Knockout (A Holly Hands Cozy Mystery—Book 1)

CHAPTER ONE

Holly “Hands” Aldren swayed, rocking on her feet like a cobra about to strike. Beneath the spotlights in the small arena behind Glazer’s Bowling Alley,

she watched her opponent from across the boxing ring, knowing she was only two fights away from a chance at the championship.

But her excitement quickly faded as she faced the inevitability of what had to be done. A flood of emotions swirled through her chest, and a sob almost crept from her mouth.

She gritted her teeth—this was the

first round

. She didn’t have to fall—not yet.

She forced a smile, and for her, that smile was a matter of pride. The way some women bragged about other gifts, Holly took pride in her all natural pearly whites. Her ears, on the other hand, would give most cauliflower farmers reason for envy. A gift of the trade. Her nose, though broken once before, had set well enough beneath her sea green eyes, and her body was toned, a happy consequence of years of training.

A jab followed another jab. Holly ducked under a lazy roundhouse, her hair rubbing her opponent’s forearm flying overhead. She leaned in, sending two uppercuts straight to her opponent’s ribs.

Her opponent reeled back, awarded a bloody nose and a new complexion dappled brown and blue.

Behind her, Holly could hear Cannizzaro’s basset hound voice cheering the loudest. Her manager had always known how to bring down the house, with the car and garage thrown in for good measure.

She risked a glance over, and saw his sweaty face behind the lights of the boxing arena. The sound of the fans echoed through the stadium. The place was packed—nearly five hundred in attendance.

Cannizzaro flashed her a thumbs-up beneath his jiggling chin and gave an emphatic wink before ushering a shooing motion toward her opponent. The gesture was an obvious instruction:

finish her.

Holly’s eyes flicked to Lucas, who wasn’t as loud as his uncle—but his eyes blazed with double the passion. If ever there was a boxing aficionado, it would be found in her five-foot-nine, half Italian training partner, hidden somewhere beneath his buzzed head and beak-shaped nose. Lucas wasn’t waving, though; his eyes were fixed on her opponent’s pink shorts, shouting all manner of creative expressions and turns of phrase one might expect to find in the literary halls of the local high school’s bathroom stalls.

Luckily, the expletives were drowned in another round of clapping and cheering and hooting from the Baltimore crowd.

Holly licked her lips, tasting salt and sweat, and refocused on her opponent.

Never make it personal.

Cannizzaro’s first rule. But for Holly, this fight meant everything.

Pink-trunks, a.k.a. Susan Chips, a.k.a. Chips the Hips, came swaggering forward all bluster and brash. She stood two lip whiskers short of six foot, with legs that would’ve put most tree trunks to shame. She snarled, her fuzzy lip tilting up as she squared her shoulders, gesturing with her gloved hand toward Holly. She shouted incoherently through her mouthpiece.

Holly, though, remained quiet, still forcing her smile, still enjoying the moment as best she could—she might not ever have one like it again. Besides, trash talk wasn’t her style.

Chips howled and this time came rushing in. Holly’s eyes flashed as she spotted the opening. A quick feint and an uppercut—Chips was all-in, but Holly could call her bluff.

Except, she didn’t.

Instead, she blocked a wild swipe, grappled, and waited for the ref in his black and whites to separate them. She avoided ringing Chips’s bell for the rest of the round, preferring to allow the timekeeper to ring his instead.

She disentangled, smelling the sweat of the arena, the cheap scent of concession stand beer on the air, the odor of the harbor sweeping through the open, upper windows in the back of the gray building.

The ref sent them off to their corners, and Holly watched as Chips collapsed in her stool, gratefully guzzling at the water pushed to her mouth, spitting out her mouthpiece and listening to her coach’s instructions as stray hands iced her already forming bruises.

Holly’s gaze flicked through the ropes, all the way to the back of the arena, and spotted the man in the baseball cap leaning against the back wall, his face illuminated only by the pale glow of his oversized Samsung—a compensation if ever she’d seen one. He had two warts on his chin. He scowled at her from beneath the bill of his hat, and scratched at his chin. He inched an eyebrow and fixed his gaze on her.

She knew what she had to do…

But could she? How could she—Holly Hands had never thrown a fight in her life.

For her eight-year-old daughter, Holly knew she’d throw more than a fight. Medical bills were expensive, way too expensive. More than even her family knew. They needed the money, and Olivia needed the help. As much as she loved boxing, as much as it gave her a reason to wake up in the morning, none of it mattered when weighed against her daughter.

The man in the shadows just looked at her, seemingly trying to cow her with the force of personality alone. His greasy hair beneath his cap and his equally unctuous gaze made Holly feel like she needed a double shower. She held his gaze a moment longer, waited for him to blink, and only then did she look away.

Holly had been fighting her entire life—fighting in a fighter’s family in the heart of Baltimore. Fighting since before she could remember. She wasn’t about to let some skeezeball with a warty lip give her the stink eye for free.

Then again… she’d already agreed to the deal, hadn’t she?

Now, her smile was completely missing. The joy that normally came in a fight, the exhilaration, had vanished.

