The Art of Being Tony (Tony Winters Book 1) Read online

  That was blasted out, taking the woman to the mat, hard. He was also caught in a nice head and arm choke which was sunk in deep before they were all the way to the ground. Then it was a rather desperate fight to get out of the thing, using brute force and a bit of cheating, using a leg to pry himself loose from Ash’s death grip. It was a thing that he nearly didn’t make happen. Technically it wasn’t cheating to do it the way he was, but Fox wouldn’t have. She’d just force her way out, using her arms. If she could.

  Hopefully that would mean she’d be stuck, unable to get out of the move.

  At first it didn’t really seem like his clever plan of being fresh against a tired woman really meant that much. It was clear that his gym pal had been working the whole time to get better and learn to fight her opponent, which was paying off really well. There were a few moments in the first three rounds where she might well have won, against the real Fox. In two of them he had to cheat again, using more technical moves than would be ordinary, so that he could escape in time not to black out.

  It was going into the fourth round where things shifted suddenly. Ash was exhausted and he was breathing hard from the exertion himself, but wasn’t spent yet. That meant pressing in and pushing the woman into mistakes, over and over again. He tried not to spare her at all, forcing Denny and Raul to call out tips to her. Reminding her of the fight plan.

  That part did work, when she got back to it. Even tired she was able to hold him off and finally sink several good submission holds that were so brutal he nearly had to tap out. The thing there was that Fox Rends never gave up. Not in the fights against women. So Tony the super-boy hung on too, even as he thought his arms were going to break a few times. Desperately trying to force his way out of the moves in ways that wouldn’t have worked with an opponent that was stronger than he was by any decent percentage.

  They ended on their feet, trading blows. Actually, he was mimicking Muchado for that one, the boxer that had fought with Steve a few weeks before. He was, hopefully, actually coming at Ash with better skill and speed than Fox would have, adding in just enough kicks to let him move in and press her as she tried for a takedown of her own. That wasn’t allowed suddenly. Not because of any plan, just that to him it made sense.

  Fox wasn’t winning on the ground against Ashley. Not if she held to her fight plan. That meant doing it on her feet, trying to pound the woman into submission or knock out.

  The thing was, that part wasn’t lost on the fight team and they’d been training for that, too. It was a big part of why she was there, at Winters Gym. To learn how to improve her standing game. It showed and she managed several blows that nearly knocked him out, even as Anthony refused to go down, trying to hang on for dear life until the final bell rang.

  At the end he was spent and had to lay on the mat, gasping for air, as his opponent walked around a bit, doing much the same thing. Then, they were doing twice the work of a real professional fight for MMA stuff. That showed, by the end. Not just in how tired they got, but in how sloppy they were as they fought.

  Jen clapped though and this time the audience did as well.

  “Good session. Did we get the cams going for this? I want to look at some of that.” The woman helped him up, holding a hand out, as he nodded.

  “Yeah… I think so. I set it up, so that we’d get three angles on it in here? Unless I hit the wrong buttons.” In that case they wouldn’t get anything, most likely. No one seemed that worried about the idea and headed up to Rick’s office in order to watch it all.

  That meant going with the man to the video room, to learn how to set up the transfer to the big screen, down the hall. Which meant he messed up and put monitor one, which still showed the car prowler from earlier, up on that screen for a bit, thinking that it was monitor four. Which wouldn’t have been a big deal, since Rick was right there to help him fix it and he really did have good shots of the sparring match for them.

  “What’s this?” He pointed at the ugly man, but didn’t get an explanation, since there was cursing from down the hallway. It was loud and kind of panicked sounding. That meant running, slowly in his case, since he was kind of wiped out still, to see what was up.

  It wasn’t Ashley and Raul wrestling for the last protein bar or anything normal seeming like that. Just the woman staring angrily at the big screen, which still showed the man looking into the car. It was freeze framed and not a great likeness of the guy, but in color.

  “That’s Daren. Where did this come from? That’s our lot here, right?” It did look a little different, showing just rows of cars, which made it harder to tell.

  Rick, Jen, Denny and Raul were all lost on that one, but Anthony had been the one working things, so nodded.

  “I saw someone looking into a car, who ran off. I think that’s Dani’s new boyfriend?”

  That got a yelp from Ashley and a scared look that he wasn’t used to seeing on her face.

  “No… Or, maybe? That’s Daren McElroy. The crazy, stalking ex of mine? I… I have a restraining order against him, but in another state. I don’t even know how he could have found me here. I’m so sorry…” She swallowed hard and really seemed to mean it, sinking down in a chair, staring at the man.

  Rick nodded and did something so weird that Anthony nearly had his own turn to freak out.

  He, almost instantly, dialed the police.

  It was all he could do not to run from the room and leave the building. Everyone knew that calling the cops was always a bad plan. They did not come to help you. They were there to arrest you, if they could. He didn’t even have real ID to use, not being a licensed driver yet. That meant, if they questioned him, that he’d probably be taken in, just to do an outstanding warrant search. Which he didn’t have, but still, they could lock you up for days, claiming you were trying to pull one over on them, even if they had nothing on you.

