Strike (The Beat and The Pulse #10) Read online

  Strike

  (#10 The Beat and The Pulse)

  Amity Cross

  Strike (#10 The Beat and The Pulse) by Amity Cross

  Copyright © 2017 by Amity Cross

  All rights reserved.

  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 author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  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, networks and brand names mentioned in this book are the property of the sole copyright owners.

  Cover Design © Amity Cross / Nicole R. Taylor

  1

  Callie

  After years of saving and planning, my dream was days away from fruition.

  The Fitzroy Cake Company was the culmination of years of baking, experimenting, studying, and saving. Not to mention, the competitions at the annual show, building my social media following with clever pictures, the dead-end jobs baking bland finger buns out of standard premix flours, and the ruthless cutthroat determination of building a business from the ground up at the expense of having a life. You know, the life where I had lots of friends, went out dancing, and got laid.

  Cake or sex? Dick or chocolate ganache? Marzipan sculpted penis cupcakes for hen’s parties didn’t really count.

  Rolling my eyes at the thought of my cock-starved vagina, I surveyed the disarray in the stockroom. Callie Winslow, you’re finally going places…right after you paint this shithole blue.

  The tiny storefront on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, Melbourne, Australia, wasn’t the most spacious, but it was mine. The moment I signed the lease and the keys were in my hand, I’d come here and sat in the middle of the kitchen in a complete haze. To think it had once been a kebab shop!

  It sat on a corner lot, so the front was open with lots of windows, and the wall across the cobblestones was full of vibrant graffiti. The kitchen was behind the counter, but I’d had builders in to put in some walls to separate it, and beyond, was a dark little storeroom with a door on the left that swung out onto the lane.

  Tonight, the last of the painting was happening. Tomorrow, the last of the contractors were coming through to install the display cabinets. The day after that, the furniture was arriving, and then the baking for opening day would commence. Mini cupcakes showered on passersby galore!

  The sun had dipped low, the doors were locked, my earphones were stuck in my ears, and my phone was set to play a rotation of all my favorite songs. I was ready. Placing my hands on my hips, I stared at the wall. Okay, Callie, no time like the present.

  Wedging the lid off the can of paint, I peered at the pale blue hue inside and wrinkled my nose. I hadn’t thought about the fumes. The back door was wedged shut. The lock was jammed, and until the locksmith came, there was no getting out the back. There wasn’t even a window out here. The only exit was back through the little kitchen and out onto the shop floor.

  I hoped I didn’t pass out before I got the first lick of paint on the wall.

  To save a bit of money, I’d opted to do the painting myself, but all those years of watching home renovation reality TV shows hadn’t prepared me for how big a job it actually was. Sanding back plaster, cutting in around all the edges, and rolling on three separate coats to achieve a perfect finish. My first attempts had looked like someone projectile vomited on the wall there’d been that many streaks and drips. No one ever told you how difficult it was to paint a wall a solid color.

  Was I that uncoordinated with a brush? I should stick to baking and decorating cakes. Fiddly and intricate were my things. Oh, and tweaking recipes to achieve the richest, most flavorsome cake and icing you could put in your mouth. That was my forte.

  Dipping the brush into the pot, I carefully applied paint along the corner of the wall. It was a perfect powder blue, a shade between white and full-blown color, it was perfect for the space. It brightened up the dingy stockroom and matched precisely with the kitchen.

  Singing along to my playlist, I worked my way around the edges of the walls, and when I was done cutting in, I tipped some paint into a tray and dipped a roller into the powder blue. Slapping the roller onto the wall, I began applying the first coat, my heart soaring, and I wiggled my round hips and ass to the music.

  I wasn’t exactly overweight or anything, but I wasn’t thin, either. How was I supposed to keep my thighs firm when I had to sample all my recipes? More sugar! More spice! More chocolate! More crème patissière! Spun sugar, butter cream icing, marzipan, lemon meringue… Trying to keep your stomach completely flat when all you wanted to do was lick the batter from every spoon was impossible.

  My nose wrinkled, and I sneezed as an unfamiliar smell tickled my nostrils. Size fourteen wasn’t exactly in the overweight category, but it wasn’t in the realm of borrowing clothes from my super slender housemate, either. Macy had that gap between her thighs and everything.

  Turning, I went to lower the roller into the tray, but I gasped at the sight of billowing smoke and the flicker of flames through the doorway. My fingers went numb, and the roller fell to the floor with a thud, leaving streaks of powder blue paint on the toes of my sneakers.

  The kitchen was on fire.

  Wrenching out my earphones, I grabbed my bag and slung the strap over my head. There was no sound, other than the crackling of flames. Why wasn’t the alarm going off? Why hadn’t the sprinkler system engaged? The fuck…

  Covering my nose and mouth with my sleeve, I ducked low and stepped into the kitchen but was instantly pushed back by a wall of heat. Beginning to panic, my heart sped up, and I tried again.

  Boom!

  An explosion tore through one of the appliances, and I was thrown back against the wall, my head cracking on the brickwork. My arm crashed against the tin of paint, knocking it over. Powder blue pooled over the drop sheet as I cradled my aching head in my hands.

