Chatter ceases and heads swivel towards the commotion.
Reminds me of high school when a kid farted in class, and the whole room went silent and stared at him until his face turned purple.
The girl jumps up, tiptoeing her platform heels through the glass as planned.
“I’m so sorry,” she apologizes, the first hint of inflection in her tone. “I’ll clean this up right away.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I shout, glaring at her like she’s the one that knocked it over.
Her mouth falls open, and I stand.
“Come to the back with me,” I snarl, my eyes flashing with fury. She curls in on herself, while the other men snicker.
“Clumsy bitch,” one of the men mutters, looking at her the same way you would if you accidentally touched the week-old gum stuck to the bottom of your desk.
“I’ll be back once I take care of her,” I say directly to Mark.
He laughs heartily, enjoying the thought of an innocent woman being punished for something so trivial. The old fuck probably falls over once a week and needs LifeAlert to get back up. Asshole can’t talk about glass falling when he can’t even keep his body vertical.
I grab the woman’s arm firmly, jerking her against me and dragging her away.
She doesn’t fight too hard. Self-preservation is kicking in, fighting its way through the cloud of drugs in her system. But she has long accepted her fate.
As soon as I get her into a quiet room, I turn to her. She’s already dropped to her knees, her green eyes looking up at me with sorrow and acceptance.
She’s a beautiful girl, with bright red hair, grass-green eyes and freckles dotting her nose.
Something about her reminds me a little of Addie, and I nearly walk right back out and crush my fist in Mark’s face just for touching her.
“Get up,” I say firmly. She gets to her feet unsteadily, looking much like a baby giraffe walking for the first time.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” I say. Her brow puckers and she frowns.
“Sir—”
“What’s your name, sweetheart?”
She stutters over the question. “Cherry.”
I shake my head. “Is that your real name or stage name?”
She rolls her lips. “Real.”
Her parents are really fucking unoriginal. Like might as well have a second child and name her Strawberry or Watermelon.
Anyway, besides the point. “How would you feel about getting a fresh start in life, yeah?”
Her eyes widen, and it seems like the prospect of escaping this one has some of the drug-induced fog receding from her gaze. But then she turns wary, and then resigned. Tears line the edges of her lids, and the sight will forever haunt me.
She looks down, seeming to collect herself. “I know what that means. I-I’m really sorry. I didn’t realize I was leaning that far down.”
“I’m not going to hurt or kill you, Cherry,” I cut in. “I’m going to help you, but I need you to listen to exactly what I say.”
She shifts on her feet, peering up at me through her lashes and bobbing her head frantically. I slip out the Bluetooth earpiece I had hidden deep in my inner suit pocket. All of my jackets have a special lead lining in them that deflects radiation. Meaning I can walk through any body scanner without the devices being detected.
I pop it in my ear, press the button that immediately calls out to Jay, and wait for him to answer.
When he does, I explain the situation. It takes fifteen minutes before he has a car ready to pick her up. In that time, Cherry tells me about her family. About her younger sister that has cancer and her poor single mother. She works this job to pay the medical bills, but she confesses that she doesn’t know if it’s worth it if she’s killed and the extra income stops.
She won’t ever have to worry about taking care of them again. Or being killed because of a broken glass.
Jay watches the camera feed and directs me towards a back door exit without detection.
I grab her wrist before she walks out of the door. The nondescript black sedan is waiting ten feet away, and the door already open for her.
“I know,” she says softly. “I don’t know your face. I’ve never seen you before,” she guesses.
I shake my head. “Cherry, you’re not going to a place where you’ll ever be questioned about something like that. You and your family will be taken care of and safe. I promise. All I ask is that you do something meaningful with your life. That’s all.”
A single tear slips from her eye. She hurriedly wipes it away and nods. Her brightened eyes shine with hope, and doing this shit, involving myself in the worst of humanity—it’s all worth it when I have a survivor look at me like that.
Not like I’m a hero, but like they can actually envision a future.
She stumbles off to the car, and I make my way back inside, making sure no one spots me.
“Jay, clear the cameras,” I say before taking the earpiece out and slipping it back in the hidden pocket.
The cameras will be spliced. If anyone reviews them, they’ll see me dragging a dejected Cherry into a room and us walking out separately.
It’s one of my specialties that I mastered and then trained Jay in. Taking parts of a camera feed and manipulating them to look exactly how you want them to, without even the best hackers being able to detect manipulation.
I crack my neck, and ready myself for a very long night of shooting the shit and becoming BFF’s with a fucking pedophile.
Chapter 21
The Manipulator
I
’m stewing.
Nana used to make this god-awful stew when I was young. It smelled like a dumpster fire and tasted even worse. My attitude is about as foul as that stew right now.
“I don’t even know his name,” I groan, my voice muffled by my hands. They’ve been glued to my face ever since Daya got here, and I confessed he broke in again.
I haven’t gotten around to what happened yet. There’s not an ounce of courage in my bones. She’s been patiently waiting, knowing that I’m holding something back. Something terrible and shameful. And something I can’t stop fucking thinking about.
“You fucked him, didn’t you?” she asks calmly.
My eyes bulge, and I unglue my hands from my face so I can pin her with a glare.
“No, I did not fuck him,” I snarl, as if she’s suggesting something insane and I didn’t come really damn close to it. I can feel the blood rising in my cheeks and my left eye twitches.
Fuck. Daya knows that’s my tell.
“You did!” she bursts, standing up from her chair and looking down at me with shock.
“I didn’t! I promise,” I rush out, grabbing her hand. “But… something did happen.”
She puffs out a breath and settles back down in her chair, scooting back into the island in my kitchen and grabbing her margarita. She sucks down two huge gulps, trepidation on her face.