The guys thought this was hysterical, watching a man go down at the hands of a petite woman wearing nail polish. Sometimes, when I’d get the callout, two or three of them would show just to watch.
I never disappointed.
“See you there,” I said to Rhash.
“Yeah, later,” he replied.
I flipped my phone shut, started up my girl, she purred for me while I waited the thirty seconds before I saw Cher pull up and park. Then I gave her a chin lift through the windshield and waited while she walked to Serena’s house. After that, I waited until the door closed behind Cher.
Then my girl and I took off.
* * * * *
I had my back to the wall at the side of the door when I heard the elevator beep. I turned my head and watched Rhash walk out.
Rhashan was a huge, midnight skinned black man. Handsome. Fuck, they made few of them as good as Rhashan from head to toe. Smooth with a kick, like a good bourbon. You sucked it back then sucked in a breath to ease the warmth on its way down.
He’d recently married a woman I liked unreservedly, which was rare. It was known he liked to dominate which was why I didn’t dip my toe in midnight before he made the ultimate hook up with his new wife, Vivica.
No one controlled me. Not anymore.
That didn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the view immensely as he walked his muscled bulk my way.
When he got close, I lifted up a keycard between two fingers.
“Boss owes me a hundred, fifty,” I noted.
Rhash’s full lips quirked. “You get a receipt?”
I shot him a grin and jerked up my chin.
His eyes went to the door. “He in there?”
“According to my boy downstairs who’s one hundred and fifty dollars richer for handing me a keycard, he’s not checked out,” I told him.
He looked me up and down before he remarked, “This hotel, I don’t get away without shelling out at least two fifty.”
“You don’t have tits,” I pointed out the obvious and his lips again quirked.
Then his face got serious. “You lead?”
“Uh… am I Sylvia Bissenette?” I asked.
“Last time I checked,” he answered.
That got him another grin.
He positioned and so did I, both of us unholstering our guns.
I slid in the keycard, got the green light, slid it out, carefully turned the handle and cautiously moved into the dark room with Rhash at my back.
Within a minute, we’d ascertained the space was clear.
Rhash turned on a light and we both scanned the wrecked room with our eyes.
When I was done with my scan, my gaze went to Rhash and I noted his strong, square jaw was hard.
“She put up a fight,” I remarked.
His eyes cut to me.
I was a loose part of the Knight Sebring team, not an official member. I was freelance. I had other jobs. But I was always on-call for Knight.
Being freelance didn’t mean much to Knight’s boys. For them, I took assignments, I took call, I was a member of the team. This meant we knew where each other lived. We drank together. We watched the Broncos together, usually at a bar. I was invited to Rhash’s wedding. If I needed help on another one of my jobs, all I had to do was make a call and they had my back.
The fact that, outside work, our time spent together usually included alcohol meant we’d all shared.
So I knew Rhashan Banks had grown up rough. His Mom had him when she was sixteen. He had two sisters and a brother by the time his Mom was twenty-one. Each Banks kid had a different father and none of the dads stuck around.
Rhash was in a gang by twelve, his best friend got whacked during a turf war and died in his arms when Rhash was fifteen. Still, it took three more years and getting his girl pregnant before Rhash started to pull his shit together. She put the baby up for adoption, wanting nothing to do with it or a Daddy who was destined for dead or incarcerated. She dumped his ass, had the baby, got rid of the baby then promptly went back on her grand schemes and got involved with another gang member, this one about seven huge steps down from Rhash. Her new guy didn’t mind sharing. In fact, he passed her around to all his buds.
To deal with a life that turned total shit, she eventually got hooked on meth. Now she worked Colfax and her life expectancy wasn’t very high considering her pimp was an asshole, her strip was dangerous and her mind was always on her next fix.
Rhash fought his way out of that shit, eventually found Knight and lived every day knowing the kid he created with his girl was somewhere better. Knowing it and hating it because that better did not include his real Mom or his real Dad.
Somehow, all this shit got twisted in his head. The gang mentality wasn’t gone. His loyalty was ingrained and extreme. It was just that now it was to Knight, Knight’s team and Knight’s mission.
