Selling Out (15 page)

For that, I should hate him. I didn’t.

Loving her meant wanting her to be happy; that was what made
it love.

Luke was a different story. I wanted him near me, over me,
inside me—his happiness secondary. And so I would continue to seek him out,
endangering his career, his life, manipulating him into helping me for my own
benefit. The little plastic badge that I’d stolen and used and discarded was no
better than the plastic tiger replica on my fridge, a symbol to covet, a trophy
of misuse.

Underneath her usual brusqueness, Jade had looked like the
tiger that day, hunted, haunted. Ready to lash out, and God, I knew—I knew
exactly how she felt. Reading my father’s files had brought it all back to the
fore, all the quiet rage and seething shame, every gentle touch and cruel,
wrathful word. Each paid-for fuck had pressed it all down, pushed back old
hurts in favor of new ones. But seeing Luke seemed to soften me, weaken me, and
now I felt each memory like a sharp new cut.

Somehow I ended up in front of the shelter. The squat brick
building looked the same, but I felt a world apart from the last time I had
visited Marguerite. I didn’t have an envelope for her today, but I did have a
girl who needed help, one who was fearful and helpless.

This time, it was me.

I felt hollow inside, from the base of my neck to the pit of
my stomach. Empty and cold, the dubious relief of frostbite. Instead of pain,
syrupy languor spread through my veins.

My reflection waited in the black-mirrored door of the
shelter, and I watched it with a casual detachment. How pretty. A marble statue
to be desecrated and then washed clean in the next rainfall. But there was no
water this time, only parched lips and broken eyes.

The door opened. Relief flooded Marguerite’s face before she
dammed it behind studied professionalism. Her minimal makeup was flawless as
usual, her curves safely hidden beneath a severe black suit and skirt. She
smoothed that skirt now, her hands twitching as if she wanted to reach out to
me—or slap me. It could always go either way with her, and right now, I would
have been grateful for both. Anything to make me feel again.

“I saw you on the news,” she said. “I assume you’re here to
stay.”

Would she let me, if I asked? But I wouldn’t, for the very
same reason I hadn’t brought Ella here in the first place. Henri was on the
hunt, and this place was a too-easy target.

I shook my head. “I just stopped by… I came here because…”
Because I thought she could give me advice. Something without pity, because I
knew she didn’t have any.

Her lips tightened. Her hesitation drummed in my ears. She
had helped a thousand girls. Why not me? Was I beyond repair, a lost cause?
Then put me out of my misery.

Finally she gestured me inside. “Come with me.”

Our shoes clopped on the rubber floor, the sound bouncing
off the egg-speckled walls. The fluorescent lights burned into my eyes, but
despite that, some of my shock thawed. My tension eased. Strange, considering
I’d just entered the human equivalent of the pound. The unwanted, the abused
all crammed into cages, waiting for the world to want them again. But the air
was bright and clean, and that was more than most of us would have asked for.
The two girls who passed us in the hallway glanced at me curiously from beneath
lowered lashes. No fear.

The sound of laughter and clinking metal on ceramic floated
out from the cafeteria as we passed, comforting, familiar. It was like high
school without the confusing and soul-deadening home life. Still, I didn’t
doubt this place had its demons. They must have been banished to the
shadows—neat trick, that.

I realized I’d lagged behind, and I hurried to catch up.
“What do you do when someone doesn’t follow the rules?”

She didn’t look back. “It depends on the rule.”

“A big rule. Let’s say one of them punches the other in the
face.”

“We don’t allow violence here.”

“She’s a rebel,” I said about my fictional rule breaker.

“We have a sliding scale of punishments, depending on the
severity of the offense. There are a series of warnings. Then certain
privileges will be removed. And finally, there are punishments.”

I grinned slightly, feeling back on solid ground. “Don’t
tell me you paddle their behinds. That’s very naughty, Ms. Faust.”

Marguerite flashed me a repressive look. “If a girl is truly
a danger to the others, we separate them. They eat their meals in their rooms
and are given study work until they’ve shown they can interact with the other
girls.”

