by C. L. Quinn
The slim man nodded, too, then, his face thoughtful. “I suppose.” Pulling hard, he started to move the heavy trash bags across the rough pavement.
Xavier jumped down and grabbed each bag to swing them easily up and into the large bin.
“Whoa, thank you! Damn, you’re a strong guy,” the man said, impressed. “You’d be quite handy around here.”
“Aye, well, if ya need anythin’, I’ll be happy to help. Ya wouldn’t mind if I curled up back here for the night would ya?”
The man didn’t answer right away. When he did, he spoke quietly. “You don’t have anywhere to go?”
“Nay. I, uh, just got into town and I’ve no money.”
Again, the man just silently looked at Xavier. He started to speak, paused, scratched against a straggly beard and put his hands into his pants pockets. He scanned the man in front of him. The stranger was the biggest man he’d ever seen, obviously strong, the accent an immediate clue he wasn’t local. Still, he’d always had good instincts when it came to people.
“Look. I’ve an idea. I ain’t getting any younger, and it seems to me that I could use the help of a big strong guy like you. Now, I don’t know your story, maybe you’re ex-military, PTSD, can’t hold down a job, down on your luck, whatever it is, but just the fact that you didn’t hesitate to come down here and help out an old man tells me that you’re a good man. I can’t pay much, but I own an apartment building down the street. Apartments are kind of shit, better than they were when I bought the building, but still, it’s a roof and a clean bed. I’m getting old, Scottie, and I could really use the help in my back room with stock. Plus, it gets crazy around here, it’s not the best side of town, and I’ve always thought I needed a bouncer.”
Doing the same, Xavier looked over the man who wore a lot of years on his face. His body seemed strong, but slight, and Xavier didn’t doubt that this man really could use some help.
“What kind of work?” He needed to know what he might be getting into, and the daylight thing might be a problem.
“Oh, sure. This is my place. It’s a nightclub. I call it The Blind Spot, mostly because I think most of us have them, big ones, and they make our lives harder than they should be if we just kept our eyes open. I guess more accurately, people just call the place a dive bar, but it’s mine and I’m proud of it. You’d take care of stock, cleaning, minor repairs, security when I might need it. Cooking, if you’ve a knack. Not too much, but things that really would make my life easier. What do you say? We could try it out and see if it worked for us. Stop, if it don’t.”
After a brief delay, Xavier put his hand out and shook with his new employer. He could hide here, heal, earn a little money, stay away from the creep who wanted to kill him, and then hopefully move on someday soon to try to find out who he was.
“Aye, I’ll take the job and be grateful for it.”
“Great. I’m Lucky Johnson. And you are…?”
Xavier thought about it for a moment, reluctant to use the name that his enemy had given him. He didn’t feel like he had the right to use it. Plus, not carrying the name provided one more layer of security.
“I like Scottie. It suits me.”
Lucky nodded. That, he understood too. No one knew his real name, and he’d moved to New York City twenty-three years ago. There were times when even an honorable man needed to disappear.
“It does at that. Okay, Scottie, welcome to The Blind Spot.”
Now, three weeks later, Xavier was rested, well fed, and more at ease than he thought he might have ever been. Yes, the threat still existed from the bullet-crazed Claude, and no, Xavier still had no idea what his life had been like before what he now realized were repeated traumatic brain injuries from the bullet holes. The mystery remained as to why he wasn’t dead because of that. Still, he felt certain that these days…these easy, uncomplicated days, were something he’d never known. This simple life felt right. For now, it was what he wanted and needed. For now, he wasn’t overly concerned about discovering who he was and how he came to be here. For now, he liked the life he had. The trauma of his story would come some day and then he would deal with it.
As Xavier opened the door to his small apartment, he dropped the bag carrying leftover food from a night of business at the bar, a bottle of bourbon, and two bags of potato chips onto a chipped and stained counter in a little kitchenette. He had yet to use any of the equipment there other than the ancient refrigerator. All of his food came from the bar.
A sagging couch decades old filled most of the twelve-by-twelve living room along with a portable television he never watched. This room was never used after morning came due to a single-paned window he hadn’t bothered to cover.
Once daylight arrived, Xavier barricaded himself in the windowless bedroom, and slept until the next night.
The fact that he became almost comatose during the day was yet another mystery to add to all the other mysteries of his lost life. The extreme exhaustion forced him to seek the mattress-only bed. It was like his body was geared to live only at night.
During his rest, he’d dream, but only fractured images that never made any sense. Sometimes he’d waken breathing hard, but still completely clueless as to his background. As the weeks passed, he felt more and more comfortable with the oddities of his nature.
Yes, he was something different, but, strangely, those differences were beginning to feel normal.
Two
“Freddie!”
Margot watched her office door and when it didn’t open immediately, she leaned forward. “Freddie! Freddie? Freddie!”
Slowly, a crack appeared and a slender woman with tightly bound hair entered with a scowl.
“Really? You need to learn to use that intercom.”
“I don’t have time. Freddie, did you get the charts and graphs from Gopher?”
Sighing, Freddie moved into the huge office, walking up to her boss with her arms folded. “Margot, I wish you wouldn’t call him that.”
