by A. P. Jensen
“Meatloaf,” she said.
“Meatloaf it is. You need help, call me. You didn’t reach for the pen when you saw me in the doorway. You were too busy gawking.”
“I don’t expect people to follow me into guest rooms!”
“The Battalion’s capable of anything. Don’t put your guard down.”
She wanted to say ‘I never do’ but he just witnessed her act like a silent actress in a bad horror movie. She glared at him as he ambled out of the room.
Knowing there was a meatloaf meal in her near future and with the extra pills doing their job, she sang rap songs to piss herself off and drive her through the constant pain. Getting shot in the shoulder? Just another day in the life of a gangsta.
Raven’s feet dragged as she went to her last room on this floor, which was the checkout. She left it for last so she could take her time, since cutting corners wasn’t an option for this room. Making the bed took the longest. She swore it took her almost an hour to fit the insert into the duvet correctly and make sure a quarter could bounce on the sheets. She was sweating like crazy despite the temperature and she knew she wouldn’t last much longer. She was trying to fold the towels one handed when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. She dropped the towels and reached into her pocket and saw Rose, her supervisor staring at the clean towel on the ground. Rose said something in Spanish and Raven bent to pick the towel and released the pen at the same time.
“Don’t speak Spanish,” Raven said in a bored voice. This was America, wasn’t it?
“I’m going to do an inspection. Let me see your room assignment sheet,” Rose said briskly.
Raven handed it over and tossed the towel in her dirty laundry bag and continued to do the last minute touches on it.
“You still haven’t done the penthouse?” Rose frowned in disapproval.
“He requested late service,” Raven improvised.
“You better hurry up. You only have three hours to clean the whole penthouse. Why are you so behind?”
“Dirty guests.”
Rose didn’t ask if she went to lunch or if she needed help. No. All she wanted to know was why she was behind. Uh, because she got shot in her shoulder two days ago and she was sure any minute now she was going to throw up all over the pretty floor she just slaved over.
“We have people waiting for this room. Hurry up and get to the penthouse. Do you know how much they pay a night?”
Rose handed her paper back and walked out of the room. In Raven’s mind, the rap music went up several notches and helped her finish the room. By the time she keyed on the room phone, notifying the front desk that the room was available, she was dead on her feet. She rode the elevator up to the penthouse and with each step felt like someone was punching her shoulder. She rang the doorbell to warn Cain so he didn’t freak out. He opened the door and jumped out of the way as she wheeled her cart in.
“What’s up?” Cain asked.
“I don’t want my supervisor to see my cart out here. She’ll want to come in and kiss your ass and make sure the room is clean enough.” She gave him a sharp look. “I’m not cleaning in here today. I’ll do it tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to clean anything. The room looks fine to me.”
“Whatever. I can’t leave my cart in the storage room because it’ll be suspicious.”
Raven made a beeline for the couch and gingerly lowered herself onto it, cradling her arm. Cain set a steaming plate of meatloaf on the coffee table along with a tall glass of iced tea, which she guzzled down.
“So how was your day?” Cain said conversationally.
She blew damp bangs out of her eyes and stared balefully at him and said nothing.
“Do I need to call Manny?”
“No.”
“Are you being stupid?”
Her mouth twitched. “No. I’m not that stupid.”
“Good.”
She ate what she could and settled on her back on the couch. She glanced at Cain as he ate a large meatball sandwich.
“So you put a tracker on me.”
“Yeah.”
“And you said it wasn’t working?”
He frowned. “Maybe something in the hotel is interfering with the signal or something. That’s never happened before.”
“But you used your super power to find me?”
He grunted. “It feels more like a gut instinct rather than a super power.”
Her mind wandered as she let the food settle in her stomach and let her abused body rest. That invisible target on her back faded away as she listened to Cain type away on his laptop and the news played in the background.
“Is there really dragons and stuff?” she muttered sleepily.
When she didn’t get an answer she cracked open her eye and saw Cain staring at her, his sandwich inches away from his mouth.
“Well?” she demanded.
“No dragons.”
“Vampires? Zombies?”
“None of those. The only monsters in this world are us.”
“Damn. I really wanted to see Medusa’s snake head.”
Cain snorted and continued working on his laptop. At some point, she drifted off to sleep. When she woke, she examined the light in the penthouse and saw Cain watching her.
“Time?” she croaked.
“Four forty five.”
“Shit.”
She tried to sit up but couldn’t lever herself up. Cain came over and helped her up. She hobbled over to the cart and when he tried to help, she snarled at him. He held his hands up and opened the door to the service elevator. By the time Raven dropped off her cart (she didn’t bother filling it for the next person) and walked into the storage room to clock out she was in danger of being almost ten minutes late.
Rose held out a hand for her room assignment and spoke in Spanish.
“No comprende,” Raven yawned.
“What rooms did you have?” Rose said impatiently.
