Breaker

by Alexis Abbott

  “Damn, should have hung around longer,” I mused, and I head past the bar toward the back, giving Eli another nod. “Anyone else shows up, tell ‘em I’m dragging Roadster’s ass back in here.”

  “You got it, boss,” Eli says absently as he goes back to cleaning glasses.

  I step onto the deck out back that overlooks a scenic ditch in the ground, but there’s no sign of Roadster until I hear a toilet flushing somewhere behind me. The bathroom door just inside the exit swings open, and Roadster emerges, drying his hands on a paper towel and raising an eyebrow at me.

  “Breaker’s already here? How long was I in there?” Roadster jokes, and immediately, I punch him on the arm as we break out laughing, and he hits back.

  Roadster might be the son of Buzz—our club’s prez—but it doesn’t mean he’s some spoiled brat. In fact, Roadster earns his keep around here and then some, if you ask me. Then again, we are buddies, so we always have each other’s back. I’d certainly had Roadster’s in more than our share of bar fights, and he had mine. Despite both of us being just shy of twenty-three, we have a few scars to prove it, too.

  “Prez here yet? Or anyone?” Roadster asks once we finished greeting each other and headed back toward the bar together.

  “No, I was just looking for you,” I say, glancing over at him. “To congratulate you.”

  Roadster arches an eyebrow.

  “What for? I mean, unless you want to cede the pool tournament next month early, in which case, I humbly accept,” he grins, putting his hand to his chest in mock grace.

  “Fuck you,” I grunt, elbowing him with a laugh. “No, I mean the girl, man! You get lucky last night?”

  Roadster screws up his face and looks confused. “The fuck you talking about?”

  I stare, and gears started turning in my head. “The girl in the shed. I saw her on the way in.”

  “Sure you didn’t have too much to drink last night?” Roadster asks as we sidle up at the bar, and Eli starts getting our drinks ready before we even have to ask. “I got no idea what you’re talking about.”

  I’m starting to get annoyed. “Well, someone’s got a friend out in the shed out back, and she didn’t look too happy about being there.”

  “I’ll see what Buzz thinks when he gets here, I’m sure he’s ahead of us, whatever that’s all about,” Roadster says with a dismissive wave as Eli sets our drinks in front of us. Buzz has been playing up “big plans” for the past week and even hinted at a big job coming up at the meeting last week, so we’re all on the edge of our seats to figure out what’s on his mind.

  I have a neat glass of bourbon, and Roadster has a vodka. Roadster raises his glass to me before I can take a drink. Confused, but playing along, I raise my glass with him and drink.

  “What was that for?” I ask after wiping my mouth.

  “You’re still alive after that heist I heard you were on last night while we were getting our asses trashed,” Roadster chuckles. “That’s what for, asshole!”

  I roll my eyes, but I allow myself a half-smile.

  “C’mon, before the others get here, how’d it go?” he asks, grinning.

  “It was a bar outside Rawlins,” I say, not liking to brag but not minding filling in a friend, either. “Got a tip from a stripper that the owner was some fuckhead who was stiffing the staff on their tips. ‘Percentage based tips,’ I hear he was calling them,” I scoff. “Anyway, I hit the place up, and the story checked out. Had a talk with the owner, we came to a gentleman’s agreement, and now I can call myself the proud partial owner of a dive,” I explain. “I get half his profits, he pays his staff good. Win-win.”

  “That gentleman’s agreement have anything to do with that stain?” he asks, nodding down to a dark blotch near the cuff of my jeans.

  “Damn, that’ll be a bitch to wash out,” I grumble.

  Roadster was right, though. I had to knock out more teeth than I’d been expecting to get the owner to come to the negotiating table, and I reckoned I used a baseball bat more than most business brokers, but only a little more. Fucker was a piece of shit who didn’t deserve those teeth, anyway.

  “Alright, Robin Hood,” Roadster jokes, chuckling. “You sure that girl out back ain’t your Maid Marian you made off with?”

  I open my mouth to joke back, but the doors open again, and the rest of the gang files in. Buzz leads the group, as it should be. The big old guy is our prez, and he is twice as fierce as his salt and pepper hair and beard makes him look. Roadster is his spitting image, twenty-something years younger.

