by Amber Lin
Twenty of them, three of us. And I probably shouldn’t even have counted myself, compared to these guys. Two and a half. Could the situation get any worse?
“There’s another problem,” Luke said. “Rico isn’t responding.”
“Shit,” Major said.
“Yeah, shit. You heard him when he got inside the fence, right? Then nothing. We’ve made it past two buildings now, and he hasn’t reported in about a single one.”
“What do we do?” I asked.
“We follow the plan,” Luke said grimly. “We’ve found the right hangar. Now we go in.”
“Redundancy.” I felt light-headed.
“Keep breathing,” he told me. Then to Major, “You stay with her. I’ll go in.”
“That wasn’t the plan.”
“Well, in the plan we had two teams, one to keep watch outside, one to go in. Since there’s only two of us, that means one person per team.”
“Bullshit,” Major said. “She can wait outside by herself. If anyone comes close, shoot them in the fucking face. We’ll hear the shot and come get you.”
“No,” I said. “I want to confront Henri. You said I would be able to.”
“It’s not a good idea,” Major said, his voice oddly gentle, as if I might break.
Maybe I was shaking a little. “That’s why I’m here. I know I’m slowing you guys down, but it will all be for nothing if I don’t at least try. If he dies before he calls off the hit on me and Ella, we’re screwed. You know that.”
Luke looked away, the moonlight drawing long shadows over his eyes. “Okay. We all go in.”
We waited until the side of the building was clear and then crept to the back. The night air felt suddenly as thick as fog, as rich as butter. The light beaming down on us from the stars seemed blinding, even though I couldn’t quite make out anything.
I felt invincible.
“That’s the adrenaline talking,” Luke muttered, and I realized I had spoken aloud. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
Right, adrenaline. Except it already was in my head, in my body, rushing through my veins like a sweet hit of coke. I had done drugs a few times. There were men who wanted to get high and wanted the girl to ride it with them. The crash at the end had never been enough to make me want to repeat the experience without a paycheck to help me bounce back.
This racy, jittery feeling was just like shooting up. I wondered if adrenaline had a crash at the end too. But who cared when it felt this good? It felt surreal, and that kept me safe.
We crept through the quiet hallways. Where was everyone?
Major motioned with his hand. Up the stairs.
We started to climb when Luke paused. He put a hand to his ear. “Shit,” he muttered.
“I love it when you say that during sex.”
Major gave me a strange look.
“Not you,” I assured him.
He rolled his eyes. “You are flying high.”
“Almost,” I whispered.
Luke pressed a hand to his ear, listening. “They need backup,” he whispered. “Major, you go.”
Major firmed his lips, as if he wanted to protest. But he didn’t have a choice. With a salute and a faint look of regret in his eyes, he was gone.
“Come on.” Luke waved me to follow him.
We crept down the hallway, hearing men and women moan and groan and cry out in questionable pleasure.
He looked back at me.
I shook my head. Henri didn’t moan. He shouted. And anyway, I didn’t really expect to find him in these upper rooms. He rarely took his prostitutes to bed. This wasn’t a party to him, unlike Major had thought. This was business. This whole setup was too dirty, too common for him. Despite that, I couldn’t shake the eerie feeling, as if he would be here, exactly where he would never be. It didn’t make sense, but I wanted the feeling to go away. I wanted to see Rico and Major and Jeff again.
“Downstairs,” I mouthed.
Luke nodded his agreement, and we slid along the wall the way we’d come.
From the stairwell came the raucous sound of male laughter and female giggling. I looked back and saw nothing but rows of doors. Trapped. Their footsteps climbed the staircase, banging along the sides, as they tumbled about in wild sexual abandon. At least he did. Her laughs were obviously fake, way too high-pitched and evenly spaced. They reached the top landing. I held my breath. Then it was pushed out of me in a whoosh as Luke slammed me inside the closest room.
He was on me, pulling off my clothes. My hand was caught, but it didn’t matter—he yanked it free, the whole shirt whipping over my head along with my bra, tumbling my hair from its ponytail. I gasped into his mouth, trying to catch up, but I couldn’t. He was moving too fast, climbing onto the bed, dragging my body beneath his as if I were prey and he a tiger gone in for the kill. His mouth glued itself to mine, taking away any sound as he settled between my legs, the hard ridge of his erection a blatant message that his lips hadn’t had time to speak. He rocked against me, and it hurt. I wasn’t ready, wasn’t aroused, but already my body prepared itself to receive him, well practiced in this, growing wet and swollen, supple flesh to be speared repeatedly. His hands were all over me, my waist, my arms, my sides—but not my breasts.
The door slammed open, and two very drunk, possibly high people stumbled into the room. Luke finally released me, looking up. I panted audibly.
“Ocupado,” Luke said in a guttural tone.
“Sorry, man,” the guy said. They both backed out of the room, closing the door behind them.
We collapsed on the bed for long minutes after they left.
“Okay,” I said, still panting. “I see what you did there.”
He let out a breath. “He’s not in this building, is he?”
