The Fight (A Ray Hammer Novel Book 4) Read online

  Published by Rogue Kitten Media, LLC

  Copyright © 2020, by Aaron Leyshon. All rights reserved.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First published in Australia in 2020 by Rogue Kitten Media.

  Rogue Kitten Media LLC, 30 N Gould St, STE 4000, Sheridan, WY 82801

  The Fight

  Aaron Leyshon

  Contents

  The Ray Hammer Thrillers

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  The Ray Hammer Thrillers

  Die A Little (Free Short)

  The Spill

  The Deal

  Strike

  The Fight

  The Stain

  The Flame

  Receive your free copy of Die a Little by visiting: https://ray.aaronleyshon.com/die

  Chapter One

  I stood there clutching the one thing they’d allowed me to bring to this place: a crumpled, torn, yellowed lottery ticket. I didn’t think I’d win. I knew the odds, knew that playing was a form of gambling, another addiction I didn’t need in my life. But, it also presented a connection to the outside world, a tactile reminder that beyond the screams and the shivering and the sweats and the delusions and hallucinations, there was a world out there, a world where people bought lottery tickets and hoped to win the money belonging to the other suckers who bought lottery tickets.

  I couldn’t tell you if I’d been in here days or weeks, but I could tell you what the place looked like the second I walked into it. It was gray and monotonous: drywall, no wallpaper, no paintings, no murals, no color. Just gray—gray walls, gray metal doors, gray beds with gray blankets, and a gray TV in the corner where a colorful presenter was drawing multicolored balls from a transparent ball pit made for adults.

  I glanced down at the yellowing slip of paper and my yellow-stained fingers and wondered why the hell I was doing this. My hands didn’t shake so much, and the sweats were nowhere near as bad, but the urge to slug back a tall glass of amber liquid, or clear liquid, or beer, or anything, was stronger than ever . . . but not quite as strong as the urge to fight and run and escape from this place once and for all. But I promised myself I’d try and get clean.

  A colorful ball with a number rolled out of the transparent dome and popped up at the bottom of the screen. So far, they’d all come up my way . . . but I knew it wouldn’t hold. My editor always said I was a lucky son of a bitch, but this would be pushing it. The smells of disinfectant and the tasteless, colorless dinner lingered in the room alongside the sweat and the screams of the other recovering addicts.

  When the fourth number was drawn, I crumpled the paper in my hand and looked around to see if anyone was watching; they weren’t. They never did. They all wandered around, their heads down in a daze.

  This place was called Manor House, but it was neither a manor nor a house, just a crumbly old rehab center. I suppose they called it that because it was out in the middle of nowhere on the rural outskirts of Savannah, Georgia. Hell, maybe there’d been a manor here at some time . . . or a house. But, this building was new, designed to look like nothing and feel like nothing, except depression and misery.

  An orderly smiled at me and apologized as she shuffled past. “Any luck, Mr. Hammer?”

  I crinkled my face back at her. That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it, to show you’re a nice person? It had been too long. I’d been out of the real world for too long. Another number dropped, and then the final number, and my legs gave way. My knees thudded into the hard, gray concrete floor.

  I clutched the piece of paper to my chest, stared at the screen, and then glanced down at the paper, and then back at the screen.

  My heart thumped the Edinburgh tattoo.

  And I suddenly felt the meaninglessness of life so keenly it brought a tear to my eye.

  Chapter Two

  Chris Mayweather stepped out of the tiny shop and into the street; under his arm, a bundle of 50 roses, cut carefully by the florist, were wrapped exquisitely in a large sheet of crimson cellophane. The florist had thrown in a postage-stamp-sized packet of flower food.

  “It’ll keep them longer,” she said. “Just make sure you pour it in the water. What’s the big event?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.

  Chris was pleased to tell her. “Fifteen-year anniversary. I can’t believe it.”

  “Childhood sweetheart?” asked the lady.

  “No,” said Chris. “We met in college, but sweethearts ever since.”

  Her smile was genuine, and Chris’s enthusiasm stepped with him out into the street.

  He had a spring in his stride as he fumbled with the keys in his back pocket, approaching his car. The sun was high in the sky, the birds chirped, and he and Nelly had been together for fifteen years, stuck at it for fifteen years, laughed and cried and fought together for fifteen years, but always together. They’d been broke together, been promoted together, traveled the country together, even been overseas once. They had also seen all of the interstates, and many towns in America. But, there was nowhere like home.

  He stepped up to his black Dodge and placed the flowers on the roof. A huge smiled creased his face as he remembered the day they’d stopped in the Mojave Desert on the way to Vegas—a tiny roadside bar, a cold beer, tumbleweed, and a great expanse of nothingness in all directions.