Raven clocked out and rubbed heavy eyes. Rose usually didn’t speak to her and now she wanted to chat twice in the same day? “Five rooms on the fifty ninth and the penthouse on sixty.”
Rose looked at her paper and frowned. “You shouldn’t do the penthouse last. They pay five grand a night. They should be first.”
Raven rubbed her throbbing head. She wanted to say ‘yeah, yeah, we already went over this.’ Instead, she repeated, “He requested a later time.”
“Oh. Fine, then. See you tomorrow.”
Raven didn’t bother telling Rose she was off tomorrow. What was the use? She went back in the service elevator and had no problem going up since everyone was trying to go downstairs. On any other day, five flights of stairs wouldn’t even speed up her heartbeat but with her body so battered, it was beyond her. Cain was standing outside of the service elevator when she walked out and she rolled her eyes at him.
“What you do is hard work,” he said as he unlocked the door to the penthouse.
“Yeah.”
“Here.”
He held out a room key.
She took it and stared at him. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I think I know more about you than you think.”
“I could be a damn killer for all you know yet you’re nursing me, feeding me, shadowing me. This is freaking bizarre.”
“I’m taking the cues from you. I show up in your apartment and you don’t react like a normal person who would scream and cry. You throw your fork at me and shoot me in the leg. You wake up and there’s a doctor you don’t know sewing you up. You don’t ask questions or get hysterical, you take everything in without blinking!”
“I didn’t pop you in the face when you showed up in my apartment because I recognized you.”
“You met me for what, two minutes at the most? You’re crazy for not screaming for help! I could’ve been a killer or part of the Battalion.”
“I knew you weren’t.”
He cocked his head to the side. “What?”
She leaned against the counter. “I know you’re dangerous, but not to me.”
“How?”
She examined him. He looked rough and normally she wouldn’t want to meet a stranger like him in a dark alley. He wasn’t tall, probably less than six feet. He was muscular though and his face looked like it was hewn from stone. Despite his outward appearance, she hadn’t felt panicked or alarmed when she met him. Maybe she didn’t have enough sense to know there was something going on with all the attacks but she was usually a good judge of character and both times she met Cain, she hadn’t felt cornered.
“I don’t know how. I just knew I wasn’t in any danger from you.”
He didn’t look happy with that information. If anything, he looked angry and offended.
“You shouldn’t always trust your instincts.”
She gaped at him. “Uh, hello! Didn’t you just say your super power is more like a gut instinct than a power? What if that’s mine?”
“We shouldn’t assume anything until there’s another vision that tells us what to do next.”
She glared at him. She wasn’t sure where all of this anger was coming from and she didn’t care. Maybe it was left over from her rap session but she didn’t like having Cain dismiss her instincts so disdainfully.
“So you think I should ignore instincts that brought me this far but you want me to wait for a vision from your grandpa? Come on now!”
“Why are you yelling at me?”
“Because I like to yell! See, you didn’t know about that, did you?” she snarled. “I’m going to take a shower and I don’t care what Manny says about my arm. Don’t you dare walk through that wall or I’ll throw another fork at you and this time I won’t miss!”
She wanted to stomp away from him, but it was more like a shuffle because she was beyond tired. She made her way slowly, very slowly up the glass staircase and could feel his eyes on her, so she kept her nose in the air instead of letting her head fall forward in defeat. In the bedroom, she slipped off her sweaty uniform and even though it didn’t make a difference, locked the bedroom and bathroom door. She turned on the water and felt so guilty when she poured signature bath salts into the tub. Soothing aromas filled the air and she looked at her shoulder in the mirror and was happy to see it wasn’t bleeding. She eased herself into the tub, moaning. She settled herself into a niche perfectly formed for her body, shoulders above the hot water and let all of her troubles drift away.
She hadn’t had a bath in… she blanched. Almost three days. Disgusting. When the water cooled, she cleaned as much of herself as she could and washed her hair one handed. She was too lazy to dress in anything more complicated than a robe. She melted into her bed and that easily, slept.
Pain, that constant nagging bitch, woke her. She groaned, raised her head to glance at the clock and saw it was two in the morning. Shit. She looked out of her still open windows at the lights of Las Vegas. She lay there for several minutes until she couldn’t take it any longer. She swung her legs over the bed and before she stood, there was a knock on the door. She wasn’t sure whether to be grateful, irritated or suspicious.
“Can you see through walls?” she snapped.
“Great hearing. I know you’re due for your next set of pills.”
She stood but before she could walk to the door, he walked through it. She glared at him but didn’t comment when he held out her pills and water. He walked back through the door, and brought back a fruit salad and chicken. Raven ate instead of talking. Cain sat across from her, typing things on his cell. Although it was two in the morning, he was dressed in what he probably thought was ‘causal’ slacks and a buttoned up shirt.
“Don’t you know assassins are supposed to wear leather or trench coats?” Raven asked.
“I like to be different.”
“You look like you should be on a yacht or in a board room.”