Therefore, when he took in the evidence that one of Knight’s girls fought back before getting a busted lip and a swollen eye, it pissed him off.
Rhashan Banks pissed off was a little scary and I say that even though not much scared me.
When he made no reply and I was done with his dark eyes burning holes into mine, I asked, “You got any cash on you?”
“Your tits wear off?” he asked back and I fought back another grin.
“They’re b-cups, Rhash. They look good but they only go so far covered up,” I replied.
He twisted his torso and the light went out.
Then I heard him say, “Let’s move.”
* * * * *
We turned from the night clerk who was two hundred dollars richer and told us what we already knew from the empty, wrecked hotel room.
Serena’s client had paid in cash. The credit card he put on file for incidentals cleared at the time of check in which was eight o’clock. When the clerk ran it again, it had been reported stolen. Plus he had checked in under a different name and address than he’d given us.
The false name and paying in cash was not surprising. Clients did their best not to leave trails.
The address and stolen credit card, not good.
This meant he felt safe to leave the room in that state, knowing they couldn’t find him to charge him.
Knight had a stable of fifty-seven girls and shit happened. It was rare because Knight also had a reputation. Nevertheless, it happened sometimes. But no girl took a client without him being checked out. This was part of the work I did for Knight. He didn’t dig deep but he did dig. He never sent a girl out if the client was shady, had a record, cash flow problems or anything of concern turned up. We ran credit history, work history, financials, criminal records and we checked homes and places of work, all on the down low so as not to scare away clients.
In other words, this
particular
kind of shit did not happen.
Ever.
“His house,” Rhash growled. “Meet you there. I’ll text you details.”
“Right,” I muttered, walking beside him to the door. My head was tilted back, eyes up and aimed at his profile. I was assessing the level of his anger. I sensed it was not only increasing, but expanding to take in the guy who took his fist to Serena and whoever did the legwork on the client.
We were pushing out of the doors when I felt it.
Eyes on me.
I twisted my neck and shoved the door open with my gaze trained over my shoulder. I swept the reception area with not mild attention.
It was early morning, no one was there that I could see but the clerk.
Fuck.
I turned my attention to where I was going, heading for my girl in the lot.
This had been happening lately, too much. I long since learned how to sense it and read it. I might not be girlie but I’d have to be blind not to see that I wasn’t hard on the eyes. This meant I got a lot of looks.
This wasn’t that, some guy who liked what he saw and wanted in there.
This was a different kind of watching.
It had been going on now for about a month but every time I felt it, when I scanned or circled back to take a better look, I could find nothing.
I didn’t like it but there was nothing I could do if I couldn’t discover the source.
Now I had a job to do and I didn’t have the time to swing back into reception on the guise of asking the clerk more questions to see if someone was checking me out.
So I followed behind Rhash in his car with my eyes peeled, looking for a tail.
And finding nothing.
* * * * *
I stood in the empty living room trying to hold my shit.
“Who did the check?” I asked, my voice low with anger.
“Live,” Rhash grunted and I flipped open my phone, using my thumb on the keypad to scroll down my phonebook to Lively.
I heard Rhash hitting buttons on his own phone, I knew connecting with Knight.
We’d hit the client’s house and found a for sale sign in the front yard. When we’d gone in, there was nothing there. Not a stick of furniture. Totally cleared out.
This gave me a bad feeling. This was not your random asshole that got off on paying for sex and roughing up women.
Stolen credit cards. False addresses.
This was bad.
The phone rang four times in my ear before I connected.
“Pip, what the fuck? It’s after four in the morning,” Live muttered sleepily in my ear, using the shortened version of the nickname that the boys gave me. Pipsqueak.
The guys jacked around all the time. We were always fucking with each other, playing jokes, giving each other shit. It was just the way. Pipsqueak and Pip were not the nicknames for badass bitches like me who could kick ass but what did I care? It was ironic and it sure as fuck could be worse. I knew this because one of Knight’s men was nicknamed Tiny, this wasn’t ironic and it didn’t refer to his stature. He hated it but he put up with it because if he didn’t it would mean he not only had a small dick but also no balls, which would have been worse.
