Chapter 3: When Rivalry Turns Lustful
The hum inside Tribe CrossFit had shifted. The clatter of weights was still there, the grunts of effort, but the focal point of the room’s energy had tightened to a single, twenty-foot circle of mat. In its center, Ben Schmidt rolled his shoulder, a wince flickering across his broad face.
Morgan stood a few paces opposite, coiling a heavy jump rope with methodical twists of her wrist. Her gray eyes were fixed on the space between them, not on him. “Stinger wearing off?” she asked, her voice that low, unhurried rumble.
“It’s fine,” Ben said, the lie obvious in his tight smile. He rotated the joint again. “Just needed to pop it back. You caught me off guard.”
“That’s the point,” Morgan said. She dropped the coiled rope by the wall. “Ready to prove it was a fluke?”
Ben’s usual geniality had hardened around the edges. The loss had been public, quick, and it had stung more than the ache in his ligament. He was used to being the affitable giant, the one who lost with a laugh.This felt different. Morgan’s calm dismantling of him hadn’t been playful. It had been clinical. He needed to… not even win, just not lose the same way.
“Two out of three?” Ben proposed, his voice louder than necessary, playing to the dozen or so people who’d stopped their workouts to watch.
Morgan just shrugged, a single lift of her powerful shoulders. “Your funeral.”
They clasped hands again. Ben’s palm was slick with sweat. Morgan’s grip was dry, cool, and absolute. Her eyes, up close, were the color of a winter sky over concrete.The whistle blew.
This time, Ben didn’t go for the clinch. He backpedaled, using his reach to keep Morgan at bay with long, probing slaps at her hands and shoulders. It was an awkward, unathletic strategy, but it created space. He was thinking, not just reacting.
Morgan feinted left. Ben flinched right. She closed the distance in a blur of motion, not with a sprint but with a sudden, efficient lunge. She shot for a single-leg takedown, diving for his left knee.
Ben sprawled, his long legs kicking back. He was slow, but his mass was effective. He landed heavily, half on top of her, using his weight to smother the shot.
For a moment, they were a tangled heap on the mat. Morgan was underneath, but not controlled. Her legs churned, searching for a hook, a lever. Ben tried to flatten her out, to press his chest onto her back, but she was a live wire, all coiled muscle and shifting angles. The scent of rubber mat and fresh sweat filled the air between them.
“Get her, Ben!” someone yelled.
He drove a knee into her thigh, trying to pin a limb. Morgan grunted, the sound swallowed by the mat. She bucked her hips, a violent, explosive bridge that lifted Ben’s considerable weight an inch. It was just enough. She snaked an arm free, not to push him away, but to wrap it around his head and neck.
She couldn’t secure a clean choke from the bottom, but she could disrupt. She pulled his head down, wrenching his neck sideways. Ben’s breath hitched, his vision momentarily swimming. He pushed against her shoulder with his hand, his fingers digging into the dense muscle of her deltoid.
The struggle descended into a raw, ugly scrap. This wasn’t the clean throw or the precise lock. This was friction and force and discomfort. They rolled, a slow, grunting revolution. Ben ended up on his back, Morgan in his guard, her body pressed between his legs. He locked his ankles behind her back, trying to hold her close, to limit her options.
Morgan was breathing hard now, deep gulps of air that expanded her ribs against his shins. Her face, just above his, was flushed. A strand of dark hair had escaped her ponytail and stuck to her damp temple. Her gray eyes were blazing, not with anger, but with a fierce, consuming focus.
“You’re heavy,” she breathed, the words a hot gust against his cheek.
“That’s… the idea,” Ben gasped back, squeezing with his legs. His thighs burned. Her posture was too good; she wasn’t being compressed.
She didn’t try to break his guard. Instead, she braced her hands on his chest and drove upward, posturing out of his grip. His legs strained, then slipped. Before he could re-adjust, she dropped her weight back down, but not onto his torso. She drove a forearm across his throat, her other hand gripping her own wrist. It was a crude, brutal cross-face, more pressure than submission.
Ben gagged. He brought his hands up, pushing against her elbow, but the leverage was all hers. The rough nylon of her gi sleeve ground against his jaw. His face turned a deeper red. He tried to buck, to dislodge her, but she was an immovable anchor, her hips low and heavy.
“Settle,” Morgan commanded, her voice a hard knot of sound. It wasn’t a shout. It was an order.
Panic, pure and simple, flashed through Ben’s system. It wasn’t the pain, though that was considerable. It was the absolute, physical dominion. The way her body communicated control in a language deeper than words. His strength, his size—meaningless. He was just a thing to be pressed into the mat.
