She didn’t answer.
I didn’t wait and went on, “Well, that’s my man and no one out there saw him or me. You scream, we vanish. You report this to the cops, we both got alibis. But you, you live with Knight Sebring’s wrath breathing down your neck and everywhere you go, every minute of the day, you fear the day he unleashes that wrath. If you can live down the blowjob pictures, you still got Knight to deal with. You talk right now, you’re homeless and without a man to lead around by his dick. You don’t, you bought yourself a life full of fear.”
She didn’t say anything.
I yanked up on her arm hard.
She whimpered.
“Don’t test me. I might be small but I’m strong and I’m pissed. I’ll snap it,” I whispered in her ear.
“He… he, I don’t know much about it,” she whispered back, straining against my hold, lifting up to her toes in her high-heeled shoes to alleviate the pain.
“Share what you know,” I invited.
“Let go,” she demanded.
“Not until you share.”
“Not until you let go.”
I yanked up again and she cried out.
“I got all day. You got a martini to get back to,” I told her.
“I… fuck,” she snapped. “He wants Knight’s girls. Thinks, if they don’t think they’re safe, they’ll defect. If it’s bad enough and they just quit, he’s fine. Just as long as he shuts down Knight and his girls.”
“You know Nick?” I asked.
“Who?” she asked back.
“He work with a man named Nick?”
“No. I don’t know. I never heard that name.”
“Those clients last night, Amy, they weren’t new,” I told her.
“He’s been planning this a long time,” she told me.
“Are there more men in the system we gotta worry about?” I asked.
“I… don’t know.”
“How many men are there, Amy?” I pushed.
“I don’t know,” she repeated.
“Three men worked girls over last night. Are there more?”
“I don’t know!”
I yanked up her arm and shoved her so deep into the wall, her face smushed against it.
“Now is the time to share,” I advised softly. “I find out you withheld anything, Amy, this will not make me happy and I’m a girl. Girls know girls. I’ll know exactly what’ll cut deep and I’ll do that to you. You get me?”
“I don’t know!” she snapped. “I just told him what Live told me about the new girls. He wanted to target the new girls. The other ones, the ones that have been around awhile, they were in the business, defected to Knight for protection and know the score. They wouldn’t blink. The new ones would freak. He knew that. So I gave him their information.”
Stupid, useless bitch.
“Do you know what else he’s got planned?” I pushed.
“No!”
“You sure about that?” I prompted.
“I just told him about the new girls. That’s it!”
I whipped her around again, grabbed both wrists and cocked her arms, shoving them into her chest and her back into the wall so hard her skull cracked against it. She blinked and winced in pain but I got in her face.
“He beat her bloody, split open and swollen. He raped her between her legs and up her ass. He did the deed but you did that to her, too. He’s a man and men can be animals. You’re a woman and we gotta look out for each other. What could bring you to do that to a sister?”
Her head tipped slightly to the side and her face got snide. “Can you rape a girl like that?”
Blood roared in my ears and it took everything I had not to spit in her face.
“You sucked cock for money,” I reminded her, she flinched and I leaned in. “And you spread for Live for the same reasons. He might not have handed over cash direct after the act but those girls got one on you, bitch, in a way that makes them so many steps up from you it isn’t even funny. They’re honest about being whores. You’re just kidding yourself that you aren’t one.”
I shoved her against the wall and stepped away.
Her hands went to her wrists and rubbed.
“I don’t see you again,” I whispered. “You see me, you disappear. Do you understand?”
“Fuck you,” she whispered back.
“Blowjob pictures, Amy.”
She scrunched her face up and glared at me.
I continued, “I do not see you. I do not hear about you. Live doesn’t. No one does. You have ceased to exist on the club scene in Denver. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she snapped.
I was done so I turned away from her to see Creed watching me blank-faced, arms crossed on his chest. He moved away from the door and opened it for me. I walked right through and we moved down the hall, through the restaurant, out and to his truck.
I called into Knight what I knew. He reported back they’d picked up Nair. I told him we’d be there in thirty.
I disconnected, filled in Creed and suddenly, he pulled into a parking lot, drove to a section far away from the store without any cars around, stopped the truck and switched off the ignition.