by Zoey Parker
“Nope, you’re not falling. We gotta get you back and make it look like nothing even happened.”
“Can I have my fucking tampons?” I asked. If the worst that was going to happen to me was being told I had to spy on the man who was trying to help me, the least I could have asked for was to get my tampons.
“I don’t see why not. We’ll give you a couple of bucks to grab another box when we get back to the store,” the passenger said as we pulled away from the warehouse.
We didn’t say another word on the way back. They pulled up to the curb in front of the store, and the passenger cop pulled me out of the backseat, uncuffing me. He slapped a couple of fives in my hand and opened the door to get back in the car, but before I could get too far away, he stopped me. “Remember what Axel said. If anything goes wrong – if you don’t answer the call or try to warn anyone, especially Blade – you’re dead. And who do you think is going to pull the trigger?”
I swallowed hard and felt all the color leave my body. He flashed a smile and got back in the car. They drove off then, leaving me standing in front of the store where they’d picked me up in the first place.
Chapter 20
Blade
“Oh, hey,” Maggie said when she answered her door to find me standing in the hallway in front of her room at the safehouse. She sounded like I had interrupted something.
“Hey, yourself. Is everything all right?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” She stepped aside to let me in and checked the hallway before closing the door. I knew that look, but I didn’t want to say anything about it right away.
“I got us some Chinese,” I told her, dragging the bag of food to the kitchen counter.
“Chinese is good.” I heard the locks slide to on the door, and then I heard the chain slide into place.
I ignored it, shrugged it off as just her paranoia over being in a strange place. I started pulling the food out of the bag, and I grabbed a couple of plates from the cupboard.
“You didn’t have to get me anything,” she said absently, like she knew she was supposed to say it. It was the cordial thing to say.
I eyed her. Something was up. “I figured you wanted something to eat, and after leaving you hear so abruptly last night, I decided to come by and spend some time with you. You know, to see how you’re adjusting to the new place.” I tried to sound confident, like I wasn’t put off by her awkward manner.
“Settling in just fine,” she said. “Really. I could have grabbed something from downstairs.”
“Well, now you don’t have to,” I said as I lined up the Styrofoam dishes full of steak, chicken, and shrimp with vegetables and rice or noodles. I grabbed four different dishes because I wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted.
She crept into the kitchen and dropped her distant, awkward act for a moment. “Did you get any chopsticks?”
“I did,” I said, fishing a couple pairs out of the bag. “I didn’t know if you used them. I do.”
“You do? Impressive, Blade,” she said as she made her way to the counter and started dishing food out onto her plate. She grabbed a little bit of everything.
I went through the kitchen behind her, grabbing some of the shrimp and chicken. “What, did you think I was some uncultured brute?” I asked, joking with her.
“You know, the thought had crossed my mind.”
I grabbed napkins for us and followed her into the dining room.
“Did you happen to bring anything to drink?” she asked.
“Your fridge should be stocked with soda, beer, and a pitcher of filtered water,” I told her. “We try to keep enough of the necessities stocked so you don’t have to go out for a whole lot on your own.”
“Oh, I didn’t know,” she remarked. “I haven’t looked.”
“Well, let me check.” I got up and went back into the kitchen. I opened the fridge and looked in. Sure enough, she had bottles of beer, cans of soda, and a water pitcher with a filter built in so she could just refill it from the tap.
“I’ll have a beer if there are any,” she said behind me.
“My kind of girl,” I remarked as I grabbed a couple of beers and walked back into her dining room. I twisted the caps off with my shirt.
“You know, this is a nice place,” she said when I handed her the bottle. “I didn’t think it would be.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence there,” I said as I took a swig of beer.
“No, it’s not that. I was just skeptical, you know,” she quickly covered.
I smiled. “It’s fine. How’s your dinner?”
“It’s good. Is this the place down the street? I passed it on the way to the store earlier. It looked like a food counter. You know, they’ve got a couple of tables in front, but you just walk up to the counter and order. There was a line.” She nervously rambled on about Chang’s, the Chinese take-out joint just down the block.
“Nah, this is the from the Hong Kong restaurant by the clubhouse. Chang’s, the place you’re talking about, is like ordering Chinese from a hot dog vendor. I wouldn’t do it.” I shook my head and chuckled. “Some of it might even be dog, or cat. You don’t know with Chang.”
“I’ll remember that,” she said.
