Refresh

by Suzanne Steele

  He wanted to finally reach out and touch her. He wanted to whisper, “I love you,” but he knew it would make him look crazy because Fey was invisible to Candy. He’d have to wait until he was finally alone with this angel who was quickly becoming the center of his world.

  The way Reese was staring at her made Fey feel like he’d wrapped his arms around her. Her crush had escalated to something far deeper and stronger. It was incredibly gratifying to have revealed her presence to him at long last. She had every intention of revealing a whole lot more to him, though, and was going to indulge in some corporal exploration of her own when she could get him alone.

  He stared until Fey nodded in Candy’s direction, reminding him to listen.

  “…couldn’t live with myself if he was killed and I hadn’t at least tried to warn him. I mean, he’s a complete asshole, but still...”

  “How much did you tell him?”

  “I didn’t tell him about you two or anything. He was so rude to me. I didn’t have a chance to say anything except that he should watch his back because the killer saw us that night.”

  “How was he rude to you?” Reese asked, curious about why someone wouldn’t be grateful for a heads-up.

  “He just went off. He started telling me he didn’t want to be associated with the likes of me. Worried about his precious reputation, I guess. He wasn’t worried about that all the times he had his dick down my throat, I’ll tell you that. What a jerk. He made me feel like I was scum on the bottom of his shoe. I’ll never work the streets again. Too humiliating.”

  “What made you work them in the first place? Why didn’t you try getting work in a place like this first?” Reese couldn’t help asking.

  “It was supposed to be a temporary thing. I almost didn’t get through that first time.” Her eyes got a sad, faraway look in them. “It was disgusting. I wasn’t a person to him; I was just an orifice. A gloryhole on two feet. I’d never been treated that way before in my life. I had never felt so filthy. I will never do it again.”

  “Look, we’ve all made mistakes,” Reese said with a shrug. “You had no help, no support. You do need to stay off the streets now, though. For good. Don’t think about the past. This is a new beginning.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right.” Reese smiled at the woman…until Fey cut her eyes at him. He could feel her stare cut through him like a razor’s sharp edge.

  “Sorry…baby,” he discreetly mouthed in her direction. The apology didn’t seem to accomplish much, but when he called her ‘baby’? Fey wished the waitress could see her just so she could ask for the check.

  Suddenly water was sloshing across the table and Wolf was signaling the waitress over for a clean-up. As Candy scrambled to scoop ice back into the glass and the waitress mopped up the spill, Reese decided it was time to do a little discreet communicating. He made a show of moving the salt and pepper shakers out of the way, giving himself a few precious seconds to say what needed saying without being noticed.

  Fey, of course, had him all figured out, grinning at him. “Clean up on aisle three?” she teased.

  The heated look he sent her way wiped the grin off her face, leaving her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling with sexual interest.

  “Baby,” he whispered, his voice throaty with arousal, “I hope you’re ready for me because I’m gonna tear you up.”

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Robert Princeton stood with his arm around his beautiful wife as he smiled for the photographer. He had every intention of running for office soon and a huge spread in the social section of the Courier Journal would bring him one step closer to that dream.

  He had it all: money, good looks, a beautiful wife, a great job as Louisville’s lead prosecuting attorney, and now the promise of power as a politician. After all, if the Governor had gotten away with marrying a hooker then it should be easy enough to get into office with his squeaky clean reputation.

  He pushed away thoughts of his taste for trysts in dark alleys with street whores, especially that Candy girl. He liked her the best. When he demeaned her, she seemed to really take it to heart and feel bad about herself. That always made his dick so hard it ached; in fact, just thinking of it was getting him hard now. He hadn’t gotten the chance to fuck her that night, had only planned to fuck her face, anyway–get in, get out–which had been disappointing at the time but was probably for the best, really. At least he was safe as far as that situation was concerned.