His free hand slapped the vinyl, once, twice, frantic.
Morgan released the pressure instantly, rolling off him and onto her knees beside the mat. She sucked in a long, ragged breath, her shoulders rising and falling.
Ben lay still, coughing, one hand on his throat. The gym was quiet except for the distant thump of a bass line from someone’s headphones. The spectators were silent, watching. This hadn’t looked like a game.
After a moment, Morgan stood. She looked down at him, her expression unreadable. Then she extended a hand.
Ben stared at it. His arm felt like lead. The offer felt different this time—not courtesy, but a challenge. To accept help from the person who’d just made him feel utterly, physically helpless. A hot wave of shame washed over him, mixed with a strange, dizzying current of something else.
He took her hand.
She pulled him up with a steady, undeniable strength. His legs were wobbly. They stood close, the heat of their exertion radiating between them. Her hand was still around his. Her skin was calloused, warm.
“You okay?” she asked, her voice back to its normal, deep register, but quieter.
Ben nodded, not trusting his own voice. He was hyper-aware of every point of contact: her grip, the few inches separating their bodies, the sharp, clean smell of her sweat cutting through the gym’s heavier odor.
“Good.” She released his hand. The absence of her touch felt sudden, like a light going out. “You fight with your weight. That’s good. You just need to learn how to move it.” She turned to grab her water bottle, the moment broken.
The small crowd began to disperse, conversations starting up again, the normal rhythm of the gym reasserting itself. Ben remained by the mat, rubbing his neck. His skin felt branded where her forearm had been. He watched Morgan take a long drink, the line of her throat working as she swallowed.
Lexi materialized at his elbow, her voice a whisper. “Whoa. That got… intense.”
“Yeah,” Ben croaked. He cleared his throat. “She’s something else.”
“Understatement of the century.” Lexi’s green eyes followed Morgan, who was now re-tying her ponytail with quick, efficient motions. “She wasn’t just winning. She was… establishing facts.”
Ben didn’t answer. That was exactly it. She had established a fact: in that space, on that mat, she was in control. And the frightening part, the part that had his heart thumping against his ribs in a rhythm that had nothing to do with exertion, was that a secret, buried part of him had found a perverse relief in it. The surrender had been terrifying, but in its wake was a shocking, hollow calm.
Across the gym, Mike leaned against the rig, watching. He’d seen the whole thing. The raw display of power, Ben’s submission, the loaded silence afterward. It should have captivated him. Instead, it felt like a television show on in another room. His mind was a scrambled radio tuned to a single, silent frequency: the withheld number, the dead click, the list of chemical manifests in his brother’s handwriting.
“You look like hell, Mangold.”
Brittany was suddenly there, leaning against the rig beside him, close enough that her shoulder almost brushed his arm. She wasn’t looking at him; she was watching Morgan tow a loaded sled across the floor with grim, relentless strides.
“Long day,” Mike said, the automatic response feeling thinner every time he used it.
“You’ve had a ‘long day’ for three days straight.” She finally turned her head, her brown eyes meeting his. They weren’t soft. They were analytical, assessing him like a piece of faulty equipment. “It’s affecting your work. Your squats were shallow. Your pulls were sloppy. You’re here, but you’re not here.”
The blunt accuracy of it was a relief. No prying, just an observation of degraded performance. “Something’s… going on,” he admitted, the words like stones pulled from his throat.
“Family?”
He stiffened. “Why do you say that?”
She shrugged one muscular shoulder. “You get a look. It’s the same look my sister gets when our mom’s health acts up. A trapped look. Like you’re trying to solve a problem with your fists, but the problem isn’t something you can hit.”
Mike stared at her. She’d read him with terrifying ease. He said nothing, which was answer enough.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said, looking back at the gym floor. “But don’t let it wreck you in here. This place…” She gestured at the ropes, the weights, the mats. “It’s a pressure valve. Don’t weld it shut trying to be some stoic hardass. Sometimes the most productive lift is knowing when to rack the bar and walk away.”
She pushed off the rig and walked toward the locker room, leaving him with the echo of her words. A pressure valve. His felt ready to blow.
He pulled out his phone, a nervous tic now. No new calls. He opened his photo album and stared again at the picture he’d taken of Leo’s list. ‘Port_Manifest_Alpha.xls’. ‘T99_Transport_Sched’.
His thumb hovered. Then he opened a browser. He typed ‘T99 transport Baltimore’. He got nothing. He tried ‘T99 chemical transport’. A few irrelevant links. He added ‘Holt Engineering’.More nothing.