I sighed as we settled into silence, eating in the fluorescent light from the kitchen. The rooms in the safehouse weren’t much to write home about. It wasn’t much more than an efficiency apartment. The kitchen – or what I thought of as her kitchen – was just a counter with a sink and a fridge. There was a microwave on the counter, but the rooms didn’t have dishwashers, stoves, or any of that. For any actual cooking, we had a pretty decent kitchen in the basement, where the laundry and utility rooms were. It gave us better control over how the kitchen was being used; not everyone needed to be cooking. And it gave us the opportunity to occasionally prepare meals for our residents, like for holidays.
The rooms weren’t intended to be particularly cozy or to feel like home. They were supposed to be temporary. We didn’t ask for rent. We just asked for working residents to pitch in when they could and for unemployed residents to find work. We tried to get people back on their feet. We didn’t want anyone to get comfortable. We wanted them to do better.
I had hoped eating dinner with Maggie would have relieved me of some of the stress of having to go back to the auction house sooner than I had planned. I had also hoped it would take my mind off the drama the last auction had brought into my life. However, the silence hovering between us told me there was more drama than I knew about. I wondered if Axel had reached out to her, or if she was thinking about running again because I hadn’t been around.
“So, how’d today go?” I asked.
“You know, uneventful,” she said with a shrug, without looking up at me.
“You just said you went to the store. How was that?” I was grasping for straws here, trying to get any piece of information I could out of her.
“I just walked down to the store and back. Needed some fresh air, so I figured I’d get a look at the neighborhood.” Again, she didn’t look up from her food and she shrugged. She looked like a teenager not wanting to talk about her day at school.
“Well, I’m a little closer to tracking down your ex, Axel.”
That got her attention. She stopped in the middle of chewing and looked up. With her mouth full, she said something that sounded vaguely like she was asking me, “What are you going to do when you find him?”
“I’m going to make him pay for what he did to you girls and for causing trouble with the auction and the MC,” I said, taking a shot in the dark to answer the question I thought she asked.
She put her chopsticks down and finished chewing. Then, getting up, she said, “I’m going to grab a fork. Need one?”
“No, I’m fine.” I went back to eating as she walked away from the small dining room table.
I listened for the sound of her digging around for a fork, but I heard nothing from the kitchen. Not immediately. Then, after a moment
’s silence, I heard her open a couple of drawers looking for the silverware, followed by the clinking of the forks as she pulled one out of the drawer. I knew I’d hit a nerve with my comment about Axel. Something was up. It seemed entirely plausible that she would have been thinking about him since she’d had some time alone for the first time since the auction.
I thought something else was going on, though, something more involved than just a few thoughts or memories, or just missing him. “So, have you given any thought to what you’re going to do?” I asked when she sat back down.
“No, I haven’t. I mean, I can’t go back home to him and, well, I just don’t know what other options I have,” she answered. She played with her food with her fork, sliding it around her plate and twirling her noodles. “Why do you ask?” She looked up from her plate with worry in her eyes. It looked like she wasn’t far from tears.
“Just curious,” I said, deflecting her question. “I figured since you’ve had some time to think about it, you know, maybe you had come up with something.” I had to make a conscious effort to stop myself from talking. I was starting to ramble to cover up why I was really asking questions.
“I’m still just taking this glorious new life in,” she said with a hint of sarcastic excitement in her voice.
“Yeah, it’s a lot to accept, I’m sure.” I wanted to reach across the table and hug her, to let her know everything was going to be okay, and to tell her she never had to go back to Axel again. I wanted to tell her she could start a new life, and The Marauders would help her create a life of freedom and independence, just like we had for every member and most of the people who’d come through the safehouses.
Of course, there were always those who didn’t want to be saved, who needed more help than we were able to provide. We didn’t exactly write those people off, but they certainly were the exception instead of the norm.
“I think I’m full,” she said finally, putting her fork down. “I’m sorry. I know I’m not being good company tonight.”
“No, it’s fine,” I assured her. “You’ve been through a lot. Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of the dishes and the cleaning up,” I told her. “Why don’t you go kick back and turn on the TV or something.”
“Are you sure? I can help you,” she said.
“No way. I brought this mess in here. Let me clean it up,” I insisted, grabbing the plates as I got up from the table.
“Thank you, Blade. You’ve been so helpful and generous,” she said suddenly, out of nowhere, before retreating to the bed and turning on the TV.
“It’s the least I can do,” I said under my breath as she disappeared into the darkness beyond the glow of the screen. She didn’t seem too eager to walk away, but she also wasn’t thrilled about staying where she was.
I sighed as I scraped the leftover food off the plates into the small trashcan next to the fridge and stuck the plates in the sink. I wiped my hands off with a napkin and started gathering the trash from dinner, including the large bag our food came in.
I paused, facing the bed. I could see the light from the TV screen shining on her face. She looked troubled, like she was trying to lose herself in whatever was on, but she couldn’t. She held the remote and occasionally changed the channel. The light would blink off for a split second, and it would come back on, different. But each time, it captured the scowl she wore.
