Page 59 of Prey

That boy was never late, or maybe he started getting slothful while I was in prison. Nah, that didn’t seem like him.

Freddie beckoned the girl out of the line of dancers and asked her to come down the stairs to speak to me. Even from this distance, I detected the fear in her eyes, but I didn’t care, and I suspected she knew why I wanted to see her.

Her hands grasped together to stop them from shaking as she stumbled into those black tap shoes; luckily, Freddie caught her before she made an arse out of herself.

As she stood over me, I peered at her eyes, and as I expected, she was high as fucking kite, and I shot Freddie a look of disapproval. “Roll up your sleeves.”

She fidgeted and shuffled from one foot to the other, irritating me.

“Did you hear me speak?” I snarled at her. “Did you see these lips move?”

She swallowed before answering, “Yes.”

“Roll up your sleeves,” I demanded.

With shaking, pale hands, she began to pull them up but was taking her sweet time, so I signaled to Freddie to help her. He yanked her sleeve up and exposed track marks, and I tutted in annoyance.

“Get her out of here,” I growled, pushing back my chair to stand. “Put her in the fucking rehab.” Freddie started ushering her away, looking ashamed, so he should be. We’ve got standards to uphold. Our good Kaiser money should be spent pleasing our paying members with gold and silver, not two-bit snags.

“Wait.” I halted Freddie because I decided I hadn’t finished and stormed toward the stage.

You couldn’t hear a fucking pin drop as their nightmare descended on them, climbing up the steps as some of the girls smiled while others looked as though they were about to faint.

“Sleeves up,” I ordered, not in the mood to muck around.

One by one, I demanded they pull their sleeves up, and if they didn’t, I pulled them up for them. The brown-haired girl was another space cadet with tracks on her arms, so I told her to step back. The redhead was fine, the curvy blond was fine, and the skinny blond was another whose pupils were large while she swayed on her feet, so I ordered her to step back as well.

Out of the lineup of twelve girls, four of them were spun out, and that raised the question as to where they were getting the drugs from.

“Bring those girls to me,” I insisted as Freddie bustled about, probably wishing I was still in prison, while he herded the reluctant girls down the stage steps to my table.

It was too early for a drink, so I lit a cigar and took a strong pull, blew out the smoke, waiting impatiently for the girls to sort their shit out and park their arses in a chair.

Once they were seated and fidgeting nervously, I sat in silence, which was a technique I learned from my uncle to intimidate and assert control. Long pauses and unflinching stares were an effective way to dish out a message without saying a damn thing. Everyone in this bar. Everyone in this fucking club knew who was in charge.

Dragging out the silence a little longer as we were draped in a cloud of cigar smoke, I inspected the dancers' body language on the stage. When I was ready to speak, I leaned back in my chair, rested my arm on the chair next to me, and demanded, “Point them out.”

Blank stares on pale face replied, still twitching and too frightened to look me in the eye.

“Your dealer,” I clarified, noticing a redhead behind the bar watching with great interest as she wiped the glasses with a cloth to make them squeaky clean. She could be curious. Or she could know something.

When silence fell, I repeated slowly, “Who is your dealer?”

The girls exchanged glances, which told me they were possibly connected outside of work and had the same dealer. No one dared to speak, so I wondered if the dealer held something over them, bribery with drugs or threats against their families. But more likely, they were worried that I’d arrange for the Merk character to be knocked off. They knew who I was and where I’d been for the last three years.

“You’ve got five seconds to give me a name…five, four, three…two-”

“Merk,” the blond with a pixie hairdo blurted and received fearful looks for it as panic coiled through them as if by uttering his name, they’d written their death warrant.

“Merk? Who the fuck is Merk? Where can I find Merk?” I pressed, as the redhead behind the bar kept catching my eye for some reason. Everyone else in the room turned away, pretending not to see, and she kept watching.

The pixie girl stuttered, “He’s-”

“Shush,” the girl with long brown hair hushed, then realized she made a grave mistake when she caught the look on my face. Merk had them wrapped around his little finger, and that pissed me off, mainly because it caused a weakness in my business.

I wavered before pushing my chair back and beckoned Freddie to get his arse over to me as I walked toward the bar.

“Everything okay, Mr. Kaiser?” he asked apprehensively.

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