  The huge piece of work we called Big Daddy comes in behind him. That isn’t a name he cares for, but he’s our enforcer, and he’s earned his place around here in blood on more than one occasion. He tends to be quiet, but his mind is always active, and that makes a lot of people think he’s slow when he is anything but.

  Bones is at his side, with his usual cocky swagger that gets him into trouble. The guy is a year younger than me, and he has an incredible, red-hot energy to him. Let him out of your sight for as second, and he’ll get the better of you. Lot of rivals learned that lesson the hard way over the years. We all know the guy’s running from something dangerous, but that has never affected how well he works, so he falls in with our band of misfits just fine.

  Ironside brings up the rear, those fierce eyes wearing his trademark thousand-yard stare. He’s fresh out of the military, and when he first showed up on our doorsteps, that was all we knew about him and all we needed to know. Between him and Big Daddy, nobody fucks with us when we wanted to look intimidating.

  “Lookit that, I’m late for my own meeting,” Buzz says with a gruff chuckle as he steps into the room.

  Roadster is already standing up, like he always does, but I take my time in doing the same. Buzz must be a hard dad to impress, because Roadster always seems eager to prove himself to Buzz. I don’t envy him, but I honestly don’t know if it is better or worse than the string of step-dads I had growing up.

  “Alright, Eli, you know the drill,” Buzz says as the bartender starts taking out glasses. “Get us a round of beers, and let’s get this meeting started. I got big news for you all. Roadster, you come with me for a minute.”

  Roadster and I exchange glances, but he doesn’t hesitate from following his dad out back while the rest of us take seats. Whatever it is, Buzz looks excited about it, and I’m happy to see Roadster visibly relax a little as they round the corner and vanish from sight.

  The rest of us pull up chairs around the biggest spool table in the room and sit down. Within a minute or two, Eli has pints of frosty beers before us as we all exchange greetings, handshakes, and pats on the shoulder while we take seats. We barely have time to start talking before Buzz and Roadster come back, and as they do, Roadster circles around to me and puts a hand on my shoulder, leaning in close to speak quietly.

  “Don’t worry about the girl, Dad will explain,” he says, grinning. “She’s Buzz’s new groupie, but she’s part of a plan. Just watch.”

  “That’s weird,” I murmur while the others are distracted by the Prez, who’s cracking a joke about the quality of the beer. “Buzz’s old lady usually doesn’t like new girls staying here.”

  Roadster shrugs. “I never know what’s on my Dad’s mind, but just wait, I think this is gonna be big.”

  I furrow my brow and looked up at him with confusion on my face, but he only winks at me and makes his way to his seat.

  Buzz has Roadster on his right and Big Daddy on his left, as the member with the most seniority. I sit between Bones and Ironside, taste of the bourbon still on my lips when I take my first swig of beer.

  “Alright, everyone,” Buzz says, putting his hands on the table and looking around at us all with that confident smile he always has when he’s about to give good news. “I’m calling this meeting to order. Don’t think I’ve been hyping things up the past week for nothing, so all you fucks better pay attention.”

  A gruff chuckle goes around the table as t
he Prez takes a drink of his beer and sits forward. A few of us glance at each other, probably with smartass cracks in mind, but Buzz commands enough respect at the table that nobody is about to interrupt him.

  “I’m not a politician with speech writers, so I’ll lay this out on the table plain and simple: I bought a bar,” he says, and jaws drop around the table, followed by grins.

  “Shit, you’re kidding me!” Bones speaks up despite himself.

  “Damn, I knew things were going well, but not that well,” Ironside says with a grim chuckle.

  “What’s the place?” I ask, just as enthusiastic as the rest.

  “Right now, it’s a shit hole called Sir Ray’s about an hour’s ride east of here,” Buzz says.

  My smile fades.

  That’s the name of the bar I hit last night.

  What the fuck?

