Page 9 of Bullet

I rushed to the door, peeked through the peephole, then swung open the door. Bristol entered the room. I slammed the door and locked it again.

She wrinkled her nose as she stepped into my room. “Girl, what is going on with you?”

I opened the dresser drawer and grabbed a pair of panties and a bra. “Nothing.”

She plopped down on the bed and dropped her hobo satchel next to her. “Nothing? That wasn’t nothing. What just happened?”

I tugged on jeans and a T-shirt I’d picked up at the secondhand store. “Nothing I can talk about.” Anything I told her could put her in danger. I grabbed the few clothes I had out of my drawer and tossed them on the bed. I had to be selective on what I kept and what I left behind. “Do you want these?” I held up two sequined bras I wore at the club.

“After today, you’re not going to need them.” She pulled an envelope from her bag. “This is from Jude. She pulled your cuts for the day. Travis is pissed. He said not to come back.”

I took the envelope and sat next to her. Getting fired was the least of my problems.

“You’re scaring me, Stormy. Who are those guys? Because I’ve seen you dance for a room full ofassholes. I’ve watched you avoid the bikers and curl up to the frat boys. Those guys in suits made you nervous, but the other one, Mars, scared the shit out of you.”

“I’m sorry. It’s complicated.” Not even Bristol knew me as anything but Stormy. She was smart enough to know I was running from something or someone.

“Does he know you?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. But he stared at me like he knew me.”

“Maybe he just wanted more than a dance. You definitely could have earned a thousand dollars with him. Devon lost his shit when you ran out. He had Travis up against a wall with a hand around his throat. He wanted to know if you’d been threatened to do more than dance.”

“Do you think they’ll come after me?”

Bristol wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “If they can find you. They were pissed that Travis didn’t have any paperwork on you. Who are they?”

I didn’t speak.

“You can’t keep running,” she said. “You’ll just get tired. The problems don’t go away. At some point, you’re going to have to trust someone. You can trust me.”

I nodded. “I’m in trouble.”

“No shit,” she said and chuckled.

“I recognized Mars, but I don’t know the other two.”

I needed help getting out of town, and if those three men figured out who I was, then Emerson could find me, and Bristol needed to be prepared to protect herself.

“Do you know who Emerson Barras is?”

“No.”

Neither did I when I met him. I thought he was a handsome businessman. He flew me to Paris on a private plane for our second date, blinded me with the sparkle and decadence of wealth, and took my virginity. I didn’t realize the plane belonged to hisassociates. “We were together for three years. He’s a lot older than me.”

“A sugar daddy?”

I shook my head. I’d been so foolish, enamored because of what he could buy me rather than looking deeper. Then I’d have seen his black soul and tasted the venom in his kiss.

“He’s a snake. I wanted to leave when I found out he had a wife. He tried to convince me the marriage was just business.”

It was easy to believe because they didn’t live together. I lived with Emerson in his penthouse. She lived on the coast. He claimed not to have children, but he’d lied about a lot of things.

“His wife was the least of my problems.” I slowly exhaled, trusting someone for the first time in months. “He’s dangerous.”

“And that’s who you’re running from? Why you’re dancing at the Landing Strip?”

I nodded. “I know some things I wish I didn’t.” Such as Emerson working for the mafia. But I couldn’t tell her that. It was a risk just telling her his name. “Ibetrayed him, and when he finds me, I’ll wish he’d killed me when he had the chance.”

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