“What? He’s self-titled. I think he really likes it. It gives the man distinction over the other interns. Anyway, I need those before I take lunch tomorrow with Sandoval. I want to go over them first.”
“Yeah, yeah, you know you’ll have them.”
Margot smiled as she reached for her cell phone. Yeah, she did. Freddie was more than her right hand woman, she was her right hand. Most of the time, she was her left, too. As Freddie tapped a foot, her arms folded, Margot leaned back in her custom-made two thousand dollar office chair that fit her ass like a second skin.
A smile sneaked onto her face as she remembered that the first night they had delivered this magnificent chair, after all the other staff had gone home, she’d sat on the satiny leather naked. The only thing she’d worn were red stilettos with 6 inch heels.
“Anything else, Margot?”
Glancing up distractedly, Margot waved a hand. “No, no, Fred, that’s all. Just get me those reports.”
“All right. You do remember you have lunch today with Michael Lipnicki?”
“Seriously? I thought I’d asked you to cancel that?”
“You did. He said you couldn’t.”
“Shit. He owns the firm, so I guess I’ll be having lunch with him then. Remind me why I put up with all of this crap?”
“They pay you six figures?”
That smile sneaked back again. “Ah, yeah. Will you remind me thirty minutes before I have to leave? I think I’ll get a shower.”
Pausing at the door, her hand on the knob, Freddie nodded. “You might want to take that after you have lunch with Lipnicki.”
Once the door closed, Margot spun in her chair and looked out the wide glass window behind her desk at the stunning cityscape below her. God, was Freddie right!
Michael had the market cornered on assholeness. He was a creep with a long history of giving the word new meanings. And the worst letch she’d ever seen outside of a prison cell. Technically, Michael’s father owned the firm, but Old Man Lipnicki w
as little more than a figurehead these days, so his morals-unencumbered son called all the shots.
Ugh! Yeah, that shower needed to happen after lunch!
“So, I think this calls for wine before lunch and plenty of it!”
Sliding out the hidden panel on a bookshelf beside the desk, Margot considered her choices. Lined up like good little soldiers, twelve bottles of her favorite wine waited to be lifted from a custom-designed rack.
This job might suck on occasion, but the perks never did. Margot was exactly where she’d always wanted to be, where eight years of hard work placed her, in a job that bought her respect and a whole lot of gorgeous money so that she would never, ever, need anything from anyone else again.
Master of her own destiny.
Margot leaned back in her obscenely priced chair, perched in her high-dollar office space high above New York City, and sipped a glass of expensive wine. Master of her own destiny? Not quite.
“Mistress of my own destiny,” she mused out loud, her eyes closed, the wine cool and soothing. She owed nothing to any man, and never would. They had their uses, oh, yes, but no man would ever be responsible for her happiness like her poor mother. Never, never, never.
Eyes closed, bare feet resting on her desk, the wine sweet on her tongue, Margot winced when the new intercom chirped. What an interruption! Her dedication to ignoring the damn thing wasn’t getting her anywhere, the annoying thing just kept chirping.
After releasing a long sigh, she tilted forward and scoped the shiny new device. Um, there it was, the freaking answer button. Once she pressed it, the sharp invading chirp stopped and Freddie’s equally annoying voice came through the little speaker…annoying, because she sounded smug. Freddie had been determined to make Margot use the damned thing and she’d finally succeeded through perseverance and aggravation.
“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Margot’s silence answered Freddie, point gained immediately. Freddie continued. “So, your lunch date is pushed to dinner. Eight o’clock tonight.”
Rolling her eyes, Margot upturned the glass and killed it. “Well, you know what that means!”
Freddie didn’t answer immediately either, then said quietly, “I do. I’ll stop in at nine.”
“Okay. Look, Fred, I’m incommunicado the rest of the day. I need to look at the contracts for Bellaire and then get a salad so that I don’t have to eat much tonight.”
“But you’ll keep your cell on in case I need you?”
“Yeah, yeah. Just make sure that Gopher gets those reports.”
“Okay. And it’s Robert, not Gopher.”
“Got it, Barbara Frederick!”
“Shut up. It’s Freddie. Who names their kid Barbara?”
“I’m just saying that sometimes the nickname is the better one.”
“All right, all right, point crammed down my throat. I’m leaving now since I have to work tonight. I’ll see you at nine.”
The chirp announced that Freddie had ended the conversation and closed off the intercom, so Margot filled the glass again. She swirled a mouthful and glanced over at her file cabinet. She really should look at those contracts for Bellaire.
But they were so fucking far away and Freddie was probably already out the door.
“Tomorrow,” she said out loud as she laid her head back again, closed her eyes and tried to tune out the voices in her head that never quite shut up. It was so noisy up there; the price for keeping an expensive job in a dog-eat-dog world.
Margot groaned as she went off-tangent and thought how much she hated sayings like that. She really liked dogs. She’d never had one, but she always thought she’d be a great dog mother.
By the time she’d polished off a third glass of wine, the voices quieted, one by one, and eventually, Margot fell asleep as lunch time came and went.
Chirp! Chirp, chirp, chirp!