  I glance at Roadster, who doesn’t seem to have noticed, then back to Buzz without showing my thoughts on my face. I nod slowly, crossing my arms on the table and listening carefully. Something’s up, and I have a strange feeling. If that lying-ass bar owner ripped me off, I’ll take that baseball bat back to his place and negotiate round two.

  “But not for long,” Buzz says, grinning. “Because with the money we’ve been pulling down, I’m gonna flip it. It’s going to be the best strip club in the county, no skeezy city fucks with their greasy hands involved, everything handled in house. We already got a bartender, and whatever this place will sell for will pay for the renovations on the bar itself. All we need to worry about is the strippers.”

  A resounding cheer goes up around the table, with applause, and I don’t have a choice but to join in, even though my mind is racing.

  “Oh, shit, we could have these meetings in the VIP room,” Roadster says, and Buzz chuckles at him.

  “Yeah, reckon we could, boy,” he agrees. “It’s about time we get a proper club to call our own, and we’ll run it the way we want. This is a payoff that’s gonna keep on giving, and it’s already a done deal. Held off on giving you all the good news until I knew it was set in stone.”

  Fuck. That jackass owner pulled the wool over my eyes, no doubt about it. He sold me a bar that was already sold. He’s probably three states away by now.

  “Should go without saying,” Buzz goes on, “that we’ll need strippers if we want a strip club, but I don’t think any of you will have problems with that part.”

  “I’d like to humbly volunteer to run interviews, as much as it pains me,” Roadster says with mock humility that makes the whole table laugh with him, even Buzz.

  “Actually, I have something else in mind for that,” Buzz says, casting a meaningful smile around the table that gets us all exchanging curious glances. “We won’t be interviewing girls so much as recruiting them. We don’t want anyone who’s going to give us trouble, and we want classy girls, ones that’ll give folks around here real reason to drop some serious money.”

  “And even more reason for them to drop a different kind of money at the motel down the road,” Roadster says in a tone that makes my stomach turn as I realize what they’re talking about. “We get our pick of the litter of girls passing through, the good people of Wyoming get a few warm beds at night after a show, and we rake in the money, right Prez?”

  Prez gives Roadster an affectionate, fatherly chuckle.

  “Yep, and I got our first employee right here, ready to help us get the show on the road,” he says. “And I expect each and every one of you to pick one out for yourselves and pitch in, understand? I want a little of all our tastes represented, give it some real local flavor.”

  My face is expressionless, and the rest of the room feels like it’s melting around me. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Knocking over bars owned by assholes is one thing, but what Buzz is talking about is a whole ‘nother ballpark. I didn’t sign up for this. But there’s no question about it.

  Buzz wants us to start kidnapping girls to pimp out at that bar… and that girl out back is the first victim.

  Kate

  God, I am so very tired.

  I don’t know one-hundred percent how long I have been stuck in this smelly, awful little room, but it feels like a million years have passed since I first woke up this morning. The dazed sensation I woke up with has mostly faded away by now, which I thought would be a good thing, but instead it’s just left me feeling even more on-edge and terrified now that the intoxicating substance is out of my system.

  As it turns out, that drug—whatever it was and whoever slipped it to me—was the only thing keeping the overwhelming rush of fear and hopelessness at bay. Now that it’s worn off, all I can feel is dread and emptiness. I have spent hours, maybe days, maybe weeks just pacing around this crappy little cell in circles. I have done everything I could think of to keep my mind from spiraling out of control into the darkness. I have played mind games. Word games I made up just to pass the time. It’s a weird self-comforting habit I picked up back when I was still just a little kid.

  I was always a fearful child, for some reason, and I was easily spooked. I used to have nightmares about my teddy bears coming alive to attack me, so they always had to sleep in my closet at night instead of in bed with me. Things like that. I don’t know why I was so skittish, but that’s just the way it was back then for me, I guess. One time, I accidentally managed to watch an entire horror movie from my hiding place in the living room behind the sofa while Leah and Samantha were having a sleepover with their friends. I, being the younger middle child, was not invited to the little party. They were all in middle school, while I was still a third-grader. Just eight years old and totally traumatized by the blood and guts and violence of the movie they were watching together. I was horrified by all of it, and yet I couldn’t look away.

