Read Online The Death Match by Christa Faust - Free Book Online

pull her off his blue-faced buddy, but Matt’s ax had other ideas.
    Once the final man was down, Matt turned toward Stacy to make sure she was okay. She stood alone in the center of the pit, breath harsh between her teeth, eyes narrow and flint hard. Matt unbuttoned his shirt and was about to remove it and drape it over her quivering shoulders when she launched herself at Long’s lifeless body, pounding his already broken and bloody face into unrecognizable meat.
    Matt tried to pull her away from Long’s corpse, but she shook him off and renewed her mindless attack, an unhinged howl of bottomless agony spiraling up out of her and echoing through the stone arena.
    “Stacy,” Matt said, wrapping his arms around her from behind again. “Stacy, it’s over. He’s dead. He’s
dead.
Let it go. We need to get out of here.”
    She paused and looked back at Matt with anguished eyes.
    “Leave me,” she whispered, balling up and covering her face with her hands.
    “Stacy, no…”
    Stacy pounded her fist against the floor, hitting and jarring the mesh cover of a large, blood-clotted drain in the center of the pit.
    “I won’t go,” she said. “Let me die here with her. I don’t deserve to live after what I’ve done.”
    Matt ignored her for a moment, peering down into the drain. He could hear a trickle of running water down there, like some kind of primitive sewage system. The manhole-sized grate was easy to remove, and the slimy, stinking drainage pipe beneath would be a tight squeeze, but they could both fit. It could be a way out. Or a claustrophobic death trap.
    A new group of corrupt thugs burst through the distant door into the arena, guns drawn. An electric spike of adrenaline shot though Matt’s chest, galvanizing him into action.
    He grabbed both of Stacy’s ankles and jumped feet first into the drainage pipe, dragging her down with him as a gunshot shattered the stillness inside the arena.
    Like the flint on a Zippo lighter, the gunshot ignited the gas from the broken pipe, sending a roiling wave of cleansing blue-and-white flame down the pipe behind them. When Matt and Stacy hit the foul water below, he sucked in a deep breath and pulled her under with him, less than half a second before the flames hit the surface.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    The drive back to Long Beach seemed endless. They were both cold, wet, and filthy from the crawl through the sewer to the storm drain grate beneath Long’s burning mansion, Matt bare-chested and Stacy dressed only in his oversized shirt. Stacy didn’t speak, and Matt didn’t push her.
    When she finally pulled into the driveway of her small, forgettable house, she killed the ignition but made no move to get out of the car.
    “Come on,” Matt said softly, his hand on Stacy’s arm.
    She just sat there in the driver’s seat, staring down at her hands.
    “Let me have your keys,” he said.
    She looked at him as if she’d just realized that he was there but had no idea what he was talking about. Her eyes were all cried out. Empty.
    “Keys,” Matt said again. “To your house.”
    Stacy pulled the key from the ignition and handed over a jumbled ring with a tiny silver boxing glove dangling off it. Matt took the keys, got out of the car, and went around to the driver’s side to open the door and help Stacy up, but she shoved him away.
    “I’m fine,” she spat.
    “Fine,” Matt replied. “Come on.”
    Matt unlocked the door to her house and guided her inside. For a moment the two of them just stood there in the cluttered living room.
    “You gonna be okay?” Matt asked.
    She didn’t answer.
    A pink-and-black short-sleeved Fight Chix rash guard had been thoughtlessly discarded in a crumpled heap near the door. She took a single step toward the shirt, stopped for a moment as if swaying on the deck of a ship, and then sank to her knees, gathering the discarded rash guard up against her chest and pressing her face into the fabric.
    “I’m so sorry, baby,” she