  Thank God he’d told that whore to stay away from him. If she had some killer chasing her around, that was her problem. Another dead hooker wouldn’t matter. He was much more important than she was. There was a part of him that hoped she did get killed. He’d even toyed with the idea of arranging it himself, but decided it would be too risky. But if she were to meet with an untimely death due to her poor life choices, at least then he wouldn’t have to worry about his more deviant predilections coming back to bite him in the ass. The slightest whiff of scandal–just one skeleton rattling around in his closet–could annihilate his political viability and destroy his chances of running for public office. It wouldn’t hurt her, of course; she was already trash in society’s eyes.

  “Mr. Princeton! Over here!”

  He pulled his wife closer, smiling as if all were right in his world. Any why not? His twenty-thousand dollars’ worth of porcelain veneers said it all: the world was his; other poor suckers just lived in it.

  Of course there was that one thing he hadn’t thought to factor into all the things he had going for him, the one thing that could shatter all the pipe dreams he had built up into sandcastles in the sky: after a lifetime of pomposity and excess, he had made enemies. After spending his career prosecuting criminal cases, he had sent a lot of people to prison. Inmates had one commodity: time. They had years to think about getting even with the person who had put them there.

  Of course none of that crossed Robert Princeton’s mind; he was too busy smiling for the camera.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Razor!? This is the eighth club we’ve been to, man. I’m running outta money paying these cover charges. They’re just fuckin’ bikini clubs now, anyway. But seriously, the bitch left town or something.”

  “No, she’s still around. She may not be on the street anymore, but she’s here somewhere. She was never a lifer on the streets; she got smart and got a job stripping.”

  “How do you know?” Sic challenged his partner in crime.

  “It’s what the smart ones always do. They run to a place they think is going to be safe. After letting strangers finger ‘em and fuck ‘em behind garbage dumpsters, they think it’s a step up to just tease us with that shit from up on a stage. Call it a gut feeling, but I’ve been out on these streets for years and if I know anything, it’s how people think. Self-preservation is what that bitch is thinking about right now. Trust me, she’ll try to hide in plain sight. Have you seen the tits on her? I have. Not up close, but I was close enough that night. Any strip club would be crazy not to hire her. She should be easy enough to find.” Razor shifted in his chair and glanced around the room. The place was packed tonight. Sic was right though. Fuckin’ pasties. What a waste of time.

  “How do you know?” Sic asked.

  “The same way all you know is how to say ‘How do you know?’ I know because self-preservation is what I’m thinking about and it should be what you’re thinking about too. You heard what Phenex said before we left, but I can promise you he meant every word. We’ve got to put her to ground; non-negotiable. And before you ask how I know, I’m tellin’ ya: I could hear it in his voice and I could see it in his eyes. He’s capable of more than you realize.” And more than you remember, apparently. “If we don’t find that bitch and kill her, sooner rather than later, he’s going to kill us. I ain’t dyin’ for no street ho.”

  “Now who has bad grammar?” Sic chided him. “So what are we doing here? Going to every bar in town until we find her?”

&nbs
p; “Looks like we won’t have to,” Razor purred as he leaned back in his chair and directed his lust-filled gaze at the woman shimmying under the spotlight a mere twenty feet away. “There she is. She’s right up there on that stage. And, fuckin’-A, she’s in next-to-nothing, shakin’ her little moneymaker.”

  He caught her eye with a tilt of his chin. A slow smile crossed his face when she zeroed in on him as a target. She dropped to her hands and knees and began slowly, seductively, crawling toward him. He shifted in his seat and crossed his ankle over his knee. “Man, this is gonna be too damn easy. Here, kitty, kitty.”

  Sic watched Candy practically slither across the stage toward Razor; watched her as she proceeded to do a sequence of moves that culminated in her doing the full splits along the edge of the stage. Her sheer G-string and strategically applied body paint kept her in compliance with Kentucky law, but just barely.

  Razor liked what he saw. “Damn. I might need to have a little fun with that shit before I off her.” He glanced over at Sic and grinned. “No charge, of course.”