What the hell?
Startled and confused, Margot looked around her office, still bright, but only because of the efficient LED lighting installed last summer by the building’s manager.
It took a few moments to realize that she’d fallen asleep in her desk chair, and that it had been for a long period of time, and judging by the low light outside the window, it was already evening. No one understood better than she did how much lost sleep affected someone, she was the queen of restless nights.
Chirp! Chirp, chirp, chirp!
What the fuck was that sound? Finally alert enough to make sense of it, the sound was coming from her desktop, and although it sounded like it, it wasn’t the annoying new intercom system. It was her cell phone.
After a few swipes, she saw that it was Freddie.
“What the hell is that godawful sound coming from my phone?”
Freddie’s throaty laugh traveled through the phone.
“Got your attention, though, didn’t it? I put it on as my ringtone because it was so funny. The guy who installed the intercoms gave it to me.”
“You know I hate that sound, Fred.”
“Gives you a good reason to answer the phone quickly. I called to make sure you don’t miss dinner with Lipshitti. Oops, did I say that?”
Grinning, Margot shook her head. “I didn’t hear it. Thanks, I’d fallen asleep.”
“I thought you might have. Margot, you can’t keep catching up on your sleep in the office. You’re coming off four months buried in the Chao case, I know you’re exhausted, but you need to find a way to get sleep in your own bed.”
“I know. It’s on my list.”
“Where? Between conquering New York City and becoming Queen of the Universe?”
“Right between those two things.” A huge yawn interrupted the conversation. “I’m getting ready. Fred, don’t forget to come.”
“I won’t. That prick would eat you whole if he had the chance.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got my ace in the hole.”
“Did you just call me an a-hole?”
“Only with love,” Margot purred. “Now let me get my ass out of this chair and clean up. See you soon.”
With a long sigh, Margot stared at the bottle of wine that held just enough for one more glass. Shrugging, she poured the remainder into the empty glass on her desk and slipped the bottle back into the cabinet to cover the evidence. Leaving her shoes behind, she headed into the neat hidden bathroom near the back of her office to prepare for a dinner with her boss that she would not eat, and unwelcome sexual advances that she would not accept. Freddie’s pre-arranged rescue couldn’t come soon enough.
From the small closet of clothes she kept in her office, Margot chose a somewhat demure business suit. The skirt was fairly snug-fitting, but the top she wore with it had a high neckline and showed no cleavage, a desirable feature when dressing for a renown letch. Sadly, all four pairs of shoes at the office were high-heels, and as such, pretty sexy. There was nothing to do about that other than to keep her feet out of sight as much as possible. God knew what might turn him on. Most women in the building thought anything at all could turn him on, which made no choice completely safe.
“Ugh!”
Taking a last look in the full length mirror, Margot nodded, drained the last drop of wine, grabbed her satchel, and headed to the elevator.
“Let’s get this over with!” she groaned as the elevator approached.
“Meeting daddy’s little darling?”
Margot turned to the voice that came from behind and shrugged. “You got it,” she answered.
Kymberly King, the only other female attorney who worked for the firm, nodded as she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I have my meeting with him tomorrow. Good luck!”
“I wish you the same.”
“Heads-up if he’s particularly awful?”
“Deal. Or I’ll have to kill him tonight and save you.”
“Ooh…yeah! I’ll defend you in court, I promise.”
Following the ding that announced their ride had arrived, a united front, the two women
stepped into the elevator.
The Tall Giraffe was one of New York City’s newest happening clubs. It mirrored its parent club in Los Angeles by offering the best of the best of the best. Anyone who was anyone chose it for dinner and after-dinner drinks and socializing. So, of course, Michael Lipnicki had made it his must be seen in location.
Margot checked her neckline before she pulled open the signature over-tall doors that led into the creatively lit restaurant slash nightclub. Scanning the room, her eyes landed on Michael immediately, leaning back in his chair so far it seemed to defy gravity as he pawed at a waitress obviously trying to pull away from him. Sighing, because her own fate was sealed tonight, she hurried over to at least rescue the waitress.
“Michael,” she barked, as she arrived at the table and interrupted his attempt to “charm” the young brunette. He turned abruptly, a smile splitting his face, the fleshy lips too full to be considered sexy.
“Margot, my darling, you’re here.”
Dropping his seat back to earth, he took a long sip of amber liquid from a whisky glass, the smile faded and his eyes moved up to pin her in place. “And you’re late.”
Scooting into her seat, Margot perched her satchel on the extra chair to her right. “No, I’m not, and you’re drunk, so you wouldn’t know it even if I were.”
His head now lowered, Michael stuck his tongue deep into the glass to fish around at the amber inside.
Turning her head, Margot looked toward the entrance, which was also the exit, and wished she could use it right now. This was one of his lame attempts at an unwelcome sexual advance. He’d told her once that he thought it made a woman wet just watching his tongue moving around in the tight space of the small glass, much like he would inside her.
Margot let herself watch for as long as she could stomach it. Never.
He stopped and set the glass back on the table.
“Feeling hot?” he asked, the offensive tongue now making a slow nasty path around his thick lips.