Frustrated, he typed in ‘ChemStar Baltimore T99’.He hit search.
The results loaded. A few local news articles from years ago about the ChemStar closure. A PDF from a city council meeting. And then, halfway down the page, a link to a now-defunct community forum for the Sparrows Point area. The thread title: “T99 Night Hauls - Anyone Else Hearing This?”
His pulse quickened. He clicked. The page loaded slowly, a relic of old internet design. The posts were from over six years ago.
User ‘SteelworksWatch’: They’re running the big tankers on the old service road behind the sinter plant again. Always after midnight. Marked with T99 on the side. Not a Holt truck. Smells like rotten eggs when they go by.
User ‘RiversideMom’: My kid’s asthma has been horrific this month. The night air tastes metallic. I called the county. They said it’s “permitted industrial activity.” Permitted to poison us?
User ‘WatchfulEye’: Saw a T99 tanker offloading at the old Pier 9 last Thursday.3 AM. No lights. Company name on the side was painted over. This stinks.
The thread ended abruptly. The last post was from a moderator: Topic locked. Unsubstantiated speculation. Contact authorities with concerns.
Mike’s blood ran cold. He checked the date of the last post. It was two weeks before Leo had started working at Holt Engineering.
A coincidence was a fragile thing. This was a pattern, hardening into something solid and menacing.The factory. The ghost tankers. The list. Leo knew. And now Leo was gone, and Mike was holding the fuse.
A loud crash jerked his head up. Ben had accidentally knocked over a stack of bumper plates while re-racking his weights. The noise reverberated through the gym. Ben flushed, mumbling an apology as he bent to restack them, his movements clumsy.
Morgan, finishing her sled drag, straightened up. She watched Ben struggle with the heavy plates for a moment, her expression inscrutable. Then she walked over. Without a word, she took one of the 45-pound plates from his hands and slid it onto the peg with a single, smooth motion. She did the same with the next. Her efficiency made his fumbling look even worse.
“Thanks,” Ben muttered, not meeting her eyes.
She didn’t reply. She just stood there, a solid presence, until he’d finished. Then she turned and headed for the locker room, the doors swinging shut behind her with a soft whump.
Ben stared after her, the imprint of her fingers on the plate he’d been holding still visible in the chalk dust. The hum of the gym seemed to recede, collapsing into the quiet, charged space she’d left in her wake. The facts had been established. Now, he just had to figure out what to do with them.
Now, he just had to figure out what to do with them. The facts were a weight in his gut, solid and cold.
A sharp clap echoed through the gym, pulling the scattered attention into a single focus. “Alright, heat’s on,” called out the session leader, a woman named Taryn with a whistle permanently around her neck. “Randall versus Mendoza. Let’s clear the central mat.”
The mention of a new name, ‘Mendoza’, sliced through Mike’s fixation. He looked up from his phone, shoving the device and its chilling forum thread deep into his pocket. A different kind of tension was needed, something to override the spiraling static in his head.
Brittany was already stepping onto the padded circle, rolling her shoulders with a series of fluid cracks. She bounced on the balls of her feet, her dirty blonde ponytail swaying. Her focus was absolute, a hunter’s stillness in her brown eyes.
From the opposite side, a woman entered the mat space. She moved with an economy of motion that was instantly distinct from the explosive power of Mike or the rugged determination of Morgan. This was Zoe Mendoza.
She was tall, with a poised, athletic build that spoke of lean strength rather than bulk. Her dark brown hair was secured in a flawless, tight bun at the nape of her neck. She wore black compression leggings and a fitted gray rash guard that showed the definition in her shoulders and arms. Her olive-toned face was calm, her hazel eyes taking in the room, the mat, her opponent, with a detached, analytical sweep. She gave a slight, polite nod to Brittany.
“Who’s that?” Lexi whispered, sidling up next to Ben, her freckled nose crinkled with curiosity.
“New, I guess,” Ben murmured back, his own gaze fixed. Something about Zoe’s calm was unsettling; it felt like a challenge to the gym’s usual gritty chaos.
Taryn stood between them. “Five minute round. Submit, tap, or pin. Respect the tap. Ready?”
Brittany nodded sharply, sinking into a slight crouch, hands up. Zoe simply stood upright, her arms loose at her sides, her feet planted in a light, balanced stance.
“Fight.”
Brittany exploded forward. She didn’t hesitate, using her gymnast’s agility to close the distance fast, aiming to duck under for a takedown before the newcomer could set her defenses.