  “What do we do now?” Sic asked, swallowing hard as the stripper turned away from their table and started to twerk, her ass twitching and wiggling only six feet from Razor’s face.

  “We sit and wait…and, fuck yeah, we watch. When the bitch gets off work, we’ll follow her…find a cozy little spot…If I’m feeling generous, I may let you fuck her mouth.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “You ever fuck a girl before you snuff her out?” Razor asked as he watched Candy with an almost clinical detachment. At Sic’s wide-eyed headshake, he got a dreamy look in his eyes. “Oh man, you’re gonna love it. It’s…damn, it’s just different. Nothing matters. You fucking own that shit. You make sure you got her locked down good and tight. No exits. Because she’s not going anywhere, ever.” He shifted restlessly in his seat. “Then you do what you want, where you want, for as long as you want. And when you’re done and she’s nothing but a piece of meat, you’ll still own her. You’ll own her forever.”

  He rose from his chair and approached the stage. With a nod to the bouncer who was clearly on alert nearby, Razor smiled benignly and slipped some cash beneath the string running along Candy’s hip, winking harmlessly up at her as the string snapped against her skin. Then he returned to his seat and sipped from his drink. “We follow her…we fuck her…and we kill her. Then we can put all this shit behind us and forget about Phenex’s ghostly-looking ass.”

  “Well, the guy is creepy looking.”

  “He’s more than creepy looking, man; he’s fucking dangerous. Lethal. I’ve never encountered that kind of evil before.”

  “Yeah, evil. Maybe we need to call a priest,” Sic guffawed, and they both laughed. Sic didn’t notice that Razor’s smile never reached his eyes.

  Chapter Thirty

  The clickity-clack of Candy’s heels against the pavement echoed through the alley. She wished she had insisted that Wolf and Reese give her a ride home. It wasn’t that they couldn’t; they wouldn’t. Both men had insisted that if she walked home it might draw out the killer so they could arrest him and get him off the streets. So she was taking one for the team and acting as bait.

  She quickly looked over her shoulder and picked up her pace. She wondered where they were. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think they weren’t even watching her. Were they that good at surveillance? For someone who had police protection she wasn’t feeling very safe right now.

  The walls of the alley seemed to close in around her, making her feel like she was suffocating. Shadows danced off the walls of the same alley she’d found the dead man in. The route was out of her way but, again, Wolf and Reese had insisted.

  She felt like she wasn’t alone. As she passed the spot where the body had been, she saw the dark spot where he had bled out. It was almost as if he was still there, demanding revenge for his untimely death. She teetered along, dodging potholes and walking as fast as her stilettos would allow. She wished she had worn athletic shoes instead, but she hadn’t had any with her. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  When had her life become a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a killer? It was bad enough having to worry about the crazies she made a living off of; now she had to worry about a knife-wielding killer hunting her down and cutting her into ribbons.

  Something pushed her against the wall. She lost her balance and fell to the ground. She gasped in pain when her knee hit the pavement, tearing skin off and causing blood to flow down her leg. The impact had opened the flesh down to the bone. Her shredded stockings were the only thing keeping the skin attached to the wound. Pain shot through her leg as she tried to stand. It took three attempts to finally get up off the ground and stand on her wobbly legs.

  “Okay, that’s it!” She jerked her strappy shoes off and ran through the alley. She almost tripped again from looking behind her to see who had pushed her. There was nothing there. It made no sense but wasn’t that just par for the course anymore? Things had been getting weird lately, real fucking weird.

  Her hands shook as she tried to put her key in the lock at her front door. Something smacked her hand and sent the keys flying. Her hand stung and she looked down to find a red welt marring her skin. Shit. She didn’t need any more convincing to know she wasn’t alone, and that whatever was harassing her was not of this world–at least, not anymore.