  Mayweather’s smile widened as he recalled the moment of realization that nothing else mattered, just Nelly and himself and their life together. He remembered how he’d taken one knee and held out the ring he hadn’t been able to bring himself to present to her. What if she didn’t like it? What if she didn’t want to marry him? What if it wasn’t meant to be? But, then and there, in the middle of nowhere, with the Dutch courage of a beer or two and the sheer insignificance of human nature compared to the environment, he’d had the guts to do it.

  He pressed the unlock button on the key and the car’s lights flashed twice. He opened the door, placed the flowers in, gently, on the back seat. Fifteen years; pure bliss. He remembered the soft sheen of sweat on her upper lip as she’d knelt down to kiss him.

  “Yes! Of course, Chris. Of course!” Nelly had darted into his arms.

  Chris Mayweather stepped around the open door of the Dodge, there was a screeching of tires, a flashing of lights, a squealing of sirens, and a shouting of, “Get on the ground! Get on the fucking ground, you motherfucker!”

  Chris turned around to see what all the fuss was about, and realized the guns were pointing at him.

  The smile slid off his face as he lowered himself slowly to the ground, both hands raised, keys hanging from his index finger. His cheek pressed into the blacktop and an officer stood over him, kneeling down into his back, the
muzzle of a Glock 19 pressed to his temple.

  “Don’t move, you motherfucker,” said the man, who Chris Mayweather couldn’t see, and then something hard punched through his skull and Nelly Mayweather’s face and Chris’s smile disappeared into a vast empty nothingness.

  Chapter Three

  When Chief McNamara took the call about the riots, she was halfway out the door and on the way to her goddaughter’s christening. She didn’t have kids of her own, and didn’t intend to. It didn’t go with the job, nor with her interests or life plans. But, she’d been given this opportunity—more of a responsibility, she supposed—except without all of the baggage. She thought she could manage to be a godmother, though. She’d help bring up her best friend’s first child, be there at the Christmas parties, at birthdays, with presents. She’d be the cool adult the kid could talk to. But she was running late for the kid’s christening. She was already screwing things up. One job. She turned around and walked straight back into the precinct building.

  “Shots fired,” said her lieutenant, Macy Carter, bringing Chief McNamara up to speed as she reached her glass-partitioned office. “We’ve already called on the National Guard.”

  McNamara nodded. “Good move. Get onto dispatch. We need as many teams out there as we can. The riot squad in place?”

  “Tear gas and water cannons, ma’am,” said Lieutenant Carter. She was one of McNamara’s finest; cool-headed, decisive, and able to act under pressure without the need to be constantly directed.

  “Mayweather?” asked McNamara, reaching for the phone behind her desk.

  “Straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Carter. “We’ve been at a flashpoint for years. Was only a matter of time.”

  McNamara picked up the phone and punched in a number she knew from memory. She had to report this up the chain of command. This would be huge, but she needed to be out there with her troops, and they needed the cavalry.

  Then into the phone, McNamara said, “We’ve got a situation here, sir.”

  “Don’t I know it!” he screamed down the line. “It’s all over the news. I’m getting requests for interviews and comments left, right and down the goddamn political center.”

  “We’re handling it,” said McNamara. “Riot squad are on their way. National Guard too. We’ve got tear gas and water cannons.”

  The voice at the other end let out a spray of loud, irate verbiage. McNamara held the phone away from her ear, covered the mouthpiece, and said to Carter, “Check they’re sending out the rubber bullets at the armory. We can’t have them mixed up. It would only inflame the situation.”

  When her boss finally stopped screaming down the line, McNamara responded, said she’d be out there herself, doing what she could, said she’d face the media. This was a time for repentance, for saying sorry, for calming the situation. She got another earful and turned on the TV while she waited.

  “Yes, sir,” she said eventually and placed the phone down.

  “Strap on a helmet, Carter. You’re running point on this one. And grab yourself a semiautomatic. You brief the troops. Get everyone out down there. Anyone you can, any squad you can pull, they go to this. Everything else is on standby for now unless it’s absolutely necessary. Threat to life. That goes through dispatch, too. I’m calling an emergency press conference, and then I’ll meet you down there.”

  That was the kind of leader Chief McNamara was, the kind who supported her colleagues, who gave responsibility and expected it to be followed without complaint, without question. She inspired confidence in everyone she worked with. But, right now, she felt her lip quivering and her heart thumping, and she felt ashamed to be American.

  Chapter Four

  I could leave anytime. I told myself from the start I’d stay until the shaking stopped, until the urges ended. I didn’t need a drink to calm me down or to forget the past—my time in the Marines or the things that had happened since.

