Selling Out (13 page)

“She doesn’t belong here. She’s not like you and me.”

“So get her the hell out of my house,” he snapped, but his
anger deflated quickly.

I spoke quietly. “I don’t see why you’re in knots over her
anyway. You were like meat on a slab to those women when we went out. And yet
you never fucked any of them.”

“I had you,” he said.

My heart melted a little at the simplicity of that
statement. As if he had no reason to look elsewhere when he had me. As if we
had been a real couple.

“You could have slept with other women when we were
together. It’s not like I would have quit.”

“I wouldn’t have. I thought of you as my girlfriend.”

His honesty was touching and guilt inducing. Sure, it had
been the girlfriend experience all the way. He hadn’t just taken me out on
dates. I had lived here. The envelope that appeared on my bedside table could
have been an allowance in a certain kind of relationship. And I had cared about
him. I still did.

But if it was possible to cheat on him emotionally, I had
done so. All along, I had wanted another man. From the look on Philip’s face,
self-deprecating and a little weary, he knew it too.

Jeans and a Bears cap flattened me into just another Chicago
citizen. Anyway, no one would expect me to sniff around at the station while on
the CPD’s most-wanted list. Even I was a little surprised that I dared. It was
almost like I wanted to get caught.

But I had reasons for coming here, and they weren’t only
about seeing a certain cop. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Jade had said.
It niggled at me, the way Jenny was connected to Henri through her boyfriend. The
way she had been targeted for her relationship to him.

Henri kept a few girls in his inner circle, and she was one
of them. So was I. What if I had been targeted the same way?

I had dismissed the idea at first. I hadn’t had a druggie
boyfriend who could have screwed Henri over. I had just been a dumb blonde in
need of large quantities of cash. Open and shut. No mystery. But the thought
had come back, worrying and worrying at me until I had to come here just to
prove it wrong.

The old colonial building bustled with distracted cops and
jaded public attorneys. A rumpled suit held the door open for me, and I walked
in, hiding in plain sight, immersing myself in the spill of sweaty worker bees.
Some people might think a prostitute would get nervous here, but what was a
police station except a brick box of men with something to prove? Criminals,
law enforcement officers. Customers, all of them.

I didn’t quite have the audacity, or the suicidal fortitude,
to walk straight into the detective’s bull pen. Instead I exited the flow near
the back offices. A shudder ran through me as I passed the double doors to the
morgue; I preferred my marks alive, thank you very much. Ah, there it was: the
evidence room. Possibly the safest place in this joint and definitely the friendliest.

A small bulletproof window had an opening at the bottom,
like one of those banks from the eighties that screamed “we don’t trust you” to
their customers. At least they were honest.

I rapped on the window. A few minutes later, Chase appeared.
His face went slack with disbelief when he saw me. I imagined he would have
gone pale too, if his skin weren’t practically obsidian.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he muttered, his white
teeth flashing. Not a smile; a grimace.

“And here I thought you liked me.”

“I do like you. That’s why I don’t want you raped and dumped
in the river.”

His words sobered me, but I refused to let it show. Never
let them see you sweat. I raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to let me in or
not?”

A buzz sounded from the door beside me, signaling it was
unlocked. With a quick glance at the distended mass of distracted people, I
slipped inside. Chase grabbed my hand and yanked me to the back room. The dimly
lit space had only room for two. Once there, he pulled me into a bear hug. It
should have been all bones and angles, with his thin form, but instead warmth
enveloped me, outside and in. Cardboard particles and dust tickled my nose and
brought tears to my eyes.

“Damn, girl,” he said, releasing me. “I’m sorry I freaked
out on you, but give a guy some warning. I almost had a heart attack when I saw
you.”

“Next time, I’ll put an announcement in the paper, let you
know I’m coming.”

“There isn’t going to be a next time. You shouldn’t be here,
not in the station, not in Chicago. Just start over. Start a new life somewhere
else.”

“And let them win?” I teased, although the joke was really
on me. I had long ago given up any delusions of triumph, licking the boots and
sucking the cocks of Chicago’s elite.

“If you want to beat them, stay alive.”

