Page 17 of Arran's Obsession

Alisha walked away down the hall, calling back quietly, “Yes, we can train people, but usually if someone’s here, it’s because they started this line of work themselves, or were made to do it, if you catch my meaning.”

She opened the big doors to reveal the wide room of the strip club, floor lights marking the edges and spotlights on stages. Tables and booths were packed with groups of men, and a line of occupied chairs mirrored the shape of the main stage.

I scanned for Dad among the punters. No luck.

Onstage, a woman peeled off her micro dress, revealing neon underwear. Then she dropped backwards, belly pointed to the ceiling and the apex of her thighs to the audience. In a move worthy of a gymnast, she put her full weight onto her hands, arching back so her legs were over her and open in the splits with only the barest scrap of her pink thong covering her core.

The men roared and whooped.

My host tapped my jaw closed. “Have you even been in a strip club?”

I shook my head, and she gave a more sympathetic smile.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Clean little thing, aren’t you? It’s odd for me to meet someone from the other side of the tracks. My whole world is this place.”

I didn’t know exactly what my side of the tracks looked like to her, and I didn’t get a chance to ask as a man in a suit hustled over and spoke in her ear, urgency and apology in his expression.

Alisha listened then rolled her eyes. “I need to go fix a backstage disaster. I’ll be right back. Someone will take care of you.”

She left me in the middle of the club. The perfect opportunity.

I snagged a passing waitress in a cute, skimpy serving uniform and with a tray of empty glasses on her hand. “Hey, is Sydney here?”

“Sorry, hun, I only just started so I don’t know everyone yet. Ask Clem at the bar?”

She wheeled away, and I trotted after, her steps leading me to a brightly lit bar.

An older woman with deep ebony skin pulled pints in plastic cups, her sizeable chest stretching an identical uniform to the waitress. She noticed me and smiled. “We do table service here, darling. Go sit down and someone will be with you.”

“I’m not a customer. I’m trying to find Sydney. Is she around?”

The barwoman frowned. “Not familiar with that name. Is she staff or does she dance?”

Moniqua had said stripper, I was sure. “She’s a stripper. A dancer, I mean.”

“I know all the girls on my floor, and she ain’t one of them. Not here, not upstairs.”

A strange warning swept through me with a shiver of cold. “How do I get upstairs?”

“If you don’t know that, I’m not telling.” She placed the pint of amber beer on a waiting tray and narrowed her gaze. “Who are you here with?”

Someone tapped my shoulder. I turned to find a woman about my age waiting, her outfit the same black and pink as the other staff. There was a logo on her waistcoat. A black-and-white skull, just like the men in the office had worn.

“You Jenny? I’m Lara. Alisha asked me to show you back to the offices. Follow me.”

Damn. This was all going wrong.

Lara took me back through a different route than the one I’d come, along another hall. Her short brown hair flashed in the light, pretty pink metallic strands woven into it.

The shade reminded me of Cherry’s pink. I hadn’t seen her earlier this evening, but I’d make a point of checking on her once I got home.

Around the corner, we passed a stairwell behind glass. From the lower flight, a man strode up the steps, taking on the next set purposefully to jog out of sight upwards. He wore a suit but had the same expression of need as the private room client I’d watched earlier. What was down there? I tried to picture the exterior of the warehouse. We were right on the river, so it could have another entrance, a lower one around the back, more private for those who didn’t want to enter the public way.

As they might if they weren’t here for the dancing side of the club but something else. An even more taboo offer.

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