“Not by name. He asked about a fighter with a wolf tattoo on his shoulder.”
Trent stared at the photograph.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I didn’t know it mattered.”
Denny looked between them. “Maybe Malcolm has been looking for Agrippa for a long time.”
“Or maybe,” Bryce said, “he has been looking for something Agrippa knows.”
Before anyone could respond, Trent’s phone rang.
Malcolm.
“Have you made progress?” the promoter asked.
“I have information about an old gym.”
“Good. Find out whether Agrippa has gone there.”
“What happens if I refuse?”
A brief silence followed.
“You are a grown man, Trent. You can make your own decisions.”
“Then why does every message from you sound like a threat?”
Malcolm sighed, as though Trent were being unreasonable.
“Because you keep mistaking opportunities for obligations. I am offering you a way to repair the damage you caused to your reputation.”
“By following a man who has a child?”
“I specifically told you to stay away from the boy.”
“That doesn’t make this right.”
“No,” Malcolm said quietly. “It makes it safer for you.”
The line went dead.
Trent lowered the phone.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then Bryce took a step toward him.
“We should go to the police.”
“And tell them what?” Trent asked. “That we bullied a stranger in a park and then got involved in some mystery about stolen money?”
“Tell them the truth.”
“The truth will destroy us.”
Bryce looked at him steadily.
“The truth is already destroying us. We’re just deciding whether to make it worse.”
Trent wanted to argue. He wanted to tell Bryce that life was more complicated than simple choices between right and wrong. But he could not escape the fact that every decision he had made since the park had been designed to protect his pride.
He had mocked Agrippa because he expected no consequences.
He had accepted Malcolm’s offer because he wanted revenge.
Now he was afraid because, for the first time, he could see the consequences coming.
Cole climbed down from the hood of his car.
“I know something else,” he said. “My cousin told me Malcolm was asking about an old notebook. He offered money to anyone who could find it.”
“What kind of notebook?” Trent asked.
“Black cover. Silver wolf on the front.”
The five men looked at one another.
Mason swore.
“That’s the notebook in the photo Malcolm showed you?”
Trent nodded slowly.
“Where did he get that picture?”
“He sent it to me last night.”
Cole rubbed his face.
“My cousin said someone else had already asked about it. A woman named Natalie Brooks.”
Trent’s stomach tightened.
He remembered Malcolm’s warning about Agrippa’s past. He remembered the promoter saying the notebook contained information powerful people wanted to bury.
And now he understood that Malcolm had not approached them because they were strong or clever.
He had approached them because they were expendable.
“Listen,” Trent said. “Nobody follows Agrippa. Nobody contacts his family. We find out what Malcolm is doing, and then we decide what to do.”
Mason gave a humorless laugh.
“Since when are you the responsible one?”
“Since I realized we might be helping a criminal.”
Bryce studied him.
“Do you actually mean that?”
Trent looked down at his phone.
“I don’t know what I mean anymore.”
At that moment, Cole’s phone vibrated. He read the message, and his face went pale.
“What is it?” Denny asked.
Cole turned the screen toward them.
The message contained a photograph of all five men standing in the parking lot. It had been taken from a distance less than a minute earlier.
Beneath it were eight words.
MALCOLM KNOWS YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT WALKING AWAY.
The men immediately scattered, searching the surrounding streets for whoever had taken the picture.
There was nobody visible.
No car pulling away. No figure disappearing behind a building.
Only the empty parking lot and the steady hum of traffic beyond the fence.
Trent looked at the photograph again.
The image was sharp enough to show the expression on each man’s face.
Whoever had taken it had been close.
Very close.
And whoever had sent the message knew that the group was beginning to turn against Malcolm.
Trent slipped the phone into his pocket.
“Now we really need to talk to the police,” he said.
This time, nobody disagreed.
The old boxing gym stood at the end of a narrow industrial street, squeezed between a warehouse and a building that had once manufactured machine parts. Its sign had faded almost completely, leaving only the word BOXING visible above the entrance.
Agrippa remembered the place.
He had trained there during the early years of his career, before the championship purses, before the television interviews, before people began calling him Iron Wolf. The gym had been rough and overcrowded, but the fighters who trained there respected one another because nobody could survive on reputation alone.