Selling Out (33 page)

“No. There will be no ass-kicking for you.”

She pouted. “As if you’re a ninja or something.”

“If you must know, I’ve had lessons in shooting a gun. Plus,
I’ve been shot. It’s a special club.”

“A gun lesson.” She sounded giddy. She turned to Major. “You
mean you can teach me how to use one?”

“Your enthusiasm is disturbing but irrelevant,” I told her.
“We can’t do a lesson now.”

“I’m going,” she whispered. “You can’t stop me.”

“Very mature.”

“Look at it this way,” Major murmured. “I’m going, so she’s
probably safer with us than alone.”

We got out of the car. Every car door closing made me wince,
and I waited for men to come running out. When nothing happened, I let out a
breath. We crept along the line of the trees until we reached the fence. It was
still cut away where we’d entered before. An odd lapse in security, but I
supposed Henri had already evacuated this place for the most part. If he was
just coming here for a meeting, he wouldn’t need to establish a perimeter.

Slipping inside, we made it to the first hangar before Major
put up his hand. He lifted his gun, signaling for us to stay back while the
shadows enveloped him. I heard a low voice and then a brief scuffle. I blinked,
my eyes wide, but I couldn’t make him out. Pushing Jenny behind me, I was about
to get us the hell out of there when Major reappeared with his arm around
another man. I saw the red bandanna first, then noticed the rest of him.

“Rico,” I said with relief, then realized Major was
basically choking him. “What the hell?”

Rico threw Major off him and echoed my shock, but with more
profanity.

“Was it you?” Major asked. “Don’t fuck with me right now;
just tell me I can trust you.”

Rico grew still. “You saved my ass, literally, when I was
nine years old. I told you then that I had your back, and that hasn’t changed.”

Major stared at him, measuring, and finally blew out a
breath.

“Now,” Rico said. “What in the actual fuck was that?”

“Someone betrayed us,” Major said.

Both men turned to look at me.

“Yes, okay,” I said. “Be a stereotype and blame the hooker.”

Rico frowned. “It doesn’t make sense that it would be her or
Luke, not with their asses on the line. And if it wasn’t you or me, then…”

“It was Jeff,” I said. “He must have put something in my
water.”

Rico shook his head in frustration. “He said you’d been
shot, but we couldn’t find your…” The word
body
hung in the air. “Luke was frantic. He almost got killed because he refused to
leave without finding you first. We had to drag him out of there.”

He’d thought I was dead? “Where is he?”

“I heard some of the guys talking,” Rico said. “The meeting
is happening in the middle hangar. We have to get over there before he does
something crazy.”

We turned to go around the back. That was when I saw it. A
faint red light glowing from the ground, the remains of a cigarette. Which
meant the guards were nearby. I opened my mouth to warn them, but before a
sound emerged, a shot rang out. Rico fell to the ground. Major jumped over
Jenny to cover her. Heavy hands closed around my neck.

Gleaming white teeth shone in the dark, the Cheshire cat
holding a machine gun. “You’re back.”

The dark of a windowless room enveloped me, followed by a
humid stench strong enough to gag me. Mold and copper—it smelled like pain.
Henri’s shoes clipped the concrete softly from behind me, incongruously
civilized compared to the almost dungeon-like atmosphere…but it was a lie. This
place suited him more than the well-guarded penthouse where he conducted
business. It was how he saw the world, darkness and death inescapable.

An elbow rammed into my back, and I fell to the floor,
landing in a thin film of grimy water. From the floor, I heard the
drip-drip
from somewhere else in the
room. Slowly my senses sharpened, revealing a counterpoint—low, harsh
breathing. Labored breathing.

My voice wavered. “Luke?”

“Don’t worry.” Henri’s voice came from beside my ear as he
bent to speak to me. “I punished him for taking you without payment. I know you
were very concerned about that.”

“Luke.” I shuddered, feeling bone-deep revulsion for the
breath on my ear, mourning whatever unseen pain had been inflicted. This was my
fault, not his. My pain, and my body craved it with a kind of gnawing
hunger—anything but have him suffer. I couldn’t stand it.

I had to.