I wished she could have let me in. I felt like she only saw me as the bouncer from the auction, as if I were another one of them, the men running the show and buying up the girls like they were cattle. I wanted her to know I wasn’t like them. I had shown her the toy delivery at the children’s home. She was staying in one of the safehouses. Somehow, none of those things were enough to prove to her I wasn’t like Axel, or Vlad, or any of the men who had groped her like a possession to be bought and sold.
Regardless, I thought, I’m going to keep watching over her until she’s back on her feet and safe.
Chapter 21
Maggie
While I pretended to watch TV to avoid any other questions from Blade, the unthinkable happened. The burner phone in my pocket started buzzing. I debated whether or not to answer it, hoping Blade couldn’t hear it over the TV and the noise he made in the kitchen.
I fished it out of my pocket and saw I had a call from OWNER. I rolled my eyes, assuming it meant Axel was calling me. That lowlife had always thought of himself as my owner, and I guess he really was the owner of the phone.
“Hello,” I answered quietly.
“Maggie,” he said jovially. “From the sound of your tone, I guess it’s safe to say Blade is there with you.” Then, he laughed harshly. “Who am I kidding? I know he’s there with you. We saw him enter the safehouse, and he hasn’t left yet.”
I glanced over at Blade, cleaning still in the sink. “Now’s really not the best time,” I whispered.
“That’s fine. All you have to do is answer my questions. Yes or no will work just fine,” he said slowly, taking time to enjoy every word like a piece of food.
“Okay,” I said. “I think I can do that.”
“Does he know you’re on the phone with me?” Axel asked.
“No.” I eyed him in the kitchen, working to make sure everything was clean. He bent down and pulled a dish rack out from underneath the sink, placed it on the counter.
“Good. Make sure he doesn’t find out, okay?”
“Okay.”
While Axel continued talking, my attention kept drifting back over to Blade. My gut twisted with guilt at the thought of stabbing him in the back with Axel while he was in there trying to take care of me. He’d gone beyond just pulling me off the auction block and making sure I had a warm, safe place to sleep for the night. He’d come by to check on me and bring me food. Now he was cleaning up after our meal.
During our meal, something had been bothering him. It seemed like he suspected something, the way he kept asking odd questions about Axel and what happened that day.
“Hey, Maggie. Earth to Maggie,” Axel said, bringing me back to the phone.
“What?” I asked, shocked back from my memories to the present.
“I asked you a question, dammit,” he growled, with the same threatening anger I’d heard in his voice day after day while we were together.
I flinched, even though we were only on the phone. “What did you say? I didn’t hear you.” My voice trembled. My excuse sounded weak, even to me.
“Does he suspect that you’ve seen me?” Axel asked slowly.
“No, I don’t think so,” I said, keeping an eye on Blade to make sure he wasn’t trying to listen in.
“You don’t think so, or you know he hasn’t?” he probed for clarification.
“I’m sure he doesn’t,” I lied. I was pretty sure he did suspect something.
Blade didn’t talk to me like he owned me or like I was a piece of property. He talked to me like I was a person. Even when he’d been a little more forceful in our conversations, he spoke to me like I was someone and not just something.
But there I was, betraying him with the man I had run from. Luckily, I hadn’t come across any information Axel didn’t seem to already have, so there was nothing for me to tell him. Unfortunately, I felt like that was putting me in an even worse position with both men.
“Make sure he doesn’t get any ideas,” Axel said. His voice sounded distant, like it was coming from somewhere in the back of my mind instead of coming from the phone held up to my ear.
“I’m working on that part,” I assured him.
“Listen to me, Maggie,” Axel said seriously. “I need your attention. Stop staring at your lover.”
My veins froze, and I stopped breathing. I snapped my head back around to the TV screen, attempting to listen intently. He knew too much for me to ignore him.
“Do you have any information for me?” he asked.
“It’s only been a couple of hours. No, I don’t have anything,” I whispered urgently into the phone, trying
to keep my voice low enough that Blade wouldn’t hear me. He had his hands in the sink with the dishes and silverware. The hot water was running. There wasn’t much to wash, so I knew I didn’t have long to really talk before he was finished.
“I didn’t think you would, but I wanted to check anyway.”
“Why did you call?” I asked. It wasn’t the only question I had for him. I also wanted to know when he’d gone from being a lowlife junkie drug dealer to a legit gangster with a tailored suit and an entourage. It seemed to me he’d been promoted somehow. There was no way a loser like Axel was the head of anything, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if other lowlifes looked up to him.