“So earnest, so loyal,” I cooed. “I love that about you,
Chase.”

He sent me a cross look. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Acting fake.”

That’s what I got for being honest. I did love Chase, in a
little-brother kind of way. I had always appreciated that he’d never made a
move on me. Sure, he was gay, but I found that most men weren’t too
discriminating about the warm, wet place they put their dicks.

We’d met in my early days in the life. He’d worked for some
dealer. Now he was on the city’s payroll. Not much of a step up, in my humble
opinion, but at least it gave him the respectability and confidence he’d always
wanted.

“Fine,” I murmured. “If you want the truth, I came here to
see Luke.”

“Now how did I know that?”

I ticked off the reasons. “Because I’m his informant.
Because he’s working my case.”

“Not anymore. You stopped being his informant a long time
ago, and he just got kicked off your case, off all his cases. He’s on
administrative leave.”

“The hell he is.” Luke must be going crazy. Administrative
leave was an insult, like getting fucked in the ass, too fast and too hard, and
I knew exactly how that felt.

“Yeah, well, the captain was a little pissed when he found
out you had been to his apartment.”

Guilt turned my gut. “I didn’t know where else to go.” As soon
as the words were out, I realized how pathetic that sounded. “I didn’t know who
to trust at the time.”

He shrugged, unconcerned, except I saw the way his mouth was
set. Frustrated. Protective?

“You don’t need to involve him in this, and you know it.”

If Jade was right, Luke was already involved in this, maybe
more than me. He’d been on the scene longer, fighting Henri when I was just an
unholy gleam in my father’s eye. “I need to talk to him.”

He wanted to refuse; I could tell. But he wouldn’t. I hadn’t
given away his previous life to Luke or anyone else, so he owed me. I wouldn’t
have told anyway, but he didn’t need to know that.

“I’ll bring him here, but don’t…” He looked away. “Don’t do
that other thing you do.”

I grew still. The only sounds were the muffled and nebulous
rush of people through the wall, as if I held my ear to a shell. Empty, hollow,
how I felt inside. “Fuck him?” I offered quietly. “Is that what I shouldn’t do?
Don’t worry that we’d make a mess in here. I’m a professional.”

“Hurt him,” he said, his mouth taut, body tense. “Don’t hurt
him.”

Without looking at me, he turned and disappeared out the
back room door. I heard the front room door clang shut. I stared at the rows of
dusty boxes. Hurt Luke? A laugh escaped me. As if I could. I leaned against the
stack of boxes and let the irony wash over me. Hurt Luke, when I ached for him.
Hurt him while he searched for some other girl.

She probably had a case file in here. All the more recent
reports were digitized, but the police department still kept the hand-scrawled,
dead-tree documents around, right in this room. What would hers say? Missing
persons, maybe. Solicitation, drug-related arrests were all par for the course
if she was in the life. Without a name, I’d never find her. If Luke had a file,
it would be in some internal affairs lockdown, not here. I didn’t even know
Ella’s real name.

I only had a few minutes. My file was a pathetically thin
bundle, considering my current fugitive status. There were the solicitation
charges Henri had set up for me to keep me in line. There were a few
blacked-out pages from the incident where I’d gotten shot. And a note:
Full immunity
. The benefits of being an
informant.

In the back, there was a brief report from when the police
had interviewed me over a fellow escort who’d disappeared. It didn’t include
the outcome of that investigation, but I knew she’d never been found, because I
still got an anonymous postcard every Christmas with a palm tree on it.

I replaced my file and skipped a few files down to dear old
Dad’s. Stephan Laurent. It wasn’t a big surprise that he had a file. It meant
nothing. I flipped it open.

Suspected for embezzlement. I tsked softly.
Couldn’t afford the current year’s Mercedes?
Or did Juanita finally nail you for knocking up her daughter?

Where had he embezzled from? It didn’t say, and I couldn’t
remember who he worked for or even what he did. My only memories were of
roaming eyes and cruel words. How he’d made his money had been the last thing
on my child’s mind, and when I was older, I had more important things to worry
about than angry conference calls in veiled business-speak behind closed doors,
but now the question took my breath away. So much money. No morals to speak of.
It could have been anything.