  Here Rick was, chatting with a dispatcher, in order to invite them to the gym. Like it was nothing.

  Nothing.

  It took a real fight not to start breathing hard at the idea. Jen went away, only to jog back with Dani, about ten rather tense minutes later. Rick was off the phone and the police were coming. No one even acted funny, like they wanted to run and hide their drugs, or flush them. Probably for the same reason that he wasn’t trying to do that part.

  They just didn’t have any. These people weren’t even drunk.

  Looking down he realized that he was dressed like a transsexual professional fighter though, so he faked a smile, just as a worried Dani pointed.

  “What is he doing? I pretty much broke up with him a few days ago. It was after we talked about him the other day. You were kind of right, Tony. I mean, you didn’t say he wasn’t worth my time, but what kind of guy doesn’t put out by the sixth date, right? He isn’t even religious or anything, so it was weird.”

  Uncle Rick nodded.

  “Not that strange. He was using you to get in to spy on Ashley. They used to date and he used to stalk her… Which seems to not be so past tense as all that.”

  Wincing, Dani sighed.

  “Well. That explains him wanting to know all about what everyone was doing here. I’d figured he was just trying to spy for another club, you know? That didn’t make a lot of sense, given that the easy thing to do would be buy a membership and come work out here for a few days, but it was all I could think of. On the good side, I didn’t tell him much.” She shrugged. “We did talk though, so I don’t know what he might have gotten from context.”

  Looking down again, Anthony nodded.

  “I need to change. The cops are coming and if I get arrested, I do not want to be wearing this when it happens.”

  No one seemed to think that was too odd for him to say really and let him go. He changed back into his regular gym sweats, since they made him look kind of like he worked there, or at least belonged. When he got back out, there was a man and a woman, wearing blue, carrying guns and big flashlights, talking to people and looking at the video.r />
  The man was doing the speaking, his voice conversational, instead of barking about how people were going to be arrested and raped in prison, like normal police did. He wasn’t even droning on about rights that real people didn’t actually have.

  “This is pretty clear. A man you have a restraining order on… is that active?” He looked at Ashley, who nodded firmly, but didn’t speak. “Okay, so even if that isn’t valid here, we have anti-stalking laws and that’s enough of a paper trail to show that this isn’t normal at all. Following you from several states away and using someone else to get at you like that… You said that he’s attacked people before? We need to run the full name on that.”

  It took a bit, but they actually put a call in, just using the phone, right there in front of them all, to try and get in touch with the police where Ash came from. Then, as if it weren’t even a thing, they spoke to people there, who seemed to be helpful, while everyone in the room nodded a lot.

  When the officer got off the phone, he sighed.

  “Technically we don’t have enough to pick him up on this. What we can do is go talk to him and try to scare him off. Which, given the history we have here,” he tapped the white pad he’d been taking notes on, so that they’d get the idea. “Will mean almost exactly nothing to him. You can’t really leave the state right now again?”

  Ashley seemed more pissed now than scared and shook her head.

  “I have a fight in a few weeks. It’s a major thing and I need to be training for it, not worrying about this. Damn-it! Why won’t he just go away? We went out for like, three weeks! This is insane.”

  Which was probably the real answer. The man was a nut job and they all kind of had a clue to that. What he was thinking about, well, that probably had something to do with how Ashley would love him, if he were just in her life enough. A sane person would have worked out that it wasn’t going to happen however, after he’d tried to shoot her. Even if he didn’t mean it and had missed on purpose.

  That was the real worry. Even Anthony got that. No one tried to do that and then figured you’d forgive them. So hunting her down now probably meant he aimed to finish the job. If nothing else, they had to at least assume something like that.

  It was Jen that nodded.

  “You’re in an extended stay, not far from here, right? We’ll take you out of there and put you up with Rick, Tony and I. Then… We keep people around you all the time. We don’t need you worrying about this right now. You have a career making fight coming and we have to help you keep your focus.” She glanced at Rick, since it was his place, but then did the same with Tony.

  He was in the doorway, since it would be easier to run away from there if he had to.

  “Yeah. That’s a plan. You wanted to have me around all the time anyway, right? Everyone wants more me in their world.” That wasn’t the truth, Anthony knew, but the looks he got from the room were nearly grateful, for some reason.

  The male officer nodded, the smaller lady cop speaking now.

  “That’s a good plan, if you really do it. Stay with other people and if anything starts happening, call us. Earlier is better than late. Better we come out to a dozen false alerts on something like this than get there too late. Most of the time a person like this isn’t going to try for you in a crowd, so having people around really will be helpful. We’ll go and see about changing his mind for him.”

  Then they shook hands with the people in the room, the male officer even bothering to do that with Anthony. He expected to have his arm twisted behind his back, so that he could be cuffed, but that didn’t happen. They just left. Going off to be useful and not hassling them for being poor, or living in a crack house.

  Because of course, they weren’t.

