Page 78 of Passion and Payback

Her brow crept up slightly. Clearly, I had surprised her. “Okay, you...obviously have this planned out. Not sure if that makes it stranger.”

“How old are you?” I asked her, finally finding the courage as I put the lid back on the bottle and stuffed it and the cloth back into my jacket in opposite pockets.

At that, she laughed softly. “That answer changes all the time.”

“How about the true one?”

“Sixteen.”

“And you’ve been doing this how long?”

“Long enough,” she said, her features hardening. “Why do you care?”

“Let’s just say I’ve got a vested interest in cataloging every fucked-up thing he’s capable of.”

“Him?” she let out a bitter laugh. “I don’t think there’s too much he’s not capable of. Only behaves himself because B...my boss would show up, string him up, and make it last.”

“Wow, your...boss,” I said, avoiding the words pimp or mistress because I didn’t want to risk pissing the girl off, “is worried about you getting killed or hurt but not being used for his sick fantasies?”

“That’s the nature of the business,” she said with a shrug. “But, uh...what do you have in mind for him?”

“I have a debt that needs to be repaid,” I said, reaching behind me to pull out the knife I had taken from and used on the dealer. “And I’m very interested in paying it back in full.”

She eyed the knife with the sort of casual interest someone might show to a slightly tasty-looking sandwich. “If ever a bastard deserves to get gutted, it’s him. Well, him and his buddies he sometimes likes to have around to have fun with me as well.”

My stomach rolled, and I gritted my teeth. “Lawyer and fancy rich boy on the city council?”

She took a moment to respond before whistling. “Wow, you’re familiar with him. Was what he didthatbad?”

“Does it matter?”

“Look, you seem like a nice guy, you really do.”

“I was going to drug you to kill a man. What about that screams ‘nice guy’?”

“The fact that you were going to drug me instead of just kill me speaks volumes.”

“I really hate the life you live.”

“You and me both,” she said with a soft smile. “And right there, you give a shit about what kind of life I live. And trust me, in this line of work, you learn to read people well and as fast aspossible otherwise, you end up in a bad spot or dead. And you seem like a good man, so why the fuck are you here?”

“He took something from me, quite a few things, he and his friends,” I said, tucking the knife away so it was out of sight. “And I have no intention of letting them get away with it. I’m going to make sure he doesn’t get to do the same thing to anyone else.”

“Took something,” she echoed, her gaze going distant for a moment as she mulled her thoughts. “There’s only a few things I can think of that someone could ‘take’ that would make a good man like you show up like this.”

“I’m not getting into it.”

“And I’m not asking.”

“Okay.”

“And what do you want from me? Because, sweetheart, I’m not helping you. I like you, and you’re cute, but I’m not helping you.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“Then what do you want?”

“For you to...walk away. To forget everything about me. What I look like, what I sound like, everything I told you. That I was ever here in the first place. Can you do that without getting into too much trouble?”

---