Page 47 of Baiting Kong

Inside, Scout breathed a sigh of relief as he drifted along the edges of the crowd, seeking out the space the fighters would use to change and prepare for battle. As short as he was, it was difficult to see much of anything until he reached the back side as one of the fighters was called out among an ocean of boos. Scout watched him stalk up a guarded hallway while some people hollered obscenities and a few others threw things, prompting the buff-looking man guarding the hallway to rush from his post to help calm things down.

Now to find Sawyer before someone spotted him where he didn’t belong.

Five men were behind the first door he opened, their animated conversation ending abruptly as he scanned the room.

“Sorry,” Scout muttered, ducking out once he determined that no one was in there with them. He pulled the hood of his hoodie lower as he slunk to the second door, revealing an empty space with a couple bags on the floor. Must belong to one of the guys fighting then. One by one he checked, startling women in the middle of a heated embrace and later a man attempting to give himself a pep talk.

It wasn’t until he reached the end of the hall that he encountered a downed fighter being attended to by a sobbing woman, but it wasn’t Sawyer, though her eyes lit up when they landed on him.

“Are you the EMT?” she asked. “They said they were sending someone back.”

“Do I look like an EMT?” he snapped, his patience just about at an end. “I’m looking for my brother; he’s big, blond, and wears a black leather jacket with a three-headed hound on the back of it.”

“He got his ass beat too,” she declared, “but I haven’t seen him since they dragged him to the back.”

The fact that she’d said dragged and not walked made Scout’s blood run cold. He’d seen Sawyer lose fights before, but his brother had always been able to stagger away, bitterly muttering curses, though it had never been in an environment like this one. Heart hammering in his chest, he tried the next room, spying Sawyer’s jacket on the floor, several feet from his brother’s prone form.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Scout growled as he rushed to his side and fell to his knees beside him. “Sawyer, can you hear me?”

“Shouldn’t be here,” Sawyer muttered before deep, wet coughs wracked his body.

Scout spotted blood on his lips and immediately tried to drag his brother into an upright position, hoping that would help him breathe easier. As it was, he didn’t know if he’d be strong enough to get him up, and on his feet, let alone walk him out of the building.

And what then?

The voice in the back of his head was a harsh reminder that he only had his bike, a machine he’d struggle to maneuver if Sawyer wasn’t capable of balancing himself and staying upright. For a moment, he considered calling Kong, only the man had made it clear that Scout couldn’t count on his help or protection. Even now that the truth had come out, he didn’t know where he stood with him. He’d left the meeting at Creature’s place without saying a word to him, riding in the opposite direction from the one that led back to the Joker’s compound. Since then they’d only had a brief conversation in which Kong had offered a halfhearted apology that was mostly just a bunch of excuses and justifications. Recalling the encounter left Scout hesitant to reach into his pocket for his phone.

Best to handle this as they always had, together. Hadn’t Sawyer always said that there wasn’t anything they couldn’t handle if they had each other’s backs? They were all the other needed. Well, and their old man, who he absolutely could not call because it would literally kill him to know how his sons were getting the money they were bringing in. He’d never approve of the fighting, let alone the porn.

No, it was up to Scout to get Sawyer out of here and to the ER.

Fuck.

He couldn’t leave Sawyer’s jacket.

Easing his brother down onto his side, Scout gathered Sawyer’s things and discovered his wallet on the ground, his ID missing when Scout checked it.

Son of a bitch.

Okay, that was a problem, but not as big as it would have been if the address on it was still that of their childhood home. Instead, it was the one for Sawyer’s apartment, five towns over, in Hound’s territory. Whoever had it would be in for a rude awakening if they went looking for him there. He shoved it and the jacket in Sawyer’s bag with his clothes, slung it over his shoulder, and returned to his brother, who wheezed and batted at his hands when Scout reached for him.

“You need to get out of here,” Sawyer rasped.

“We’re both getting out of here,” Scout declared, bracing himself as he hoisted his brother to his feet.

It was a slow, shambling walk to the door, where Scout staggered as he fumbled to get it open. The hall outside was empty, and Scout whispered a silent plea for it to stay that way until he figured out the best way out, since he doubted trying to walk Sawyer through the crowd would go unnoticed. There had to be a backway, though. There was always a back way in and out of these sorts of places, in case the authorities showed up and people needed to scatter in a hurry.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” A deep, booming voice asked as Scout neared the end of the hall.

Rather than respond, he tried to hurry his brother along, only to have Sawyer lurch, stagger, and send them both crashing into the wall.

“I asked you a question,” the man growled, having already caught up to him.

He wasn’t the only one, either. A second, even larger man stood to his left, a menacing shadow looming, as if waiting for the first one to give the word to smash them both.

“My brother’s hurt,” Scout tried, opting for the truth and hoping they’d take pity on them. “He needs to go to the ER.”

“And what do you plan to tell them once you get him there?”

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