  But why her? Why now? The hair on the back of her neck stood up. What if that poor man had still been alive? She had left him in the alley to die, just to save her own ass. Maybe his spirit was angry. If so, then she couldn’t really blame him for lashing out at her, but she didn’t know what to do about it. Now she was going to have to deal with a dead man stuck between two worlds.

  She turned and pressed her back against the door. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you dead in that alley. Haunt the man who killed you, not me.” She slid down the wall until she was sitting in a crumpled heap on the ground sobbing. Suddenly the throbbing in her knee didn’t compare with her heart hammering against her ribcage as she faced what she’d done.

  Fey had had enough of this. She stepped in between the weeping woman and the ghost tormenting her. There was nothing special about him; certainly, nothing to be afraid of. She had no way of telling Candy that, but she could give this asshole a piece of her mind that he’d never forget.

  “So the cowardly little whore has a guardian,” he drawled, unaffected by Fey’s anger. “You know how I know she’s a whore? Because she sucked my dick in that alley a bunch of times. I should make her suck it now. That would give her something to think about, wouldn’t it? Anyway, you can’t kill a dead man, and I ain’t scared of you.”

  “I can send you to eternal torment, though. One-way ticket, no waiting. Try me. Keep bothering her; see what happens.”

  He cringed at the thought. He hadn’t thought about burning in a lake of fire for eternity. Even though he’d felt the gates of hell when he died, he hadn’t entered them. Things had felt unfinished. Fey was a fallen angel but even though she wasn’t a good, halo-wearing, walking-the-prim-and-proper-line angel, she still had connections. The Almighty could cast him into hell if his actions here justified it. There were rules in the afterlife, and whether he liked it or not he had to follow them.

  “It isn’t fair,” he whined. “She left me in that alley like a piece of trash.”

  “You were already dead, and she was scared. She did what any other human would do. There’s no sense feeling offended. It didn’t make any difference. You’re just as dead as you would have been if she’d never shown up. Ironically, her little run-in with you and your killer may have set her on her own path toward redemption.” Fey put her hand on her hip, eyeing him with an accusatory gaze. “You do realize she’s trying to help the police find your killer, right?”

  “Well. No. I didn’t.”

  “Well,” she said, mimicking him, “she is. Now I need you to tell me who gave the order for your murder. You may still be angry
at Candy, but I think you know who ordered the hit. I think I do too, but I want to be sure.”

  “Maybe.” At her irritated glare, he huffed and said, “Fine. I’ve been playing voyeur and from what I’ve gathered, it’s gotta be Phenex.”

  “Great. He’s an asshole, that one. And he’s a freak, too. Ain’t this my lucky damn day. What exactly did you do to get such a powerful being to notice you?”

  “I don’t know. The only job I did for him was acquiring merchandise.”

  “Acquiring merchandise. Are you kidding me right now? Try again.”

  “Fine,” he huffed. “Kidnapping women. I conducted a sale myself and got involved with someone I shouldn’t have. I didn’t know who the hell he was at the time, but I do now: Inc. Short for ‘Incubus’.”

  “Doesn’t an Incubus fuck women in their sleep?” Fey wondered aloud. “What does an Incubus need with kidnapped women, then?”

  “Damned if I know. Anyway, after that, all hell broke loose and that was when the boss sent Razor after me.”

  “Well, Phenex is known for being a hothead. It doesn’t take much for him to go off the deep end. Sounds like you crossed the wrong demon at the wrong time. Now back off and let me do my job and catch a killer.”

  “I want to help. I can’t pass over to the other side until I’m avenged. You don’t want me hanging around bored, do you? Gee, who knows what trouble I’d get into.”

  “If you so much as raise a finger to interfere, I’ll cast you into the lake of fire myself. No watching her undress either, you perv.”

  He raised his hands in surrender, giving her an innocent look like the thought had never crossed his mind. Fey was adept at reading the thoughts of the dead and the undead, so she knew perfectly well that was a lie.