  Moaning, I pushed to my knees as smoke began filling the tiny room. The kitchen was an inferno, the explosion only adding more fuel to the already raging fire. It had gone up so quickly. Just…poof. I hadn’t even smelled any smoke until it was well alight. Now…it looked like I was completely fucked.

  Kicking helplessly at the back door, I began screaming.

  “Help!” I kicked again, but the door was stuck. “Help! Anybody?! Help!”

  I kicked and kicked, my body covered in sweat and my lungs filling with smoke. Coughing, I screamed again before falling to my side.

  Was this where that saying came from? The one where your dreams went up in smoke? I bet some other poor bitch’s life savings exploded in a wall of flame, and they made a saying out of it. All those things came from somewhere. Like a warning for overconfident pastry chefs who couldn’t even cut it in the selection process for MasterChef. I could have a cookbook by now. A really good one with an embossed hardcover and everything.

  “Help!” I screeched with the last of my strength. “I’m stuck! Help!”

  There was a crash and the sound of splintering glass from someplace far away. Pressing my cheek to the floor, my eyes drooped. The smoke was getting to me, and soon, I would be out cold. If I died now, it would be a real pain the ass. I wondered if my insurance covered mysterious fires? Was I liable for the faulty sprinkler system, or could I sue the shit out of my landlord? Bah, I would sue the fucker anyway!

  “Help…” I said with a rasp, my voice straining as I kicked la
mely at the door. “Help…”

  “Fuck,” a male voice cursed, and suddenly, I realized I wasn’t alone. Either that or I was hallucinating.

  He was wearing big black boots with sloppy laces he hadn’t bothered to tie. The trailing ends had been tucked inside, as well as his jeans. I peered closer. The toes were all scuffed.

  He knelt, and I felt his fingers press against my neck, checking for a pulse.

  “I’m stuck…” I muttered, my eyes rolling. “The thing… The fire was…too hot…”

  “I’ve got you,” the man said, lifting me into his arms like I weighed nothing at all. “You’ll be out of here in no time.”

  Flopping in his grasp like a rag doll, my gaze met his, and my mouth fell open. I didn’t know if I was delirious or I’d already reached the point where the smoke inhalation was beginning to eat away at my brain, but he was handsome as hell. Hot as sin…and considering my current predicament, it wasn’t a fire related pun.

  Tall, dark, brooding, chiseled out of marble…his eyes bore into mine. He wasn’t underwear model good-looking or anything, but there was something about him that made all my bits tingle. His eyes were full of sadness, pain, and depth I’d never seen in anyone before. They reminded me of those mysterious pools scientists had found in the middle of the wilderness that went down, down, down into the earth with no bottom. The deeper they went, the darker it became, and still, it stretched on. What mysteries lay within? Was there an end? Was there meaning?

  I was completely and utterly delirious. Wasn’t I? Felt like it.

  “The door’s stuck,” I managed to croak.

  The man glanced at it and grimaced, then like we were in an action blockbuster at the movies, he kicked. I felt his muscles tense as his heel collided with the door. Once, then twice, then cool air rushed into the storeroom, and he was leaping out into the lane like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2.

  Red and blue flashing lights and a wail of sirens greeted us as the mysterious stranger carried me to safety. I clung to his shirt, the stench of smoke still thick in my nostrils.

  “Oh, God,” I muttered, the gravity of what had just happened beginning to crash down on me. “Oh, fuck…”

  “You’re okay,” the man said, his grip tightening on me as we approached the fire trucks lined up on the street. Water was already pouring from hoses, dousing the flames inside my little shop of dreams. “You’re safe now.”

  “Sir… Miss…” A firefighter had approached us, and the man set me down on my shaking feet.

  “She’s inhaled a lot of smoke,” the mysterious stranger said.

  The firefighter nodded, his gaze turning to me before he took my arm. “Let’s get you on some oxygen. An ambulance is on its way.”

  Confused and on the verge of hysterical tears, I let him lead me away, and by the time I turned around to thank the handsome stranger for risking his life…he was gone.

  All I saw were the smoke and flames that had engulfed my shop and dreams and the ten firefighters and their three trucks that were hosing it all down.

  2

  Storm

  Rubbing my jaw, I ignored the blooming pain that seared through my bones.

  Brunswick Street was oddly quiet tonight. I’d caught a ride with some woman who thought she was getting lucky, and then hopped out at the traffic lights a few blocks from where I was now standing. She’d screamed some obscenity after me, but I’d disappeared before I caught the entirety of her venom-filled spiel.

  Once a dick, always a dick, I suppose.

  A disgraced cage fighter with nothing left to lose. That was my jam.

  I fought three nights a week at The Underground—a criminally run cage fighting league and the source of my aching jaw—not because I wanted things to be that way but because I was forced to.

  I’d gone to America to try my luck in the UFC—the Ultimate Fighting Championship—and earn the big bucks. I’d wanted to be showered with the fame and glory I’d so desperately wanted, and I’d fucked over plenty of people to get there. It still shamed me to this day that I’d had a threesome behind my girl Lori’s back. I cheated when I should’ve cherished. What happened next, when I finally reached the US, was karma at its finest.

