ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5)

by Glenna Sinclair

  Levi turned just in time to see Matt fall, hitting the ground much heavier than he had.

  He was confused, unsure of what had just happened, his hands slowly beginning to warm and sting. Had Matt simply tripped, taking Levi out in the process? Had someone pushed Matt? Levi saw someone run around the corner of the building, but he was so surprised by what had just happened that he couldn't tell much about the disappearing figure, if it had even had anything to do with anything.

  Levi rose, dusted off the knees of his trousers, and readjusted his coat.

  "What the hell was that?" he demanded, his hands really plaguing him now. He hadn't skinned his hands since he was a kid, playing at recess. It was a strange realization, one that had sprung to his mind unbidden. What game had they been playing that had made him fall like that?

  It was then that he realized Matt hadn't gotten to his feet. That something was really wrong.

  "Matt?"

  His bodyguard was breathing shallowly, his brow knit together.

  "Matt?" Levi knelt next to him, taking his shoulder, giving him a shake that made the kid's eyes partially open.

  Levi's stinging hands were wet, now. Was Matt's coat wet? Yes, it was wet. Wet with blood. The palms of his hands dripped with red liquid.

  Levi was a smart man. He wouldn't be as rich as he was if he weren't. He could face down any problem in a boardroom, at a computer screen, face to face with owners of other companies, and come up with a solution that pleased everyone.

  He couldn't seem to face down this. The blood on his hands. The bodyguard who wouldn't get up.

  "Who...what happened?" Levi tried to peel back the layers of clothing covering Matt's body, trying to see the source of all that wet blood. It was seeping out the back of the kid, darkening the sidewalk, soaking into Levi's pants.

  Matt batted Levi's hands away and wheezed—a nasty, rattling sound. Levi realized that Matt wasn't going to stand up again. That it didn't matter where that blood was coming from. It was coming and there was too much of it and his bodyguard...his friend...was going to die right here on this sidewalk, right now. Levi sucked in a breath to scream for help, but then Matt murmured something.

  "What?" Levi leaned closer. "What'd you say, kid? Matt?"

  "Promise me." It obviously pained him to speak. Levi wondered what was so important to say that he would force the words past the clenched jaw, the bloodied lips.

  "I promise," Levi said, taking Matt's hand and squeezing it because he didn't like seeing the kid's fingers scrabbling against the wet wool of his coat.

  "Find my sister. Help her."

  Levi squinted, trying to puzzle that one out. He didn't even know Matt had a sister. The kid hadn't mentioned her before. What kind of help could she need? And why did she need to be found? Was she lost? Did Matt know where she might be? Levi formed a question on his lips, but stopped. Matt's grip had gone slack. His labored breathing had quieted. His brow had smoothed, and it looked for all the world that he'd just decided to lie down in the middle of the sidewalk and take a nap.

  But he hadn't. He'd been shot dead.

  Levi screamed for help, well aware that it was too late.

  Chapter 2

  I grabbed on to the bottom of the fire escape just above me, steadying my body against the heaves of the man inside me, avoiding the bit of mangled metal that would land me in a doctor's office for a tetanus shot that I wasn't sure I could afford if I cut my hand on it. The soft material of my shirt caught and pulled against the brick wall behind me, but that couldn't be helped. There had to be some casualties for what we were doing.

  What I was doing.

  I had to close my nose to the stench of the dumpster beside us, breathing through my mouth, noisier than before, giving a false impression of a pant, of being turned on. The man I was with liked that, liked the idea I was feeling good, liked it so much that he buried his face in the crook of my neck and sobbed out his release, slobbering on me, pushing my hands dangerously close to that jagged part of the fire escape.

  Disgusting me.

  He gave a long sigh, like he'd quenched some thirst, and pulled his dick out of me. Wetness slicked the skin of my inner thighs, but that was the price of admission. I paid it no mind, reaching down and yanking my panties and black pants up in one jerk, buttoning and zippering myself back in.