A whole slew of blacked-out pages followed. Unease fluttered
in my gut. It meant nothing.

On the last page:
Full
immunity.

What had he done that needed immunity? Who had he fucked
over to get it?

I heard a scratch at the door. I slipped the file into its
place and shoved the box back where it belonged, my stomach churning. Would he
see the marks in the dust where I’d pulled it out? Was it even Luke who’d come?
I trusted Chase well enough, but only a fool let down her guard in the belly of
the beast. I clasped my hands together, the picture of innocence; meanwhile the
words were emblazoned across my vision.

Above me, a lone lightbulb flickered in a rusted cage and
then went out, plunging me into darkness. The door opened, and yellow light
sluiced around a familiar silhouette before the latch clicked shut. My breath
caught in my chest, a heavy bundle of anticipation—not fear, because I knew it
was Luke.

Faint squeaking of rubber on concrete put him squarely in
front of me. As my eyes adjusted, the slim light from underneath the door lent
him a faint glow. I could even smell his soap through the haze of dust between
us. But none of those things confirmed his identity as much as the simmering
tension that pulsed through my veins when he was near.

“How’s the sexiest detective?” I murmured into the darkness.

“Were you sure it was me, or is that just how you greet
everyone here?”

“Jealous?”

“Pissed, Shelly. I’m pissed. Why are you here?”

Neither pissed nor jealous accurately described what he
felt. Something closer to despair. I knew it, the way I knew what every man
wanted, their dirty desires marking me, degrading me whether they touched me or
not. Allie had called me the man whisperer, but she thought I didn’t understand
Luke. I did. Maybe not completely, but enough to know he was like the rest of
them. He wanted my body, my mind; he wanted to consume me whole more than any
other man.

But he didn’t. It fascinated me, or it had until I’d found
out the reason—some old loyalty and Luke too steadfast to ever stray. Mystery
solved.

“I had to see you,” I purred. “I couldn’t be apart from you
one minute longer.”

“Save the BS for someone who’s paying you.”

I blinked. “Yeah, okay.” Deep breath.
It’s not personal, just business
. “I need you to come with me to a club
Saturday night. That’s where Ella got taken.”

A beat passed. “I’ll go. Alone.”

“Where would the fun be in that? Besides, you’ll have to
excuse me if I don’t quite trust you after that stint at your apartment.”

“I was caught off guard when I heard you had a warrant out.
I had to improvise.”

“With my head on a platter? Nice play.”

“I’ve done everything to keep you safe. I can’t help you if
you don’t trust me. Goddamn it, Shelly, you walked into the middle of a fucking
snake nest. Sometimes I think you want to get yourself shot, for someone to do
what you can’t do yourself.”

Shock numbed me, but slowly feeling crept back in. Of
course, he wasn’t just a pretty face. Allie knew me better than anyone, but
even she wouldn’t have called that one. This was a new side of him, more
aggressive. I wasn’t sure I liked it. “What’s gotten into you? If I’m so
annoying, you should hope I’m caught.”

A pause. “I didn’t mean to say that. I’ve taken a lot of
shit around here since you came to my place.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“Yes, you damn well should have. Should have come to me,
should have trusted me. Do you really think I care what those fuckhead
bureaucrats think? I went insane thinking you were caught, hurt, dead. Thinking
the next Jane Doe in the morgue was going to be you. Checking in case it was.
You want to know what’s gotten into me? You, goddamn it, you. Too goddamned
selfish to let me know you’re okay, so fucking cavalier, walking right into
headquarters. Jesus.”

Pride was a funny thing for a prostitute. We really
shouldn’t have had any left, and yet haughtiness was practically the hallmark
of a sex worker. The last time I was with Henri, he made me do every degrading
thing in his repertoire, waiting for me to balk. It would have been his
crowning moment. I’d come to him for help, and if I said no to anything, even
once, the deal would have been off. Victorious, I’d made it through, physically
broken, mentally numb, and when I held the money in my hand, this was how I’d
felt. The same way I felt now, standing in front of Luke in the dark, his words
like lashes tracing over the silvery scars on my back. He cared about me; he
hated me, the most devastating part.