The thing was, names were not all that important. Anybody could type up a Tom, Dick, or Harry on an ID card or a birth certificate or a passport. All you needed was the right typeface and a laminating machine that could do holograms. But your mug shot, your face, your puss, your piehole… unless you had the funds and the contacts to plastic-surgery your ass, that was the one true identifier you had.

And his had just gotten a workout at Kinko’s. God only knew how many people had seen it.

Or who had zeroed in on his whereabouts.

“Look, I was just doing you a favor.” The promoter smiled, flashing a gold grille. “The bigger the crowd, the more money you make-”

Isaac shoved his forefinger up the guy’s stovepipe. “You need to shut the fuck up right now. And remember what I said.”

“Yeah. Okay. Sure.”

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.