  Of course, my parents were out that night. Back then, they were both constantly on the night shift, my mom working the moonlight hours as a nurse in the emergency room at the local hospital, and my father pulling the graveyard shift at the one twenty-four-hour filling station in Stonedale. So there was no one around to comfort me, to tell me it was just a dumb slasher movie and that I was totally safe in my home. So instead, I retreated to the comfort of my frilly pink bedroom. I cuddled my favorite doll and snuggled up under the sheets, shutting my eyes tightly to block out any chance of seeing a monster in my bedroom like the murderer from the film. I played a word-association game my reading teacher taught us in school. I would think of a word, any word, and then come up with a synonym for it. I would make a chain of words, leaping from one definition to the next, until I had ended up as far away from the original word and definition as possible.

  Maybe it was silly or childish, but it got me through that awful night. So naturally, now that I was in a dangerous, scary situation again, I returned to that little word game. I spent so long alternating between pacing around the room, banging on the door and window, and just lying on the lumpy mattress flat on my back, staring up at the popcorn ceiling and playing word games to pass the time. I tried my hardest to break the glass window. I banged on the door and screamed until my fists were bruised and my throat burned with exertion. I worked up my energy only to deplete it all in useless attempts at breaking free.

  I wandered back to the bed and slumped over on my side, curling up in the fetal position. Tears stung in my eyes and burned hot tracks down my cheeks, dripping down the tip of my nose to stain the moth-eaten bed sheets. I simply am not strong enough to break my way out of here. I’m a scrawny teenage girl, and no amount of screeching or pounding on the window will set me free. I want so badly to get out of this room. I miss my family. I miss Moxie. I even miss boring, quiet, claustrophobic Stonedale. I just want to see something other than these bland four walls and the rainy desolation outside the window.

  I’ve memorized every corner, every nook, every imperfection in the room, and then went on to do the same to the closet.

  Just like the room itself, the closet was almost completely empty save for a couple o
f hangers. They weren’t even proper wire hangers, though, just those cheap plastic ones. Still, I tried cracking one across the window pane, just in case they were denser than they looked. But no dice. The hanger was the one that cracked, splitting into three jagged pieces of useless plastic. There’s no breaking out of here. I’m not strong enough.

  I just have to wait.

  And that man I saw earlier, the one who went puttering by on his flashy motorcycle, the one whose intense gaze met with mine… he didn’t come to save me. He took one look at me and kept moving along. Like I didn’t matter. Like he was looking right through me.

  So here I am now, curled up on this filthy mattress, totally sapped of my strength and hope. There’s nothing left for me to try now. It’s all over. It’s just a waiting game now. How long will I be trapped here? How long will I have to wait to hear another living soul’s voice or see a fellow human’s face again? Am I just going to waste away to nothing, trapped within these four musty walls? Will I ever see my family and friends again or is this… the end?

  I sniffle, rubbing at my tearful eyes. I feel totally hopeless. I reach out and pull the largest shattered piece of the plastic hanger close. It may be useless against the window, but it’s the closest thing to a weapon I have found yet, and there may come a moment when I need to defend myself. I roll over on my back and stare up at the ceiling, wincing as I feel a strange prickly sharpness against my scalp.

  I sit up, confused and rooting around in my tangled hair for the culprit. I dig through the knotted-up blobs of auburn hair and manage to extract a bobby pin I forgot about. I gaze at it in my palm, turning and examining it in the low light. It’s shiny and straight with a pointed end. I wonder vaguely to myself if I can find any use for the item. At this point maybe I’m grasping at straws, but a part of me wonders if I can fashion it into a lock pick of some kind.

  I’ve never picked a lock before, since I have never found myself in a predicament that called for it. But I’ve seen it done in movies before. It can’t be that impossible to figure out, right? Clutching the sharpened hanger fragment like it’s my only respite, I cross the room and sit down in front of the door. I reach up for the doorknob and wiggle the bobby pin into the lock, finagling it around. I pick and pick and pick but nothing seems to be working. I just can’t figure it out. Evidently, it’s not just a skill you can bullshit your way through.