  But, here I was sitting flush, $300 million crumpled on a piece of faded paper in the pocket next to my heart. There were 300 million things I could do, 300 million people I could be, but I only had one overwhelming urge as I stepped past the orderlies and waved at the two big guys in lab coats with hypodermic needles who stepped towards me as I approached the door.

  “You can’t leave yet, Mr. Hammer. You’re still recovering.”

  I had a spring in my step. Hell, I could almost smell the fresh, crisp air from the other side of that gray door, and that gray wall, and that gray cloudy night.

  “It’s been a pleasure,” I said, and nodded to each one of them, “but I’ve got an urgent assignment and 300 million reasons to be anywhere but here.”

  I’d taken to nicknaming my fellow inmates, the nurses, the orderlies, the thugs with the syringes. Of the pair approaching me, one was Brutus, the other Nero.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Hammer,” said Brutus, “but we can’t let you go.”

  “That’s right,” said Nero. “You made us promise.”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” I said, “but I’ve changed my mind.”

  “You said you’d say that,” replied Nero.

  “And to use force,” added Brutus.

  “If necessary,” I reminded them, “and I don’t see how it’s necessary if I’ve changed my mind. Thanks all the same, boys. I appreciate you trying to keep a promise.”

  Nero made the first move. He stepped forward with his left foot angled against me. I ducked down, pushed hard off my back foot and drove into him. His back smashed into the door, which crashed open, and out we piled into the night. Brutus jumped onto my back. Lurched off. He swung wildly, with the hypodermic syringe, and I ducked to the ground. My hands flew up behind my head. I pulled him over me and hurled him crunching down each gray concrete step until he finally came to a rest in a fetal position on the long drive that led up to Manor House.

  “Sorry, boys,” I said as I stepped past them, “but I think I also warned you that I might use force. Old habits.”

  Nero climbed to his feet, wavered, and then sat down on the handrail, leaning against it heavily. Brutus wheezed.

  “No hard feelings,” I said, and began the long trek down the long drive that led to the long dirt road into Savannah. All I needed now was a drink and a Georgia Lottery retailer, where I could claim my lottery winnings.

  Chapter Five

  Eliza McNamara sent a text message to her best friend, apologizing for not being there at the christening. Sometimes, she thought, it’s harder to ask for forgiveness after the fact. She stepped up to the microphones and the gaggle of reporters.

  “As you know,” she began, speaking to the group of media drones in front of the precinct building, “we have a developing situation here in Savannah, brought on in the wake of the killing of Chris Mayweather. I want to convey my deep regrets that it was the actions of one of my officers that led to this unfortunate circumstance. Mayweather, by all accounts, was a loyal family man, a father of two, a loving husband, and a man whose smile reached many. It is this smile that brought you here today. It has brought people out onto the streets, around Georgia and around the country.”

  There was a swirl of movement in the back periphery of the group of reporters.

  “Traitor!” a sharp male voice shouted, and then an egg cracked and split on the podium, spraying yolk and albumen all over Chief McNamara’s meticulously ironed uniform. Sticky yellow liquid ran down onto the dark skin on the back of her hands.

  Her press secretary stepped forward and pulled her back away from the crowd. Another egg flew through the air towards her. This time, she flung out a hand and caught it softly, cushioning its trajectory. McNamara shaped up as if to throw the egg back into the crowd, but instead, she placed it delicately on the podium and leaned forward into the microphone again.

  “This is not a time for violence. This is a time for a review of our society, our attitudes, and our beliefs towards one another. It’s time for us to get along, time for us to recognize that our differences are not insur
mountable. What we’ve been seeing on the streets today into this evening is not America. We are a country with many problems, with deep-seated division, but until we start acting the way we want to move forward, the way we want to progress, then nothing will change. An innocent man was killed, and I and every single one of you standing in front of me, every single person in this state, in this country, have blood on our hands for that.”

  A tall man shoved his way through the crowd, knocking reporters left and right in an effort to reach the podium, to reach her.

  “Don’t you dare call me a traitor,” said McNamara, her eyes finding his. “I am no such thing: not to my city or my state or my skin. The United States is a place founded on the principle of freedom, both of expression and of the sanctity of life.”

  The man was almost on her now. Her press secretary was once again trying to pull her back, but she planted her feet firmly and held her ground. A couple of officers moved forward, but the man dodged them, leaped onto the podium at the top of the steps, and wrenched it to the ground, where the wooden façade split. Before she could roll away or defend herself, he clambered onto her, kicking and scratching.

  “You killed my brother! You . . .” he huffed, “you. . . .” And she swung her arm out, pulling him down to the side. She swung her leg over him and pinned him to the ground.

  “And now you . . . come here . . . spouting forgiveness. How dare . . .” he puffed, “. . . you!”