“Don’t think so.” I felt a little woozy. The ceiling made lazy swirls above us, like a big upside-down bowl of batter. Allie was a baker. She loved to bake all sorts of things. I wasn’t as good as her, but under her direction, I could whip up a batch of cookies. That’s what this looked like, chocolate caramel cookies with streaks of beige and dots of black. Or was that the exposed pipes in the ceiling? It was hard to say. And all these thoughts about food were making me want to throw up.
“Damn.” Luke’s voice sounded far away. “I just assumed because there were so many. We’ve got to try the next one.”
“Okay. Have fun.”
There was a long pause. “What?”
Right. We were going now. I was sitting up…pretty sure. I stood and took a step forward and ended up slumping over in a graceless heap.
Luke caught me and hauled me back onto the bed. “Jesus, Shelly.”
“That’s not my name.” My words were slurred.
“It wasn’t just the adrenaline, was it? Oh fuck. What did you do? What did you take?”
“Don’t know.”
He was still talking to me, but all the sounds were like mush in my ears.
I opened my mouth to speak; I didn’t know if anything came out. Until I threw up, and then stuff came out all over the floor—that came out of my mouth.
Luke was there, behind me, supporting me, talking to me, saying urgent words that washed over me. I wanted to go to sleep. Didn’t he see that? I was tired. But then, bless him, he did understand. He tucked me into his arms and told me to close my eyes, don’t make a sound. Hah! As if I could. Nope, I would be right here. He carried me for what felt like hours, days, or maybe just seconds, and tucked me into the backseat of the SUV we had parked a mile outside the compound. But what about the other guys?
“Just wait here,” he said, and yes, I could do that. I closed my eyes and slept.
* * * *
The first thing that registered was the shaking. I was going to vomit, rattling about like a loose bit of change. My eyelids felt heavy. I would have given up, just drifted off on the turbulent waves and crashed onto the waiting rocks, but for his voice. Not Luke.
Henri. Now I was really going to throw up.
>
My mouth felt like cotton as I tried to speak, to warn someone. Even though I knew it was too late. Even though I knew I was alone in the dragon’s lair. Luke wouldn’t be here. Not any of the men. They would have died first. Or they had let me go. Sometimes you had to give up a pawn to win the game.
I blinked, and everything came into a dreary focus, like looking out a rain-drenched window. Those weren’t raindrops; they were tears. Not the healing kind, not cleansing—they fell on barren land.
Henri stared straight ahead, though I had no doubt he’d registered my waking. He was all black-suited cloth and shadows except for the glint of a ruby-colored vest. He was a smart man, but not the smartest. Strong, but not the strongest. Instead, he had an animal instinct about things of a dark and violent nature. It gave him an unnatural advantage, sustaining his position in the face of richer competitors. It must have been that, because he had been at the top since I had entered the scene.
“Where have you been, sweetheart?” he asked.
I shuddered, an involuntary response, inescapable remembrance.
There was a book in Philip’s stargazing room. It said that every planet, every moon was constantly leaving orbit—and constantly pulled back by the gravitational force. I couldn’t seem to escape Henri’s pull; I couldn’t seem to stop trying.
“With you.” My tongue felt thick. “Where else would I be?”
He laughed. “That’s a good answer, but it doesn’t quite distract me. I thought we had an agreement.”
“Luke didn’t leave me. You lied.”
“Of course,” he said simply. “What else would I do?”
My eyes drooped shut, and my head lolled against the leather seats as the SUV started to move. He spoke to me distantly, his thick voice washing over me in waves of nausea. I tried to focus, but whatever drug was affecting me was still in my system, clouding everything, even my thoughts.
Henri was talking, telling me about an angry man and a woman caught, but all I could see in my mind was my mother’s face speaking to me. She was telling me a bedtime story, I realized. Or a cautionary tale. Had she really done that? I couldn’t remember, but the picture seemed so clear, more refined now that I was drugged than it had ever been in my waking hours.
There was a king, and a queen so beautiful that none could equal her. On her deathbed, she made the king promise that he should only marry one as beautiful as she, one who had the same golden hair.
He grieved for her upon her passing but eventually scoured the land for a new wife who fulfilled his promise. Although many beautiful women were found, none could compare. The king’s daughter, on the other hand, had grown into a woman. She was beautiful like her mother, with the same golden hair.
So the king decided to marry her, despite the protests of his counselors. Determined to escape her fate, the princess ran away from the castle with only her gold and dresses. She traveled far, and when night came, she hid in the hollow of a tree.
The next morning, a different king was hunting on his lands. The king’s men found the girl and brought her back to the castle, setting the orphan to help in the kitchen. There she toiled each night and day, miserable and lonely, her beauty obscured by the dirt of her work.
One evening, she washed herself and joined the festivities in her old fine dress. The king was much taken with her, but at the end of the night, she disappeared back into the kitchens. She cooked the king’s soup during the day and danced with him at night.
One night he slipped a ring on her finger, but again she disappeared. The next day he demanded to meet the new cook who made the wonderful soup, and then he saw the ring on her finger. He washed the soot from her cheeks, and she was beautiful again, so he married her.
“You’re mine again,” Henri said. “We can put this whole thing behind us.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I mumbled, though I spoke to a ghost.