  "That was amazing," he said, still panting. "You came, right?"

  "No," I said simply, looking down to discover my black shirt was unbuttoned almost to my navel. I did them up swiftly in a practiced motion, careful not to miss any.

  "Well, most girls don't," he reasoned. "I could tell you felt good, though."

  "No," I said again. The dumpster's odor was almost unbearable. I was eager to leave the alley and get back inside the bar. The urge to wash my hands drove me to step around the man, whose dick still hung out of his jeans.

  "Frigid bitch," he spat, throwing a wad of bills at me that I managed to catch reflexively. "At least hookers lie to make their clients feel good."

  "I'm not a hooker," I reasoned, pocketing the cash all the same.

  "Just a whore," he shot back.

  It wasn't worth my time to retort, so I didn't. I left him behind in the alley, fuming in the cold, still exposed, and returned to the bar through the service entrance, which I'd propped open with a cinder block.

  I just really wanted to wash my hands.

  Ignoring the irritable gazes of bar patrons ready for refills, I ducked into the women's bathroom and lathered up my hands, hoping I could rid my palms of the acrid smell of the iron fire escape. I glanced at myself in the mirror, but I didn't like making eye contact there. Just a quick check to make sure I hadn't gotten too disheveled in the alley. I swung my auburn hair down and pulled the rubber band out of it, piling it back on top of my head in a fresh messy bun.

  It would've been better if the sex had been better.

  That's what I told my churning gut, the squirming horror that he hadn't even been cute or nice. He hadn't made me feel anything at all. It had been a waste of time, another notch on the belt that meant nothing. I was afraid I was going to be sick, but there just wasn't any time to do so. There were people out in the bar waiting for me to fill up their glasses again, sorrows of their own they'd like to drown.

  Maybe there was someone out there who'd be better.

  I slipped behind the bar outside and refilled everyone’s glasses, whether they asked for it or not. I simply glanced at their faces and topped off those belonging to the angriest patrons.

  “What took you so long?” an older man snarled. He might’ve been a regular, but I wouldn’t know. I made it my personal mission not to get to know these people, or anyone.

  “Don’t you worry about it,” I told him. “I’m here now.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried,” he said, using the condensation on his glass to make a series of wet rings on the bar counter that I’d have to wipe up later. “It’s coming out of your tip, Meagan.”

  Being called by my name gave me a small jolt, and I wondered if we’d interacted before—beyond me refilling his glass over and over again. Had I taken him into the alley? Maybe the storeroom? The restroom, perhaps? Or had he been one of the lucky multitudes I’d accompanied out of here, at the end of the night, to his home? I didn’t recognize his face, but that wasn’t significant. I often wondered, passing people on the sidewalks between the bar and the house, how many I’d been with. How many recognized me without me remembering them?

  It should’ve been disconcerting, but it wasn’t, somehow. That was how accustomed I’d become to sharing myself with people. Giving myself to people. I wasn’t sure who’d had the pleasure and who hadn’t. And I certainly wasn’t sure of myself.

  I looked down and had to smile even as I sighed with no small amount of relief. I was wearing my name on my chest, a name tag I donned every day because the owner of this bar thought it would make me more approachable. That’s how he knew my name. Not because we’d been together and I’d
forgotten about it.

  The irritable old man seemed settled in, his winter wear draped over the back of his chair, sleeves rolled up. I didn’t want to deal with an ornery customer for the remainder of my shift, which stretched into the wee hours of the morning. I also wanted a big tip, but that was only so I could pay the bills, come away from the bar with a little bit more than what I walked in with. Save some money. Get out of here. I wanted him to like me—if not for my dubious service, then for the way I looked, the way I treated him.

  “Look, let me make it up to you,” I said, drawing an abstract design in the rings of condensation on the bar surface.

  “A free drink isn’t going to make me tip you any better.” He swilled his drink as if it were the most important thing in the world.

  “I wasn’t offering a free drink.”