Zoe didn’t meet the force. She absorbed it. As Brittany shot in, Zoe hip-checked her slightly, redirecting the momentum, and as Brittany stumbled a half-step, Zoe’s arms encircled her from the side. It wasn’t a crushing bear-hug; it was a controlling grip, hands clasping tightly at Brittany’s waist.
“Whoa, strong hands,” Lexi observed.
Brittany, feeling controlled, reacted with raw power. She drove backward, slamming Zoe into the mat. The impact was solid, but Zoe, on her back, merely wrapped her legs around Brittany’s torso in a guard position, her grip never breaking. She wasn’t fighting the position; she was settling into it.
“Come on, Brit, smash her!” someone yelled.
Brittany tried to posture up, to break the leg guard and rain down strikes. She pushed against Zoe’s chest, her shoulder muscles cording with effort. Zoe’s guard was like a vice. The harder Brittany pushed, the tighter Zoe’s legs squeezed, her calves locking behind Brittany’s back. Zoe’s face, inches away, remained impassive. She was breathing steadily, her eyes watching Brittany’s arms, her neck, looking for an opening.
Frustration flickered across Brittany’s face. She switched tactics, trying to pass the guard by swinging a leg over. As she lifted her knee, Zoe’s body seemed to liquify. She shrimped her hips out with a sudden, fluid motion, creating just enough space to slide one leg out and over Brittany’s shoulder.
In a blink, the positions reversed. Zoe, with a smoothness that looked like practiced dance, swung her body around and took Brittany’s back. Her legs hooked around Brittany’s waist, her chest plastered to Brittany’s spine. One arm snaked under Brittany’s chin.
The gym fell silent.
Brittany froze, a flush of panic rising up her neck. She reached back, gripping at Zoe’s forearm, trying to peel it away. Her fingers scrabbled against Zoe’s skin, but the hold was set deep, the leverage perfect. Zoe’s other hand came up behind Brittany’s head, applying steady, increasing pressure.
It wasn’t a violent jerk. It was a slow, inescapable cinch. Brittany’s breathing became a labored rasp. She slapped a hand against Zoe’s thigh, then against the mat.Once. Twice.Tap.
The pressure vanished instantly. Zoe released the hold and slid off, sitting back on her heels. She took a deep, quiet breath, her expression unchanged.
Brittany collapsed forward onto her hands, coughing, sucking in air. The defeat hadn’t been a clash of power. It had been a quiet suffocation.
“Holy shit,” Ben breathed. “She just… waited.”
“That was BJJ,” Mike said, his voice low. He’d seen it before, in different contexts. The technical precision was its own kind of violence. “Pure technique.”
Zoe stood and offered a hand to Brittany, who took it after a second’s hesitation, her face a mask of stunned respect. “Your shot was fast,” Zoe said, her voice calm and even. “You just committed everything to it. Leave yourself a door out next time.”
Brittany nodded, still catching her breath.“Yeah. Yeah, okay. Your guard is insane.”
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched Zoe’s lips. “Thanks.”
As they stepped off the mat, the gym’s noise returned, buzzing with commentary on the quick, surgical match. Mike’s hand found his phone in his pocket again, his thumb tracing its edge. The cold facts of Leo’s disappearance and the T99 tankers felt suddenly parallel to Zoe’s victory—a silent, patient pressure applied with exact precision until something broke. He looked at the mat, then at the gym door leading out to the city’s dark streets.
The pressure valve Brittany mentioned was still welded shut. But watching Zoe, he understood a new kind of strategy. Sometimes you didn’t beat the pressure. You redirected it. You used its own force against it. He needed to find the leverage point.
He needed to find the leverage point.
The session bled into cooldown stretches and the clatter of equipment being racked. The high-energy buzz of the matches dissolved into the low murmur of tired conversation and the zipping of gym bags. Zoe Mendoza left without fanfare, her quiet exit as deliberate as her victory. Ben lingered by the water cooler, stealing glances at the locker room door Morgan had vanished behind. His neck still felt the phantom pressure of her forearm.
Lexi was twisting herself into a cool-down pose, one leg hooked behind her head, oblivious to the scattered looks of awe it drew. “I’m telling you, she’s a black belt,” she said to no one in particular, her voice slightly muffled by her own knee. “Had to be.”
Mike methodically wiped down a barbell, the coarse towel scraping over the steel. His mind was a split screen: the silent, crushing efficiency of Zoe’s win, and the grainy forum posts about ghost tankers and painted-over logos. Both were lessons in applied force. One he understood. The other was a shadow he was trying to grip.
