Page 6 of Babydoll

Python stands near the yellowed-lace-curtained window keeping a watchful eye. But Python and his slightly smaller wing man are suddenly no longer my focus. Not when the third guy walks into the room and sits on the coffee table directly in front of me. His eyes are so cold they make my insides twist into knots and quiver.

He’s sinewy and at least a half foot shorter than the other two, but despite looking weaker physically, he’s clearly the leader. A gun hangs loosely in his grip, the arm attached to it dangling between his wide-spread thighs as if he doesn’t have a worry in the world. I focus on that gun, except when I attempt to memorize the tattoos that cover his arms, one of which is a naked woman nailed to a cross with a snake crawling between her legs, or when I’m distracted by his dark, dead eyes.

“Cops are all over Gage’s place confiscating our inventory.”

“Inventory?” I repeat dumbly.

He rolls his eyes skyward. “Our drugs.”

I swallow. Hard, forgetting the strength I had moments ago. They didn’t even know I dumped them. They assumed the cops took them as evidence. I’m sure they’d know soon though. The cop that ‘all cleared’ the parking lot was obviously on their payroll.

“You called 911 and that makes you responsible for our loss of stock.” His dialect is odd, as if he’s performing a sermon rather than a conversation and it adds to the sickening fear rising in meagain. This man won’t just kill me, he’ll make me beg for death before he allows it

“He was dying,” I say in a cracked voice. How much worse would this get when they learned I dumped them?

“The circumstances do not absolve you.” The flatness in his dark gaze terrifies me. “How much does she owe us, Slash?”

Slash’s knife clicks shut abruptly and he deadpans me as he slips it into his pocket.

“Just replenished his supply, Preach.”

He frowns. “Seems you have two choices…”

Every ounce of blood inside me drains away, or at least it feels that way. The room spins, the only thing that stays in focus is the cruelty on Preach’s face and the excitement on Slash’s… My guts roil.

I’m so fucked. Hell, if I believed in a higher power, I’d get on my knees right now and pray for death, because whatever my choices are, they’re not going to be as easy as that.

Chapter One

Seven Months Later

Lu

The note reads, “To the jackass that keeps stealing my pudding?—”

I skim through the rest with an eye roll as it paints me in a rather unsavory light. Which, fair enough, it’s well deserved because I am a total jackass now, but the part of me that worked so hard to become Tallulah Jane Olsen, the sweet vet tech and contributing member of society, doesn’t like it one bit. But this is my life now—friendly vet tech by day and unapproachable, lunch-thief janitor by night.

Fun.

Reading through the note once more, I shake my head. It isn’t the most imaginative of work-lunch notes, but that doesn’t stop the leaden feeling it gives me in the pit of my stomach, because it’s one hundred percent deserved.

“But it’s not because I want to be a jackass,” I whisper to the note before I jam it roughly into my pocket next to the pudding cup I stole. And it’s true. I’d much rather not have to steal someone’s lunch. I even try to take the least nutritionally valuable item because, I dunno, it seems less rude if you take a snack that doesn’t in any way contribute to the health of saidvictim, and in fact, might even prevent future health conditions like obesity and diabetes.

I know that way of thinking is quite a leap, but how else do I live with myself? And living is seriously the point. I want to live. But keeping myself alive has become a daily battle thanks to my self-righteous, anger-fueled, I’ll-fix-your-problems-easy-peasy, drug-dump rescue seven months ago.

Satan’s Ransom controlled the drugs in River’s End and the two larger surrounding cities. And I had dumped their drugs. I had dumpeda lotof their drugs. And I had to pay for them.

My choice? I could pay them back with cash or my life, but not death, no. I’d pay them back with the rest of my natural life.

And their payment plan, including a hefty interest rate, wasn’t something I could afford—not working one job, and apparently not working two either, because even with my second job as a janitor, I’d lost everything I’d worked so hard for. My apartment, with its nicely tended grounds, the savings I’d built to buy myself a new car, and the safety, financial and personal, I’d felt for the first time in my life were all gone.

Hell, I couldn’t even afford to feed myself anymore.

In an instant, Tallulah Jane Olsen was gone. Just like little Tallulah Jane the night my parents died. My life had been tossed in a woodchipper again. I’d found the pieces once, put myself together, clawed my way out of the foster care system and become someone normal and upstanding, but now?

Now the only thing left of me is a tough, gritty, and dark-humoredjackass.

Surviving requires it. Requires her.

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