For a brief moment, she could only think of her daughter… She swallowed, feeling a flicker of the same sympathy now redirected inward. Her shoulders tightened and she closed her eyes for a second as she leaned back in her stool, bare shoulders pressing against the padded post in her corner.

A flash of an image in her mind:

A small smiling face streaked with spaghetti sauce. Two sea green eyes staring up. A little grin on little lips, and a giggle that would’ve melted even a heart encased in cement.

Holly found her smile coming back, if only for a moment. This time, a deeper smile, a more intense emotion. Some things mattered more than purpose. Some things mattered more than chasing a dream.

She felt a hand shaking her shoulder.

“Hands,” Lucas’s voice echoed in her ear. “Come on—liven up out there. You had an opening for a knockdown, yeah? You’re too fast, too quick. She ain’t got a chance, all right? Just focus!”

Holly looked at her training partner, and her gaze flicked to his uncle, her manager. Cannizzaro was leaning through the ropes, but not speaking. He just watched her, shrewd.

“Everything all right?” he asked, his voice gruff and low, a bit of his belly visible through half-done buttons near his waist. His wife, Moira Cannizzaro, the queen of casseroles in three counties, loved her husband, feeding him so there was simply

more

to love. Holly adored them both—though she’d once discovered the casseroles’ secret ingredients were a pinch of love and two heaps of lard. Hadn’t gone down the same since.

She shrugged one shoulder, nodded.

He grunted. “We’re counting on you, yeah? Go get ’em.”

Holly winced, eyes flicking back to Lucas. Her training partner glared now, breathing. “We worked hard for this,” he said, slowly. He glanced toward the shadowed portion of the gym, following her gaze for a moment, then looked back, some of his famous temper beginning to show. “Real hard, yeah? Hands, ya hear me? You don’t want to do anything stupid.”

She thought of early mornings—Lucas coming in at four a.m. sometimes just to warm her up, just to help her practice. Taking shot after shot, round and round the ring for hours before the rest of the gym even arrived. He wanted this as much as she did.

“Hands,” Lucas said, his voice rising. “You saw those shots—why didn’t you take them? Hey, hey—look here.”

But the bell clanged, and she pushed off, grateful not to have to meet their eyes anymore: the second round had started.

She could feel her adrenaline swirling, swirling, and she danced on her heels. She half glanced toward warty-baseball-cap-in-the-shadows, and could feel his odious eyes fixed on her. She could feel the heat of her trainer, the shouting of Lucas behind her. With a glance of shame, she looked to the part of the stadium seating she’d forced herself to ignore up until now: three men, each of them the size of small trees. One with gray hair, the other two with shaved heads and shoulders as wide as most linebackers’, or six-lane highways.

Her two brothers and her dad caught her eyes. Not the sort to wave, but her dad raised a fist in solidarity. Her older brother, Freddie, standing on the right side of the old man, was rumored to have put half his rent on the fight.

She winced, feeling hot shame douse her.

She couldn’t… She simply couldn’t…

Then again… She swallowed, tasting salt and sweat. She breathed, huffing, her chest heaving, ignoring the crowd, the lights, the eyes burrowing into her soul.

Remember what’s at stake,

she thought to herself. A chance at an operation. Olivia would finally be able to live the life of a normal eight-year-old girl. She didn’t deserve this. Didn’t deserve weekend trips to the hospitals instead of to soccer practice.

And for a moment, in the heart of the fight, in the heart of the calm—the eye of the storm where the winds fell still and the rain stopped falling—she allowed her mind to drift, to sway on the storm-abandoned seas.

She thought of one thing… only one.

There was no other choice. She thought of spaghetti-stained lips, of an echoing little giggle.

Holly swayed, head moving, body always in motion, an impossible target.

She dropped her left hand just a gauge.

Chips was no slouch—she spotted the opening. If Holly had wanted to, she could have avoided the blow. A powerful roundhouse, meant to chop wood. At the very least, she could have leaned back, minimizing the damage.

But Holly had made her decision. Besides, she deserved a hurting.

She leaned

in

to the blow, sending her cheek to meet the flying fist. Her head snapped back, her neck took half of it and she reeled, spinning like a corkscrew, and toppled, slamming to the canvas. A loud whoosh of air exploded from her lungs; she blinked, her eyes bulging as she stared up at the lights above. She could hear the noise of the crowd reaching a crescendo, but at the same time, discerned the steady count of the ref.

Even now, even after an axe-swing of a punch, Holly knew she could get up. She’d made her name on taking punishment, on trading blush for bruises. But now she lay still, lay on the mat like a good little girl.

Her own fury at herself, with her sweat slicked to her back and arms, she supposed would be nothing compared to the disappointment and disdain from her family, from her manager, from everyone.

She wondered if her father was still holding up a fist.

She thought about half her brother’s rent, bet on the fight… She’d been too late to warn him.

Five… six…

The count was echoed by the crowd, the ref’s fingers springing out one at a time—a passing favor to half the audience.

Seven… eight… nine… ten.

Done.