“So you’ll understand,” he said. “This is for your own good. You are nothing without men and our desire to use you. You have nothing without me. Do you understand?”
In the story, the king had valued the princess without knowing her beauty. At the end of the story, the two parts of her were merged. At the end of the story, she finally made her escape.
“I know what you are thinking,” he said. “You think your detective will save you.”
There were those damn instincts again, right on the money.
“He and I have a lot in common,” Henri continued. “We both appreciate a beautiful thing. We both understand the darker impulses, sometimes to curb them, other times to unleash them.”
Luke wasn’t like that. He had a dark past, but only out of necessity. He was a protector, not an aggressor…wasn’t he? The lines had blurred for me, lumping all men together in one bloodthirsty heap.
“Oh yes. He knows…greed, lust, revenge. The last one especially.”
“You’re wrong.” Luke didn’t want material things. He didn’t want revenge either. All he wanted was to protect women like me, to find his sister. Good intentions, honest ones.
“What does he want, then?” Henri mocked. “If he’s so concerned about your safety, then why are you in the car with me?”
A mistake. He had been overpowered, outnumbered. Any number of excuses could explain it, without him having been hurt or having betrayed me. Please let one of them be true.
“Ah, yes. You see it now. I gave him the one thing he couldn’t resist. The answer to all his searching. I gave him the truth about his sister. No, more than that. I gave him proof. As you and I talk, your Detective Cameron is on his way to Chicago with a tape of his sister. And me. It was rather brutal. Of course the statute of limitations has run out for rape. But he hopes to make a case for murder, considering she is presumed dead and I am shown hurting her. He isn’t going to win. But you can understand the temptation.”
“I’ve spent twelve years of my life fighting for the law to take him down.”
Yes, Luke would do anything to nail Henri. It wasn’t just that he wouldn’t have to kill him. It was a question of principle. This was the system he had lived and breathed for the past decade. If it failed him, then all his work was for nothing. But to leave me here?
“It was a simple trade,” said Henri. “You for the tape. If it is any consolation, he struggled with the decision. It pained him to leave you here; I could see that.”
Tears streamed down my cheeks, but at least I didn’t have to see Henri and the gloating on his face.
He stroked my hair back. “Shh, calm yourself. I won’t kill you. Nothing will happen to you here that hasn’t happened before.”
Chapter Sixteen
The best thing about being a hooker is the job security. In a good year, men had plenty of spending money. To a wealthy man, a prostitute might be a smart financial move—certainly cheaper than a high-maintenance girlfriend who rarely puts out. But even in a down economy, the stress and scattered families kept prostitutes in demand. Men would use any excuse to fulfill their biological urges.
In other words, they were always, always down to fuck.
The worst thing about being a hooker was also the job security…as in, the locks on my door and the guards I could see from my window. In the years I had worked for Henri, I had always lived in my own place and kept it sacrosanct, never bringing clients home, always traveling to out-call appointments in swanky hotels.
Then I had quit. When that didn’t work, I went rogue, taking Ella with me. And finally, I’d teamed up with men who broke into his little fortress and generally wreaked havoc. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t trust me anymore—thus the need for security.
They had brought me here after the night at the Barracks, to a crumbling apartment building in south Chicago. The men who escorted me were firm but not brutal. Never mess up the goods—unless on orders. So I was Henri’s girl again. He wouldn’t let me go this time.
Hell, he never really had.
One week of sitting in this room, waiting for Henri t
o bestow his sentence on me. Would I live or die? Though my odds looked significantly worse after last night. They had sent a client in.
I had threatened to bite off his dick if he touched me.
He had requested another girl for his hour.
I’d felt triumphant for all of five minutes. Then I heard the banging against the wall and deflated. There was a certain amount of suffering in the world. I could take it upon myself or leave it for others to endure. Standing up for myself was supposed to make me stronger, but this felt cowardly.
Still, I was surprised I hadn’t gotten any shit about it. In the old days, Henri would have beaten down my door within the hour, made an example of me. Now nothing? Even if he was on his way, the delay was a sign of problems, a symptom of his strange decline.
Certainly, the location of this apartment building left much to be desired, supporting the idea that his business was in trouble, that he was in a downward slide. That would have been comforting if I weren’t currently tethered to him. If he drowned in the criminal mire, so would I.
The neighborhood wasn’t completely abandoned, though the armed men who loitered outside the building tended to scare off most pedestrians. Every now and then, cars passed by on the street, probably keeping their doors locked and eyes straight ahead as they passed through the seedier part of town.
I imagined myself Rapunzel, sending down my long, flowing, now brown locks. Of course, for that escape plan to work, I needed a prince and—
Don’t think about that.
Besides, there were burglar bars on my window and a garbage dump beneath it. Hardly the stuff of fairy tales.
A sound at the door drew my attention. Jade poked her head in, perhaps checking to see if I was going to brain her with a chair. When I had first seen her here, working for Henri, I was surprised. And then I wasn’t. The sex industry was an incestuous lot. I didn’t know the extent of the history between Henri and Jade, but I knew that favors were strewn like pickup sticks. And no one said no to Henri.