Summoning my strength, I stood. In the center of the room, I
could make out a shadow. A chair. A man, slumped over.

He didn’t register my approach. He was not conscious. At
least, his eyes looked closed, but they might have been too puffy to see. He
might have heard me call his name in horror and pain, but for the blackened
blood dripping into his ears. He must have felt me when his head jerked away
from my hand—though it might have been an unconscious move, like the leaves
that fold at the touch of a finger.

“Oh God,” I whispered. “What did they do to you?”

Hurt him, beat him, tortured him. My mind didn’t want to
accept it.
Find another answer, one that
wouldn’t leave Luke bleeding.

Blood leaked from the corner of his eye, dried into a
crusted tear. His face, his head was a mass of blue and black and purple,
swollen and misshapen and beautiful because I could still hear the rasping
breath from his bloodied lips. I could still see the beat of a green vein at an
undisturbed patch of skin at the hollow of his neck. I touched my fingertip to
that spot. He was warm and smooth there, where life and hope still beat.

I heard the steady
clop-clop
of Henri’s shoes as he came near. I shut my eyes, willing myself to remain
still, remain focused, but how could I focus in the face of my worst fears?
Luke hurt and Henri with nothing to lose—I didn’t know which one was more
terrifying. Where did I go when both dreams and waking held nightmares?

He touched a hand to the back of my neck, the soft pressure
almost reassuring. “If you had only listened,” he said with what sounded like
regret. “I had such hopes for you. After I’m gone, the two of you could have
ruled.”

The force of my denial shook my body. I knew he could feel
it, so I didn’t bother to hide the disgust in my voice. “Never. He never would
have done what you do.”

After a pause, he laughed. “I didn’t mean Luke.” Before I
could ask who he meant, he continued in a low taunt. “Though his hands are not
as clean as you think.”

“Lies,” I spat.

“Come now. We may not always agree, but have you ever known
me to lie outright?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” He chuckled. “But in this case, I wouldn’t. The
truth is far too glorious on its own. Didn’t you ever wonder why Luke cared so
much about the plight of the working girl?”

I had wondered, but it was only because Luke was so
good—someone like Henri couldn’t possibly understand motives so pure. Someone
like me.

“Didn’t ever wonder how he knew so much about the life? I know
you did. It was part of what drew you to him.”

I hated that he knew that. I had sacrificed almost
everything for the shields I wore. Only a handful of people could see through
them. Luke was one of them, Henri another. They were opposite sides of the coin…weren’t
they?

“I don’t believe anything you say,” I whispered, though it
sounded like a weak defense even to my ears. I was so starved for anything
about Luke, for something true and deep. His shields were as fortified as my
own, but one thing could always pierce them. Our pasts, our history. The
turning point at which we first realized we needed a shield at all, when the
world had attacked.

“He was like you. A prostitute. Only worse, I think. You
have to spread your legs. It is the way of a woman, for all of time, yes? A man
can bear much more physical pain than a woman, but far less humiliation. To
suck another man’s dick for twenty dollars in an alley. To bend over. He ceases
to be a man.”

No, it couldn’t be. He would have told me. He might have
kept it from me, but I would have been able to tell. It explained so much. I
could always feel that shame leaking from their heavily powdered pores, wafting
on each nervous breath.

Though an unwelcomed power, I could always detect when
another had undergone the same denial, the same internal negotiations:
it doesn’t mean anything, they can’t touch
you on the inside, they can’t even see you
. It was a repellant. I had
enough sick deals in my own head without shouldering someone else’s. But Luke…
No.

He was too straitlaced. He fought prostitution because it
went against his lofty morals, and that was the way I damn well liked it. We
were opposites that way, light and dark, the sky and the earth, touching along
the horizon but never to mix. Attached for eternity but always separate. If we
were the same after all… No no no.

“I don’t believe you,” I said with conviction now. I
wouldn’t, couldn’t.

“I hope you didn’t suck his dick,” he said. “No telling
where it’s been.”

I whirled, catching him on the cheek with my nails. The odds
were stacked so high against us, too high, but I wouldn’t make it easy. Let him
try to touch Luke again with me nearby. I swung, slamming my fist in the side
of his neck. He wouldn’t even have been the one to kill us. One of his men, as
he delegated everything except for this.

