Page 25 of Prey

A wallflower who came alive when no one was looking, but what button do I push to see that girl again? What did I have to do to unfurl the selkie from this geek girl cocoon? There had to be a way to navigate this maze to the golden prize in the center, the mythical creature frolicking effortlessly through the water. Shimmering bronzed skin and dark hair, shiny and wet, were plastered to her smooth back and those curves, taunting this man with every graceful move.

It was hard to imagine it was the same girl. But she was. I knew she was because her face and body were imprinted onto my brain forever. Now that she was venturing into my territory, under my dissecting eye, she could destroy the fantasy I’d created of her, or…she could be more intriguing than I imagined.

Either way, I’d never been more curious to explore a girl, and if I could discover the secret code to unlock Petra Black, then it’d be worth it. “Petra Black,” I chuckled again. “That’s a terrible fake name.”

Gunner emerged without saying hello, smelling of dope and cigarettes and wearing a vintage Sex Pistols T-shirt. Those black tattoos seemed to grow further down his arms whenever I saw him. He hardly suited Savile's vibe and standards, but once pushed, he’d dust up and put on a suit.

“I’m not telling you where the keycard is,” I told him straight up.

“I didn’t ask,” he mumbled, slouching back in the armchair. “Mikky here?”

“Yeah, he’s meeting with the accountant,” I informed him. Gunner seemed a million miles away, staring out across the casino. He's probably thinking about that girl he’s obsessed with…what’s her name?

“Are there problems with the accounts?” he asked as he watched the staff prepare the floor, dusting, vacuuming, polishing, stacking the chips, and checking the cards. This was my life, and I loved every second of it.

“I don’t think so. He said he had a couple of questions,” I told Gunner as he took a packet of cigarettes and tapped out one, then offered me one, which I declined.

I never had a taste for smoking anything, including fine Cubans and dope. Probably because my father was a chain smoker, and everything he touched absorbed his stench – the curtains, his truck, the couch. You’d remove a clean towel from the linen cupboard or open a fresh cake of soap, and it’ll smell like stale cigarettes.

Gunner scoffed. “You know what he’s really doing? He’s checking out that the accountant isn’t a fucking snitch.”

“He’s the same accountant that Mr. Kaiser…your father had, so he can’t be that bad,” I argued, even though the second most common question Mikky would ask when I visited him in prison was, “What’s that fucking accountant up to? Better not be screwing around with our money.” The first most common question was, “Have you found the girl yet?”

“Yeah, but Mikky needs to give him the once over. You know…” he made circles in the air with his finger, “test him for loyalty.”

I knew precisely what Gunner was talking about. You don’t want to risk your career and make an enemy of Mikael Kaiser.

“He’ll be squealing like a piglet by the time Mikky’s given him the Spanish Inquisition,” Gunner added. His concentrationshifted when about twenty people stepped into the casino area behind Freddie. “What’s going on there?”

“Interviews. We’ve got several positions that need to be filled. We lost some staff at the end of the college term.”

It was standard procedure every year at this time when students returned home for the break and reapplied for the job when they came back. That’s why we only gave the critical roles to non-students, while kitchenhands, waitresses, and dancers were primarily students who needed a bit of extra cash.

Betty checked her phone, then pushed her chair back and glanced at us. I hoped she had just received word that Petra Black had returned to pick up her uniform. She left the floor, exiting through the double doors that led to the grand entrance, where a potential new employee waited to be interviewed.

“Pain in the arse,” Gunner muttered, then started scrolling on his phone. I stretched my neck to peer at what he was looking at, hoping that it wasn’t porn or extreme violence to find that he was peering at shiny hubcaps and curvy chassis. Gunner’s porn was car porn.

I’ll update his mom, Sylvie Kaiser, later today since her son was reluctant to call her. I kept in regular contact with her just because she worried about her son after his father was murdered and the thing that went down with Annika. In many ways, what Annika did had a more damaging effect on Gunner than when his father died.

I never met Annika, not formally anyway; she’d be a lingering figure in the background with Gunner, but I didn’t pay her much attention because she was just a kid. But she broke Gunner’s heart and fractured his ability to trust people, and I couldn’t forgive a girl who did that to the son of my hero, Mr. Kaiser. I knew Mikky felt the same way, and now Mikael had been released from prison, we could refocus our attention on whokilled Mr. Kaiser, and one of the people who might know the answer was Annika.

So, not only did we need to hunt her down to find out who blackmailed or bribed her to lie and snitch, although Mikky was convinced it was crooked cops in the Larsson Police Department or FBI, but we needed to siphon that information out of Annika.

But first, we needed to find her, and I had no leads or clues as to where she had gone. It was as if she had disappeared from the face of the earth, erased and obliterated, and even our contact in the Larsson Police Department had no idea where she went or who organized her disappearance.

But we knew that she was under the thick and impenetrable armor of the Witness Protection program, and that’s the only information we managed to obtain.

The double doors opened again, and Betty stepped out like a catwalk model, straight back, long black ponytail swinging. Behind her was a shy creature clinging to her bag, glancing about nervously, adjusting her glasses, scratching her chin, and fixing curls of hair behind her ear—twitchy and intimidated like a fish out of water.

Petra Black. The naked girl in the forest nature pool was quite a different creature from what I was looking at now—the exact opposite. But, still, I couldn’t look away in case I missed the shedding of that disguise to reveal the selkie. Betty proceeded to show her around, which was a performance specifically for me, I assumed, since kitchenhands don’t work the club floor and could access the kitchen through the back service door. There was no single reason Betty needed to bring a kitchenhand out here except to tease me.

I glanced at Gunner to see if he noticed this girl to gauge how attractive she would be to someone who hadn’t seen her naked, but he was staring at a pic of an engine on his phone, watching that car porn again. Yep, she was gorgeous naked, and I wantedto see her naked again, but I was hesitant to destroy my built-up fantasy of her.

Petra Black fumbled nervously, dropped her phone, then picked it up only to drop it again, and a breathy chuckle escaped my lips, particularly when Betty shot me daggers from her eyeballs at having to hire a clumsy girl with a fake ID just because I had a thing for her. But I had faith in this girl. If she didn’t know how to work hard and fast, she’d learn on the job, and if she still proved useless, I’d sack her once satisfied.

As her little ass moved in those jeans, I imagined bending her over the nearest table and fucking her. Maybe my cock could unlock the selkie, or perhaps the selkie only appeared when she was alone and wet. No problem. I’ll fuck her in the water, under the waterfall, on the rocks.

Jeez, it’s been a while since I fucked a chick. Maybe that was my problem. Too much working and studying and not enough fun times and mindless fucking.

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