And anyway, he had a secret that I knew because one of his women shared. This was, his dick might be small but that didn’t mean he didn’t know what to do with his tongue and fingers. The way it was described, he made up for it in a big way.
I didn’t delay in sharing what the fuck to Live.
“Serena was worked over tonight. Client paid for the hotel in cash, gave a fake name and a stolen credit card. Right now I’m standing in his living room with Rhash and it’s empty. By empty I mean there’s no furniture and there’s a for sale sign in the yard.”
“Fuck,” he whispered.
“Baby, it’s late. What the hell?” I heard in the background and knew this was Live’s woman, Amy. She sounded sleepy and snippy. I’d never heard her sounding sleepy. I frequently heard her sounding snippy.
Incidentally, she was
not
one of the guys’ women that I liked unreservedly or at all. She was a ball buster. I didn’t like women like her who happily accepted the dresses, shoes, jewelry and free cover to get into Knight’s club, Slade, from her man. Amy didn’t have any problems bitching about everything under the sun, including the fact Live had to work for the money it took to buy her dresses, shoes and jewelry.
“Yeah, fuck,” I agreed, ignoring Amy which was my usual tactic for dealing with her. “You do the full check?” I asked.
“Fuck yeah, I did. ‘Course I did,” Live told me, insulted. “There was furniture there when I checked him out, all through the house. There sure as fuck wasn’t a for sale sign in the yard.”
“Baby, what… the…
hell?
” Amy snapped sounding less sleepy but definitely more snippy.
“Give me a minute, darlin’,” Live replied to Amy then to me, “How bad’s Serena?”
“Fat lip, swollen eye, could be worse but that isn’t the point,” I answered.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
I heard Rhash’s phone snap closed so my eyes went to him through the dark.
“Knight says meeting. Now. Slade. Get his ass in there, Sylvie,” he rumbled then didn’t wait for me to respond. He stalked to the door.
I went back to the phone. “You hear that?”
“On my way,” Live muttered.
“What?” I heard Amy ask, her voice going shrill. “Now?”
“Later,” I said into the phone then snapped it shut quickly in a successful effort to avoid hearing Live get his balls busted. I hoped she excelled at giving head or tasted like pure honey to be worth that shit.
I followed Rhash out the backdoor. We’d picked the lock and I made certain it was secure again before I moved around the house. As I approached my car, I watched Rhash give me a finger flick through the window as he drove away in his black Nissan Z.
I hit the sidewalk and was moving around the hood of my Corvette when I noted the big Ford Expedition motoring down the street the opposite direction from Rhash. My eyes locked on it, taking in the Arizona plates then moving up to the cab.
At the front of the hood of my Corvette, I stopped dead and my chest depressed like a boulder had landed on it.
The Expedition drove past, the driver not even glancing my way and my head turned, following it.
No fucking way.
No fucking way.
I’d seen him, this was true. I’d seen him dozens of times in the last sixteen years. Or, I had convinced myself I had.
But I hadn’t.
He was gone.
There was no way after sixteen years he’d make his way from Kentucky to a street in Denver at after four o’clock in the morning at the same time I was on that street.
No way.
There was a time when I wanted it. I saw him everywhere, that was how much I wanted it. I wanted to see him again so he could take me away like he promised. Time passed and my life that had been swirling flushed down the toilet and I wanted to see him again so I could scream in his face, kick him, beat him, share exactly what his betrayal meant to my heart and my life. How, when he left, a shit life that was only ever good when I was breathing his air turned even
more
shit.
That time was not now. I was over it. I’d gotten out, moved on, lived my own life how I wanted to live it, not how someone forced me to live it. It wasn’t easy. It was fucking hard. It nearly ended me.
But I did it and I was here. I liked my life.
And I didn’t look back.
Not ever.
Not fucking ever.
So that wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him. It was my mind playing tricks on me.