We grew quiet, passing girls filing out of a classroom,
giggling and bumping into each other.

“So basically, solitary confinement,” I said when they were
out of earshot.

She sighed. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you. I knew
you’d frame it that way.”

“The truthful way?”

“The worst possible way. We do what we have to do to make
this work. There are only so many ways to keep teenagers in line short of
beating them, which no, we don’t do. Do you think some legalized group home
does it better?”

“Hardly.”

“These kids don’t have the luxury of a two-parent support
system and the family dog. We are their family.”

“What if someone wants to leave Casa Faust?”

“When they turn eighteen, we help each girl with placement
and relocation.”

“And if they want to leave before then?”

She paused with her hand on a metal doorway. “Then we keep
them safe. And that means here. Don’t flip out. You had to know we couldn’t let
them run back to guys who would hurt them and force them to say where they’d
been staying.”

“It’s always about you, Marguerite.”

She sobered. “No man is going to hurt me or any one of the
girls here. And one day, that will include you. You know that, right?”

Well, that was both comforting and creepy. “But not today.”

“Not today,” she agreed, opening the door and waving me inside.
I followed her up a dimly lit metal staircase. We exited into a hallway exactly
like the one downstairs, except this one was quiet. Empty. Eerie.

“You aren’t going to lock me up, right?” I asked. “Because I
asked about leaving?”

I was joking, but this floor unnerved me. While downstairs
had felt happy, up here the air vibrated with expectation and something else I
didn’t recognize. Over the years, I had learned to trust my gut feeling more
than what I could see. Right now, it didn’t feel like danger, just anticipation
of it. Like fear.

She unlocked a door. “I’m giving you what you came for.”

“And what’s that?” My breath held while she considered me.

“What do you most want?”

To be safe. “To be free.”

“You want to feel like you’re in control again. I understand.
This isn’t a group therapy session where I tell you everything will be okay.
That wouldn’t work for you anyway. This is better.”

Curious now, I stepped inside. She shut the door behind me,
and my eyes adjusted. I blinked. Equipment and wires nestled among—yes, those
were guns. Two men worked laptops at the foldout tables. The guy in the far
corner looked up blearily, then turned back to his screen.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the sleek metal. “I thought you
said there wasn’t any violence here.”

“There isn’t, because we have these. All our security works
to keep us safe.”

“There’s irony here, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

She hefted a gun with a chilling nonchalance. “Are you
telling me you’ve never held a gun?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you. I have gotten shot
before, and I’m not really looking to repeat the experience.”

“Good, because I’m not planning on shooting you. You need to
know how to defend yourself.”

“I use my feminine wiles for that.”

“And yet you’re in hiding.” She raised her eyebrow. “How’s
that working out?”

Ouch.

“As long as you’re running, you’re prey. Take a stand; see
how it feels. You may still get hurt, but isn’t that happening anyway? This way
you’re in control. This way you have a chance.”

I let my expression convey my doubt.

She shrugged. “So don’t. You came here for my advice, and
this is it. You want to win a fight without getting your hands dirty. Go ahead
and try.”

When she put it that way, it sounded silly. Cowardly too.
“Okay,” I said. “What exactly would this entail? Do I need to buy chaps? My ass
looks great in leather, but it’s a little restrictive, don’t you think?”

“It’s not a costume, Shelly. It’s a gun.”

And yeah, she was holding one out. As if I was supposed to
take it.

I stared at it like it might magically float in the air,
turn, and shoot me. I could see it in my mind’s eye. Absently, my hand went to
my shoulder, where the old wound seemed to pulse.

“It won’t hurt you,” she said. “They will, though, if you
don’t defend yourself.”

My breath stuttered out of me. I gingerly took it from her.
It was lighter than I expected. So sleek and shiny.

“Point it down,” she said sharply. “Finger off the trigger.”

I almost dropped it. “Is it loaded?”

“No.” She softened a fraction. “That’s not the point. You need
to be careful. As careful as they are, or they’ll win. They’ll beat you.”

Her words rang in my ear like a premonition. “I don’t know
what I’m doing with this.”