  Accused of a crime I didn’t commit, I was taken for everything I was worth. A UFC ring girl accused me of domestic assault. I mean, I was a dick, but I would never raise my hand to anyone, especially a woman, outside of the octagon. We’d gone out a few times, had some amazing sex, the whole nine yards. She liked it rough and consented…and enjoyed. Thoroughly.

  A bunch of photographs, a police report, and a very public arrest later, I was forced to settle out of court or serve jail time.

  Completely broke and with a lifetime ban from the UFC, I came home to Australia with my tail between my legs. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I’d immediately gone back to The Underground and tried to pick up where I’d left off. There, I was Storm, a fighter to be reckoned with, not Mark Ryder, disgrace to men everywhere. In that warehouse, I was still somebody.

  But life is never that simple. No matter how far you run, your past always catches up eventually, and when it does, it tears everything apart. Everything.

  Before, I’d been a dick. An arrogant, selfish, cocksure, asshole who only ever thought about himself.

  After my very public fleecing, I was closed, lonely, quiet, and angry. I had very little left to offer the world, so I didn’t offer anything. I was a floater in the only cesspool that would take me, and even then, it was only because I was still profitable.

  What a naive bastard I’d been.

  Now I fought inside a wall of chain link with a bloodstained concrete floor so I didn’t end up on the street begging for spare change. There was nowhere else for a washed-up prick to earn a living.

  “That shop’s on fire!” someone exclaimed. “I’m calling triple zero.”

  Glancing up, I forgot about whatever it was I was agonizing over. My gaze was instantly drawn to a plume of smoke trailing out of cracks and vents in the facade of a shop across the street. Inside, it had nowhere to go and had built up, quickly filling the enclosed room. Farther in, I could see the bright orange flicker of flames.

  An explosion tore through the little shop, and everyone stumbled back a step. The windows rattled, and the sound echoed over the traffic noise.

  “Did you see that?” some guy asked next to me. “Holy shit!”

  “It just went up,” someone else said. “It just took seconds…”

  “Help!”

  I hesitated, listening. No one else standing on the street had noticed anything—they were all on their phones, taking pictures of the chaos. Vultures.

  “Help!”

  This time, I heard it plain as day. It was faint, but it was there. Someone was inside, and they were trapped.

  Glancing up and down the street, I could hear the approaching fire trucks, but they were stuck a few blocks up the street, boxed in by traffic. There was only a split second in this. Whoever was inside might meet their maker before help arrived.

  “Fuck it,” I cursed and rushed toward the shop.

  “Hey!” one of the bystanders called out. “What are you doing?”

  Ignoring everything around me, I dodged cars and bounded toward the fire. I shook the door, but it was locked. The fire hadn’t spread outside of the back room, but the handle was hot, and smoke was billowing into the front section of the store at an unbelievable rate.

  “Help!” The cry was louder this time. A woman’s panicked voice filtered from beyond the glass, and my heart rate began to gallop.

  Gathering my strength, I kicked with everything I had. My boot bounced back, and with a curse, I tried again.

  “Hey, buddy! Buddy!”

  I glanced up at the sound of a passerby’s voice. Having seen what I was trying to do, a random guy was brandishing a tire iron, and I snatched it from him and cracked it against the door. Once, twice, three times.

  The glass shattered in on
e big sheet, splintering into thousands of tiny granules. Kicking it out of the frame, it smashed to the floor, and smoke streamed out onto the footpath.

  “You’re going in there?” the stranger asked.

  I raised my eyebrows as smoke poured out of the opening. “Sure. Why not?”

  I didn’t know why I went into that building. I didn’t even know what the hell I was supposed to do, but I could hear the roar of flames and a woman’s cry for help, and that was it. I covered my nose and mouth with the sleeve of my shirt and dived headfirst into the maelstrom.

  I crossed the first room with no trouble. Smoke was the only obstacle here, but it was hot as hell, and sweat erupted across my forehead. Passing by a bunch of stacked tables and chairs, I forged into the next room and was immediately pushed back by the flames. A quick glance at the scene gave me an idea.

  A table sat in the center of the space. The explosion had set it alight, along with the walls and the roof, but if I could push it to where the flames were at their worst, maybe…

  Grabbing the table, I flipped it onto its side and kicked it across the room, forcing the flames back. I’d managed to carve a tiny path, but I would have to be quick. I bolted across the room, heat from the fire burning against my exposed face.

  In the room beyond, I stumbled. A woman was lying on the floor, her cheeks smeared with dirt and what looked like paint. Beside her, a can had been knocked over, and it had spread across the floor. She’d been painting in here when the fire broke out.

  There was no more shop to explore. This was it. She was the only person trapped in here.

  “Help… Help…” she cried, her eyes attempting to focus on me. Then she went limp, her cheek returning to the floor.

  “Fuck,” I cursed, kneeling beside her. Had she suffocated? Was I too late?

  Pressing my fingers against her neck, I felt a faint pulse.

  “I’m stuck…” the woman said with a raspy voice, stirring at my touch. “The thing… The fire was…too hot…”