  He stopped, then, as something even more desirable than booze dangled in front of him.

  “What are you offering, then?”

  Got him. The realization that it was actually going to happen was almost as good as the release. My lips parted, tongue darting out to wet them, hyperaware that I commanded a good deal of attention right this moment.

  “Come with me.”

  I walked out from behind the bar without a glance, knowing that I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to see that he was following me.

  Pushing open the door to the women’s restroom, I smiled, hearing it being held open for another person to enter.

  “Is this what you want?” I asked him, turning and already knowing the answer to that question. “Lock the door. Let’s be friends.”

  I’d learned over the last year not to make snap judgments about age or appearance. What was important was the endgame. Appearances meant nothing without that sweet finish, the itch I hadn’t quite scratched earlier out in the alleyway. Here, in the bathroom, it didn’t have to be pretty or life-altering. It just had to make me feel something, anything, for just a handful of seconds.

  “Like this,” I said, guiding him against the sink, his front to my back. My black pants and panties came down easily enough, the slickness from the previous guy nothing but a crusty memory. He entered me in one moment, taking me by surprise, all my air leaving my lungs in a whoosh. Our skin smacked together, a sharp clap.

  The restroom was perhaps preferable to the alley. I couldn’t control the smell or cleanliness of the alley, but I did keep the restroom as clean as the old building and cheap supplies allowed. And the sink came in handy for leverage. The old man had already struck up a rhythm I could more than live with. The only bad thing was the damn mirror. I didn’t want to look him in the face, and I certainly didn’t want to stare into my own eyes. I ducked my face down and pushed my forehead against the cool glass, watching the floor instead, taking note of how some of the tiles didn’t quite align with the wall, as if the person who had laid them all those years ago hadn’t cared enough to do a good job of it.

  But then—oh, magical then—was the build I craved, the promise of everything being worth it.

  “There,” I gasped. “Please. Right there.”

  The old man grunted in response and quickened his pace. I arched my back and stood on the tips of my toes, anything to continue that wicked friction until I lost myself for the briefest of blissful nothings. If I could bottle that utter nothing, it’d be a drink I’d never surface from. It was a blackness that sleep couldn’t even duplicate.

  I emerged from the other side of orgasm reluctantly, only vaguely aware of a warmth on my rear that told me the old man had found his climax, too.

  “Go,” I murmured at him. “You go first, and I’ll come out in a bit.”

  He only shrugged in response, yanking his pants up and shouldering the door open, his chest still heaving. I locked the door after him, wondering if he’d tell all the other patrons just how easy I was or if he’d keep the tryst as his own little secret.

  I didn’t care, either way.

  I cleaned myself up as best I could with clumpy wet toilet paper and hand soap, sadder with each passing moment. It was always like this after I came. It never failed, no matter how good I felt in the moment. I always had to come back down to earth, painfully self-aware.

  That man had probably been old enough to be a grandfather—my grandfather’s age, if he’d still been alive.

  I didn’t judge on age or appearance, but that didn’t stop that nasty little voice inside of me from judging me for my proclivities. It didn’t stop me from having sex, but I did experience wretched, wrenching guilt and disgust afterward.

  At least I’d come. There was that. At least it hadn’t been another wasted affair, like the debacle in the alley earlier.

  At least I’d come.

  And yet it never really helped, in the end. That was a fact I had to admit to myself, glancing at my disheveled hair in the mirror, pulling it back out of my face again. The orgasm only helped for a moment, and then my inexplicable ache returned.

  I needed sex. I needed it. I felt as if my life were just lots of waiting until the next sexual act, and the waiting was miserable. I was preoccupied with examining each and every customer who bellied up to that bar and wondering if I could cajole them into having sex with me.

  It didn’t matter what I wore, if I painted my face with makeup. I’d found that men were eager to stick it in anything willing, and that made my desires even easier to feed. Some men were often suspicious about the fact that I was all too willing to have sex with them, demanding to know my age, whether I was a prostitute, how much I charged, and, most frequently, if I were a cop trying to catch predators.