“I do both from time to time.”
That shut her up. Money was something she struggled with constantly and it was something she definitely didn’t have. She lived paycheck to paycheck and traveled as light as possible. The clothes Manny bought her were more than she owned in her life. She had two jackets, five shirts, three shorts, underwear, socks and shoes. Bare necessities. It was all she could afford and all that made sense for her to own. When something was worn through, she replaced it. With this job at Decadent, she splurged more than she ever had before by getting cable and a pay as you go cell phone. She lived a bare bones existence with no friends or family, and that was the way she liked it... except for the fear instinct that told her she was being followed or that she was in danger.
She pushed away her dinner and Cain finally looked up from his cell phone.
“You don’t like it?”
“Not that hungry.”
“I can order you something else.”
“No. I’m fine. How long are we going to do this?”
An eyebrow went up. “Do what?”
“You’re staying in the penthouse which is five grand a night. When are you supposed to check out?”
He waved that away carelessly with all the arrogance of a rich man. It ticked her off.
“Don’t worry about that.”
She leaned forward. “How long are we going to stay here? A month? Two?”
“As long as it takes.”
“For what?” she snapped, getting to her feet. “For your grandpa to have his vision or for the Battalion to come after me? Or better yet, I’ll suddenly realize I have a special power and then what?”
“If you do have power, then I’ll take you down to Texas to get trained.”
Uneasiness skipped through her. “What if I don’t want to go?”
Gone was the friendly Cain she’d come to know. In his place was an unreadable stranger with those piercing blue eyes.
“We’ll deal with that when the time comes.”
“I want to know what we’re waiting for.”
“I don’t know. Grandpa said to stay put in Vegas.”
“I can’t stay in this penthouse forever! I had a lease-”
“I paid it off so you don’t have to worry about it.”
She tried to reign in her temper. “So you’ve been in contact with my landlord?”
“She’s a sleaze. Nobody in the building, and that includes her, remembers anything that happened. Your apartment is repaired. No bullet holes. Your car is there too. It’s been cleaned.”
She counted to ten and opened her eyes. “I appreciate your financial help but I don’t want you meddling in my personal life.”
“I’m not meddling. I’m taking care of everything so you don’t feel like you have to leave Decadent.”
“Cain,” she said and her voice shook. “I’ve been on my own for a long time and I don’t like being confined. At some point, I want to breathe fresh air.”
“We’ll deal with it when the times comes.”
Her eyes blazed. “I have a life!”
He snorted. “You go to work, come home, go to work and come home. You don’t have any friends or family and you fight for your life every once in a while. This has to be an improvement.”
That hit her in the gut. Even though what he said was true, hearing it said out loud sounded so much worse.
“So, I should be happy that I’m being dogged by the rich guy who serves me five star meals?”
“Can’t hurt,” he said.
“I’m not going to hide in this damn casino for the next year! Don’t you have some woman to go home to and feed grapes to in bed?”
“No.”
“No, what?” she demanded.
“No, I don’t have a woman to feed grapes to in bed. If that’s a fantasy of yours, I guess I could-”
She lost it and hurled the remote at his head. He dodged it easily, which made her see red. Cain got to his feet and put his hands on his hips like a stern father.
“What are you so upset about?”
“Everything!”
“T
hat’s specific.”
She threw a hotel planner at his head and he caught it and set it aside.
“You just show up in my apartment and take over my life!” she shouted.
“I’m not trying to take it over. I’m trying to keep you alive. We can do this two ways. One, we can work together, communicate and trust each other. Two, I don’t trust you and I make your life hell.”
“Oh, that’s nice, Cain.”
“Well, what do you want?”
She lowered the Bible she was about to throw and sat with a hand over her face. “I don’t know. Not this.”
There was a long silence and to her mortification, she felt tears sting her eyes. She never cried and knowing Cain with his elephant ears probably heard the hitch in her breath made her want to run.
“Raven.”
She sensed him crouch in front of her but she didn’t look up or remove the hand shielding most of her face. She willed herself to think of anything that would stop the hysteria bubbling in her chest, but her mind was a whirl of mangled emotions.
“I don’t know how long we’re going to be here. I don’t know what we’re waiting for. I don’t know what to say to make you feel better and I’m sorry if you feel like I’m stepping all over your business, but this is what I do.”
When she didn’t respond, he sighed.
“You’re handling this well and it’s okay to be pissed. I would be. Just… don’t do anything stupid and run. You can throw things at me and we can fight if that makes you feel better but my main goal is to keep you safe and healthy. That’s why I bring you meals and take care of your business, whether it’s clothes or your apartment. That’s all I can do for you. For now, we have to sit tight until we figure this out. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
He stayed there for a full minute and she didn’t move or say another word. He got up, grabbed her plate and left without opening the door, which made Raven peek up when she sensed he was gone. She walked into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face, then spent the rest of the night watching the Sci Fi channel for inspiration on how to get herself out of this mess.