and then he couldn’t pay it back on time.”

“So why is he still breathing?”

“Because of you. Kinley convinced Eddie that they could make a fortune off you, but you know Eddie, it had to be his way.”

“His way?”

“Yeah. The guys up there aren’t your usual Saturday night crowd out of Nowheresville U.S.A. These guys are big gamblers, big money. Eddie’s changing the stakes, upping the ante, like he always does. Didn’t you wonder how Kinley got a guy with a reputation like the Indian’s to agree to one of these fights? I heard the dude was trained by one of the best trainers in MMA history.”

“That’s true, but Kinley told me that before Bob Red Crow cashed in on all that talent, he got drunk and killed an old man and woman on his way home from a party one night. He spent five years in prison for manslaughter, which pissed off a lot of people who thought he should have done more time. He lost his trainer and any endorsements he ever hoped to have. I Googled him—it’s all true. I just assumed he was taking what he could get these days and after I fought that guy Stacks a few weeks ago and knocked him out in the first round…” Gunner stopped talking and hesitantly Billy said:

“Stacks is also well-known in the San Antonio underground. That’s why there were so many people at that fight. Most of them were betting against you.”

Suddenly Gunner felt like a fool. He was talking out loud as the thoughts raced through his head. “No one else had ever taken Stacks down that easily. He had a fight with Red Crow a few months before he fought me and went all three rounds before finally tapping out. Kinley said the videos of that fight and the one between me and Stacks were circulating in the underground, and suddenly I was someone Red Crow was interested in fighting. This fight was supposed to be my steppingstone. Fuck! The motherfuckers set the whole thing up, didn’t they? Stacks took a dive so they could make this fight with Red Crow look legit…fuck!”

“Yeah, and Red Crow is going to take a dive in the third round tonight.”

“How did you find all this out?”

“Kinley’s oldest son, Mike.”

“He told you all this?”

“Nope. He told Patty. I guess they’re…”

“Shit, I don’t want to know that.”

“Anyway, he told her that his dad thinks he can use the money he makes tonight to pay Eddie back and he’ll be done with him.”

“He’s a fool.”

“Yep. Kinley’s still in a small-town Lincoln frame of mind. He doesn’t know Eddie Munster the way we do. We need to get you out of here, Gunner.”

“Out of here? I’m not going anywhere until after that fight.”

“Excuse me? Are you insane? You know I admire those brass balls of yours, but you know what happens to people that fuck with Eddie. If you win this fight, he owns you. If you lose…” He shook his head. “I say get back on that pretty bike you rode up on tonight and get the hell out of here before they know you’re back.”

“I’m not going to let Eddie or anyone else own me. If I run, I’ll have to keep running forever. If I win this fight because that’s the way they set it up, Eddie will expect me to do it again. The only way I can prove to these assholes that I can’t be bought and sold is by staying here and losing this fight.”

Billy sighed and rolled his eyes. Sounding like the weight of the world was on his shoulders he said, “Gunner…”

“Have faith in me, brother.”

Billy sounded completely flat as he said, “I got all kinds of fucking faith, Adam.”

Gunner handed Billy his wallet, keys, and phone and said, “I’m going to go up and tell them I’m here. I’d rather you go back to the bar.”

“Fuck that,” Billy said. “You’re not hiding out? Neither am I.”

Gunner grinned at his friend. “Thanks, man, but when this is all over…”

“Patty and I will move fucking heaven and earth to get you out of here before they kill your stupid ass.”