  I never had any qualms about accepting cash, but it was that nothing I was after. The gaping maw of whatever howled inside of me silenced for just a few precious seconds by that release.

  I’d heard heroin could get me to that same place, but it was an expensive habit to pick up.

  I felt the familiar gnaw of anxiety coupled with the surge of shame. Why had I done that? What was wrong with me? Couldn’t I make it through the shift without boning everyone with a tab open?

  The truer thought was I wouldn’t have been able to stomach a shift without sex.

  Patrons were thirsty, and I had to get back out there, trying to ignore my own thirst, building already, my body looking for its next climax.

  I encouraged customers to keep drinking past the official cutoff time. I’d do anything to stay there at the bar for as long as possible, to keep pouring drink after drink, immersing myself in other people’s lives, just to stay away from my own. I wish I didn’t have to sleep or be alone, that those two things could be magically removed from my understanding of existence. I was just fine as long as I had something to do, people to learn about and be around.

  The tips were better the longer I pushed for the customers to drink, but they eventually all drifted out, having to pass out for a couple of hours before they woke up to start their days anew, stumbling over the crumbling sidewalk just outside the door. I did whatever I could to make them stay, to distract myself, volunteering to help them get home, call them a cab, anything just stay with me.

  When the door jingled shut for the last time, the last broad back vanishing into the inky night, I never even bothered locking it, hoping that someone—anyone—would walk in, for whatever purpose.

  At that time of night, there were only a few more things I could do before I had to leave the bar. I took my time sweeping and mopping and wiping down every surface, whether it looked dingy or not. I counted the money and added it to the safe for the owner to collect at the end of the week. I turned off all the lights and locked the door.

  I’d tried, during the beginning of my tenure behind the chipped wooden bar, to spend the night on the premises instead of leaving, certain that being here would be better than trying to go home, but I was surprised in the morning by the owner, pushing at me with a broom, trying to sweep me out the door, and thinking I was a squatter or a patron who’d somehow escaped attention during the night before.r />
  “It’s me, Mr. Trenton,” I’d cried, shielding my light-sensitive eyes from the sharp ends of the straw on the broom.

  “Meagan?” He was dumbfounded, still clutching the broom across his chest as if it were a weapon and I was someone he needed protection against. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

  “I…I just fell asleep,” I said, pushing myself up from the little pallet I’d made myself of tablecloths we only brought out during the holidays and a package of napkins for a pillow.

  “Were you drunk on the job?” he demanded.

  “No.” I drank on the job often enough, sure, but I was never drunk. If I weren’t in control at all times, things could get pretty ugly pretty quickly.

  “Are you homeless?”

  It was a yes-or-no question that should’ve been easy to answer, but I found it difficult to define homeless. Was I homeless? Yes, in a way. I’d lost a sense of what home was supposed to mean ages ago. The home that was supposed to be mine just wasn’t anymore. The structure itself still stood, and everything inside of it continued to function as long as I paid all of the bills on time, but it wasn’t home.

  “I’m not homeless,” I’d sighed eventually, for the benefit of the man who could fire me if things got too weird—and they were well on their way there. “I really did just fall asleep. It won’t happen again.”

  That appeased Mr. Trenton, but it also cemented the fact that I had to leave the building once everyone had stumbled out and I’d completed the last tasks. There were a few lucky nights in which I made it to someone else’s home. The price I paid to do that was well worth it, in my opinion. If something I gave away to anyone so eagerly could win me a night away from the four walls of that old nightmarish house, I’d jump on it—literally.

  Tonight wasn’t one of those lucky nights.

  I spent an extra-long time polishing the surface of the wooden bar, even though no amount of cleaning solution could ever make it gleam again, and turned off each and every light, fingers lingering over the faceplates, dragging the heels of my sneakers, until I reached the front door.