REBEL

#4.5 The Beat and The Pulse

Amity Cross

REBEL (#4.5 The Beat and The Pulse) by Amity Cross

Copyright © 2015 Amity Cross / Nicole R. Taylor

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All song titles, song lyrics, products and brand names mentioned in this book are the property of the sole copyright owners.

Cover Design © Amity Cross / Nicole R. Taylor

Chapter 1

Charlotte

This had to be either the best or worst idea I’d ever had.

The jury was still out on which it was going to be.

I sat in my car, watching the stream of people coming and going from the warehouse that was ablaze with light and sound. Usually, it was illegal raves I came to bust up with an army of cops at my side, not a highly organized underground fighting racket.

In the daylight, I went by the name Detective Charlotte Croft, but out here in the wilds of Melbourne’s seedy underbelly, I was just Charlotte or Charlie for short. If anyone in that building found out I was a cop, I’d be gutted from head to toe. Cops were not welcome in a place like this.

What had brought me here, then? Truthfully, it was part insanity and part desperation. I needed a big break to get my stalled career moving again or just give up and drown.

I’d joined the Victorian Police right out of high school at eighteen and had excelled through the ranks…all the way to detective by twenty-five. It was young, but I’d earned it—an impressive feat considering the whole force was one big boys club. I’d endured my fair share of crap from drunken idiots during my time on the beat and more than a fair chunk of it at the station. Making detective hadn’t stopped any of it. In fact, it had just gotten worse. I constantly had to prove myself or fall behind into irrelevance, and irrelevant cops got the shit cases. The hypochondriacs and the crazies that wore tinfoil hats. The high profile drug busts and murder investigations were handed to the men with the biggest balls and being a chick…apparently I didn’t have any. Not even any of the metaphoric ones.

Being a female detective was harder than walking the streets on a Saturday night, which is how I found myself outside of the most notorious underground fighting racket in the whole of Melbourne. Hell, the whole of Australia. The Underground was dripping in bad news. Busting this open would be the best thing my career had ever seen. Fuck, it would be the best thing to happen to anyone’s career.

Too bad I was conducting this investigation off book and without backup. If my boss found out I was here unsanctioned…my head would be on the chopping block. I already knew what would happen if I pulled this off. The risk seemed justifiable to me.

Getting out of the car, I joined the stream of people that were filing into the place that was known as The Underground. Fitting name, considering what it was.

Inside, the warehouse was pumping.

The moment I stepped within the walls, I was transported to what felt like another planet. The Underground was a place like no other…and attracted a crowd to match.

Bookies were taking bets, punters were lining up around the cage that was nestled amongst a ring of bleachers, the bar was packed, and I stood in the middle of it all…absolutely awestruck. The level this operation was being run at was unbelievable. There was no way this could go on without a good chunk of the force being paid off. Not only cops but politicians, lawyers, the Melbourne Fire Brigade. Big money rolled around this place. It had its own bloody economy.

If I was going to crack open The Underground and expose it for what it really was, I had my work cut out and then some. What in the bloody hell was I thinking?

There had to be at least four hundred punters crammed in here, and that wasn’t including staff and fighters. I couldn’t believe everything I was seeing. I didn’t know if I should be mesmerized or appalled. The further I ventured into the warehouse, the more my eyes were opened. I decided it was a little of column A, and a little of column B.

I stood out with my tall stature and pale blonde hair, and people turned to look as I passed. Noticing a few groups of women done up in makeup that was an inch thick and tops that clung tightly to their artificial breasts, I began to understand why. There was a kind of woman that frequented here and it was neither highbrow nor classy. Trashy was more like it. People were staring because they were trying to decide what category to place me in. Easy or hard.

The men were trying to work out how easily they could get into my pants, and the women were gauging how easy it would be to cancel out their competition. I’d find no friends here, not that I was looking.

Pushing through the throng, I jammed myself against the fence, staring into the cage. It was a crude contraption with a concrete floor. No padding, no safety net…just a wire fence and a couple of beefy looking blokes that acted as security. There was nothing safe about it. When my gaze settled on the brown stains all over the illuminated floor, which were obviously dried blood, I swallowed hard.

“What are the rules?” I asked a guy standing to my right.

He looked me up and down and began to laugh. “Rules? There are no rules, sweetheart.”

I raised my eyebrows, glancing back to the dried blood.

“You look a little lost,” the man said, beginning to crowd my personal space. “You wanna—”

“No, thank you,” I snapped, moving back into the crowd, away from the creeper. No rules? I wondered how many fighters were hospitalized, or worse, killed in there.

Moving through the crowd, I found a space further along the edge of the cage, a sick fascination drawing me to the sidelines. The air was thick with excitement, an animalistic electricity…and it was catching.

Curling my fingers through the chain-link, I surveyed the faces around me, trying to see who carried more weight, who was in charge, and who was calling the shots. So far, it all looked pretty evenly split between the punters and the fighters. It was a very ‘them and us’ mentality. The gods and their subjects.

My attention was pulled to the side as a man entered the cage, positioning himself in the middle of the pool of light. He was in full referee garb, a cordless microphone in his hand, and when people began to notice him standing in the center of the ring, they began to fall silent. He raised the microphone to his lips and practically roared into the thing.

“Welcome, one and all, to The motherfucking Underground!” Cheers and whistles erupted around me, the air alive with energy. “This is our first bout of the evening, and fuck, do we have a good one for you.” He pointed to his left, where a section of the cage swung inwards. “He’s the meanest son of a bitch out there, he’ll fuck you up with a single blow to the head…then he’ll stomp on it. It’s Crowbar!”