There were a number of all-rights, no-problems, and anything-you-likes that followed, but Isaac turned his back on the babble, babble.

All around, grown men were getting out of cars and shoving at each other like fifteen-year-olds, the bunch of juiced-up, armchair quarterbacks ready to peanut-gallery it up: The closest they were going to get to the octagon was standing on the outside of the chicken wire looking in.

The fact that Isaac was almost done with this underground MMA moneymaker was irrelevant. The people who were looking for him didn’t need any help, and that happy little close-up along with the telephone number in the 617 area code was precisely the exposure he didn’t need.

Last thing he needed was an operative or . . . God forbid, Matthias’s second in command . . . showing up here.

Besides, it was just too fucking dumb of the promoter. Unregulated bare-knuckle fighting coupled with illegal gambling was not something you advertised, and anyway, given the size of the crowds that showed up, the audience clearly had enough mouth.

The guy in charge, however, was a greedy moron.

And the question was now, did Isaac fight or not? The flyers had just been made, according to the man who’d shown it to him . . . and as he mentally counted the money he’d salted away, he could sure as hell use the extra thousand or two he’d earn tonight.

He glanced around and knew he had to get in the octagon. Shit . . . once more to pad his wallet and then he was gone.

Just one last time.

Striding over to the warehouse’s rear entrance, he ignored the Holy-shit’s and the pointing and the That’s-him’s. The crowd had been watching him beat the shit out of random guys for the last month, and evidently this made him a hero in their eyes.

Which was a whacked value system, as far as he was concerned. He was about as far from hero as you could get.

The bouncers at the back door both stepped aside to let him pass and he nodded at them. This was the first fight at this particular “facility,” but really, the locations were all the same. In and around Boston, there were plenty of abandoned walk-ups, warehouses, and whatevers where fifty guys who wished they were Chuck Liddell could watch half a dozen who were definitely not flap around in circles in a makeshift fighting cage. And that uninspiring math added up to why the promoter had repro’d Isaac’s head. Unlike the other bare-knucklers, he knew what he was doing.

Although considering how much money the U.S. government had put into training him, he’d have to be a total tool not to crack skulls like eggs by now.

And weren’t all those skills, as well as so many others, going to help him stay AWOL.

God willing, that was, he thought as he stepped into the building.