  Still, it was a real relief when they left without taking anyone away with them. That was close to the first time he’d ever seen that happen. The police loved to hassle innocent people, after all. He’d lived that life for too long not to get that part.

  Then, as everyone stood there, not knowing what to do, he tried to figure out what Tony would be getting up to at that point. It involved something like not giving up and getting back to work, he suspected.

  “Right. Let’s go over the sparring match? Then we’ll collect up a group of guys and go get your things. Safety in numbers is the plan.” They were all fighters and really, Ash could kick one guy’s butt, if he showed up for a fist fight.

  It was just that the man had tried to shoot her once, meaning that he might not be playing fair that way. So numbers and if possible, weapons, were in order. Even the cops had agreed with part of that.

  Rick went to get things cued up and running and they all pretended to be concerned about the upcoming match. After a bit, that even started to become real, as he pointed to the huge television screen and laughed.

  “Ah… That went so much better in my head. Fox Rends would have just stood up there and taken you with her. Though I think if that happened, you could have really locked the arm out? I had my clumsy foot in your face there, trying to pry you off.” He grinned at the move, since it looked horrible and like real cheating, but was inside the rules for MMA, apparently. They were pretty good that way, as far as what they let you get away with.

  Jen jumped right on the part where Ashley got too tired.

  “Here. You flagged and went back to your normal way of fighting. We need to drill the plan more, so that doesn’t happen to you.” It took a few minutes of action, where the fake Fox looked almost like he was winning for a bit. Inside the first five rounds, too.

  Then the voices reminded her of what to do and things got a lot harder. It was a desperate match after that and showed, even to the very end, where they started fighting on their feet. Then…

  Rick smiled.

  “If you bring that to your fight, in your standing game, Rends will not know what hit him. That’s good technical boxing there. I mean her… That still messes me up. I remember when we were putting fighters up against the guy, three years ago or so. He went by another name, but wasn’t going to make it to the top. He won’t now either, in the women’s division. Not having to face you first. There are some things to fix and we need to get you to sharpen a few points up for practice, Tony, but this is looking really good.”

  Raul, who’d snuck in after the police left, being a sane and normal person, smiled hugely.

  “I agree. You’re looking good. Tony, you’re ready for the next match with Nick? I need you to push him harder, a bit more like you did here? He’s starting to lose focus. It happens in the last weeks before fights sometimes. It’s work, I think. It gets hard doing eight hours, then training for another eight, day after day.” They all nodded at that and it made sense to him. Steve and Mark had both mentioned just going home and sitting on the sofa, most evenings, to rest as much as possible between training sessions.

  Nick and a lot of the others couldn’t afford to do that kind of thing. You had to be really making it, as a fighter, to not need another job.

  “Let me go over the Wilcox tapes again? He’s more technical, but I can try to bring more to it. I need to get that pentagram drawn back on.” Denny had done it for him the last time. “We also need to run him hard and exhaust him first, if we can. Like we did to Ash today? That won’t make me any heavier, but might make it a bit more real seeming for him.”

  That got the girl to turn and make a face at him.

  “Is that what was going on? I thought it was a bit much, going for two runs like that. I figured it was just about my weak cardio work.”

  That wasn’t the case, he knew. She ran more than a lot of professional boxers did before title bouts. Her stamina hadn’t failed her that day. If anything, his had since he’d been wasting so much effort, trying to do things using strength, instead of skill.

  They broke up then, with Jen taking Ashley away and him going to pass out towels, while Rick set things up with the other guys.

  Now their good guy ways were helping out finally. They were
too soft on Ash in practice, but they had six men volunteering to make certain she could move in peace. They had to do it late, but when they left from her extended stay apartment, her junk loaded into the back of the gym van, most of the guys took off from there. It was still light out, so Rick just drove back to his place.

  “If we’re being watched, then we are. Daren knows where the gym is and he won’t be thrown off by us driving around in circles for two hours, waiting for dark.” He seemed tense.

  They all did, which wasn’t right.

  Ash needed to be relaxed and have her head on the upcoming fight. That was the point of moving her. Steve and Denny were in a car, right behind them and no one had managed to follow along. It also wasn’t like they had to elude the police or anything. Anthony hugged the woman a bit, with one arm. Not for long, since he wanted to comfort her, not get her into a troubling relationship with underage him. That would mess with her as much as Daren was doing, he was willing to bet.

  Even if no one cared about that kind of thing, which really didn’t seem to be the case with these people.

  “I have all of Fox’s fights. You should go over them when we get in. After dinner though. I’m starving. I need to go over the Wilcox things, too. There are less of those. I have some notes?” He actually did, even if they weren’t that useful to anyone.

  He was just changing the subject.

  Jen, who was in the front seat, her blonde hair back in a sporty and energetic seeming ponytail, turned to look back into the van.

  “That isn’t a horrible idea. We can give you pointers on how to fake being Wilcox for Nick. Your technical ground skills need some work to really pull that off.” Then she winced, as if saying the obvious was her being mean.

  He grinned in return.

  “No doubt. Especially if I’m supposed to really be pushing Nick. He’s good.”