He pinned me, and I panted against the wall.

“Bitch,” he spat into my face. “I should kill you for that.”

“So do it,” I panted. “Why don’t you fucking do it already?”

I realized my question had been sincere. Why was I still
alive? Why was Luke? I couldn’t have much gratitude for it, considering the
pain he must be in, considering the way this would have to end, a tragedy after
all.

An icy fire raged in Henri’s eyes, matched by the frosted
blue of his vest. It wasn’t any desire to whore me out that kept him from
putting a bullet in my brain. He must know by now I wouldn’t cooperate, and
even without that, I had disrespected him enough that retribution would be
death. The only reason I should still be alive was if he wanted to hurt
me…except he had hurt me so very little. Yes, the emotional hurt of Luke lanced
me worse than a whip, but that seemed too nuanced even for a consummate asshole
like Henri.

Still leaning against the wall, I murmured, “What is it?
What hold do I have over you that I don’t even know I have?”

“Don’t try my patience. There isn’t much left.”

“Then kill me. Why waste time?”

He turned back. “You’re not the one in control here.”

“Then who?” I whispered.

After a pause he said, “I am,” but neither of us believed that
anymore. “You’ll find what you’re looking for soon enough, but I don’t think
you’ll enjoy it very much.” He stalked from the room. His men followed, locking
us in behind them.

I considered briefly falling at Luke’s feet, just falling
apart. That approach had its appeal, but I had an advantage here. For once, I
wasn’t the remains of what my father had done to me. Not even the punishment I
had inflicted on myself with my choice of profession for the years after. I’d
had a friend who’d helped me, and so I knew what kindness looked like. In the
clumsy way of a child copying his elders, I tugged at the knots at his wrists
until they gave. I pulled him down to the floor, where I cradled his head in
the nook of my arm, not shying away from his body, not using any hollow quip to
buffer the bond between us. He radiated heat and pain, and so I took it into
myself, not a sacrifice this time but a comfort. A tear fell from my cheek onto
his. I touched it, washing the dirt and blood away from his skin.

Was it true, what Henri had said? It was an idle question,
something to ponder.
Do you think it will
rain tomorrow? Doesn’t matter; worry about it then.

He stirred, groaning. It was an animal sound, an agony
sound.

“Shh,” I soothed, but the tears came faster, and the sounds
did not stop. “I’ll sing to you,” I offered, “but you’ll probably wish I
hadn’t.”

I sang him songs that I’d sung to my goddaughter in a
different lifetime.
You are my sunshine,
my only sunshine
. Morbid for a children’s song, I had always thought. And of
course I’d been perversely attracted to it. Now it seemed appropriate in the
almost-underground area we found ourselves in, with no light and little air.

Please don’t take my
sunshine away.

When he settled, I left him and explored the room, feeling
around the hinges of the door, just in case, and along the walls. On the far
wall, I ran my hip into a table. Some sort of workstation, judging by its
height and breadth. I caught a few splinters in my palm and a few loose rocks
at the bottom of the crumbling concrete wall, the occasional screw.

“Aha.” My fingers clasped on cool metal, and I released a
puff of satisfied breath. Some sort of tool, maybe a wrench. Hardly a fair
fight against too many men armed with guns I hadn’t learned how to shoot yet.
Still better than waiting to die.

“Shelly?” Luke’s voice was hoarse, a little disoriented.

“Here.” I swallowed my guilt and worry and returned to his
side. “I’m here.”

“Why?” A pained pause. “How?”

“I came to save you,” I said with a small laugh. “It hasn’t
gone so great so far, but don’t worry. I like to save some of my tricks for the
big finish.”

He groaned, whether in pain or annoyance at my joke, I
wasn’t sure—probably both.

“Have to…have to get out.” His eyes were merely green slits,
but slowly they came into focus. Awareness would only bring pain now.

I stroked the hair at his temple. “Don’t worry about that.
Just rest. I’ve got it covered. I took a self-defense class…kind of. Of course
I don’t have a gun, so it’s not very useful, but the point is, I’m not going to
let them hurt you again.”