“Practice. Prepare yourself. You’ll only have time for one
shot. Make it count.”

I frowned. “You make it sound like I’m going to assassinate
someone.”

“Aren’t you?” she asked. “About damn time, really. You’re
going to find the son of a bitch who’s hunting you, and you’re going to kill
him. That’s the only chance you have of being free. It’s the only chance you
have of being with that cop you’re mooning over.”

Kill Henri? No. “You’re insane.”

“Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you can take him down another
way.”

Mess him up, sure, most likely with money. That was my
ill-formed plan. After all, Al Capone was brought down by tax evasion. Maybe
Henri had an assload of unpaid parking tickets, and Luke could waltz in and
arrest him.

But probably not.

“Not me,” I said. “Someone else—”

She laughed. “Who, the cops? If they were willing to, he
would already be dead.” She grew serious. “You want to help people, but you
don’t want to touch them, talk to them. You want to be the martyr, so be one.”

I blinked, taken aback by her observation and its accuracy.
It made me feel a little dirty to hear my motivations spoken so plainly, but it
also cleared my mind. This was what I wanted, to help those girls, to help
myself. In that way, Luke and I weren’t so different, although we came at the
problem from different sides.

Still, I couldn’t kill Henri. Could I? The idea made me
terrified…and giddy. But I wasn’t sure I could even shoot this thing. I still
dreamed occasionally, flashing back to that split second when I realized I was
going to die. The metal barrel glinted in the moonlight as it swung toward me.
I heard the report like an explosion in my ears and found myself already on my
back, already bleeding, blissfully gone.

I hadn’t died, though. I’d gotten almost completely better.
My shoulder still didn’t stretch all the way up or back, but what was I, an
Olympic gymnast? And when the weather changed, I felt a chill run through the
puckered skin all the way to the bone. My imagination, probably.

“I don’t think I can.”

“Don’t be selfish. This isn’t just about you, Shelly.”

A shiver ran through me, an echo of accusations I had run
from all my life, even though I knew they were true. I was selfish to my core,
working everyone around me like a master puppeteer. Never stop moving, never
stop manipulating, or they’d crumple to the ground like lifeless dolls and
prove I’d been alone all along.

“He’s after you,” she continued. “He’s after that girl I’m
sure you’ve stashed away someplace safe while you play the hero. He has whole
apartment buildings of girls he’s using right now, hurting right now. But as
long as you can walk away, it’s okay to leave those girls behind. As long as
you get yours.”

I swallowed, unable to say a word in my defense. Compared to
her, to all she had done for these girls, I’d done nothing at all. So I would
go to the club and fix this, for Ella, for Marguerite—for myself, so that I
could feel something other than hate.

“I need something else from you,” I said quietly. “A couple
fake IDs.”

She raised her eyebrows. “What makes you think I can get
them for you?”

I shrugged. “You deal in false identities, and you do a
better job of it than WitSec. Pretty sure that includes a little laminate.”

“Going hunting?”

“We’ll call it scouting.”

She considered me. “Give me the information.”

I told her mine first. She typed away on a laptop, taking it
down. Then I said, “And one for my cop, as you call him. He’ll be coming with
me.”

She smiled. “Very good. What’s his name?”

“Luke. Luke Cameron.”

Her smile slipped, just a fraction.

I frowned. “Do you know him?”

“No,” she said, turning back to the keyboard. “He’s a
stranger.”

* * * *

I took the gun with me. It sat on my passenger seat,
seemingly innocuous. Just plastic and metal melded together, like the seat
buckle it rested on. Except it was lethal, if I used it right. Marguerite had
given me a quick crash course. Would I remember? One shot, one chance.

As I drove through the city, my eyes fixated on every
Dumpster or trash can, on every litter-strewn ditch I saw. I could get rid of
it and call the whole thing off. And be alone again, afraid again. Was it
really power or just the illusion? The pain in my shoulder felt real enough. I
wasn’t sure if I could kill in cold blood, even knowing it was for the greater
good, but I was sold on using it in my defense. I would go to the club and
carry it with me. If I was going to win this fight, I’d need to get my hands
dirty.