“Hey.”
He looked up. Brittany stood there, her own bag slung over a shoulder, a fresh sheen of sweat still visible at her temples. The stunned frustration from her loss to Zoe had been packed away, replaced by a focused concern.
“You good?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Mike said, too quickly. He tossed the towel into a bin. “Just… thinking about form.”
“Bullshit,” Brittany said, but there was no malice in it. She shifted her weight. “Look, you’re coiled tighter than a spring in a bear trap. It’s written all over you. You don’t have to tell me what’s biting you.” She paused, digging a hand into her pocket. “But if it ever does get to the point where you need to yell into the void, or just talk to someone who isn’t paid to listen…” She pulled out a slightly crumpled receipt and a pen, scribbling quickly. “Here.”
She held out the slip of paper. Her number was written in a clear, athletic hand.
Mike stared at it. Accepting it felt like admitting the pressure was real, that the valve was sealed shut. Letting someone in, even just a crack, was a vulnerability. But the alternative—the silent, solitary spiral—suddenly seemed infinitely worse. He took the paper. His fingers brushed hers. Her skin was warm, calloused.
“Thanks, Randall,” he said, the formality of her last name a feeble attempt to keep a boundary.
“Anytime, Mangold,” she replied, a small, understanding smile touching her lips. Then she shouldered her bag and walked toward the exit, the glass door swinging shut behind her with a sigh.
The silence in Mike’s studio apartment was a physical presence. It pressed in from the wood-paneled walls, absorbing the city’s distant hum. A single bare bulb illuminated the small space: a worn couch, a dumbbell in the corner, a coffee table littered with takeout containers and his laptop, its screen dark.
He sat on the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees, staring at the receipt with Brittany’s number. The gym’s adrenaline had bled away, leaving a raw, grinding anxiety. Will’s face, smiling in a photograph on the bookshelf, seemed to watch him. He picked up his phone. His thumb hovered over the new contact.
He typed a message, deleted it, typed again.
Mike: thanks for today. the listening. not my strong suit.
He hit send before he could overthink it. The message delivered instantly.
A minute later, his phone buzzed.
Brittany: np. you’re not the only one who uses this place to outrun ghosts.
He blinked at the screen. Her directness was unsettling, and profoundly relieving. It cut through the polite fiction.
Mike: Ghosts. Yeah.
Brittany: Zoe demolished me. my ego is in the gutter. tell me something terrible about your day so i feel better.
A surprised, rough sound that was almost a laugh escaped him. He sagged back into the couch, the tension in his shoulders loosening by a degree.
Mike: my coffee maker died a heroic death. full internal meltdown. kitchen smells like burnt wiring and regret.
Brittany: tragic. a true warrior’s end. pour one out.
Mike: already did. it’s a sticky mess.
They texted back and forth, a steady, low-stakes ping-pong of minor grievances and gym gossip. She told him about a funny fail Lexi had on the rings last week. He complained about the new, overly sweet protein bars the gym started selling. It was normal. It was easy. The crushing weight of his investigation receded, just for these few minutes, replaced by the simple, human rhythm of a conversation.
Brittany: seriously though. if you need an ear. or a spot. outside the gym.
Mike: I know. I appreciate it.
Brittany: good.
He set the phone down on the couch cushion beside him, letting out a long, slow breath. The rigid line of his spine softened. For the first time in days, the knot in his gut wasn’t pulled taut. He closed his eyes, listening to the old fridge rattle.
The sudden, jarring scream of his ringtone shattered the quiet.
His eyes snapped open. The screen glowed on the cushion, an unknown number with a 410 area code illuminating the dim room. It was the same number. The breath froze in his lungs.
His hand, reacting before his brain, shot out and fumbled the device. It slipped from his fingers, tumbling to the floor with a plastic crack. He scrambled off the couch, knees hitting the rough carpet, grabbing for it.
By the time his fingers closed around the cold casing, the ringing had stopped.
The screen went dark.
Silence rushed back in, thicker and heavier than before. He knelt on the floor, heart hammering against his ribs, staring at the black mirror of the phone. The brief, comforting normality of the text conversation was gone, vaporized. The silence now felt like a held breath. The unknown number had called back. It wasn’t a wrong number. It was a hook, set deep, and someone was testing the line.
He stayed there, on his knees in the quiet, dark apartment, waiting for the callback that he already knew deep down wasn’t coming tonight. Cursing himself, Mike climbed back into bed, placing his phone carefully on the cardboard box that was serving as a nightstand.