Page 18 of Rook

“No worries. I plan to spread out. After being so cramped for so long, I’m looking forward to clothes in drawers and bath productsinthe shower, not carried along with me in them. Are there any club rules I should know about?” she asked, opening the trunk to pull out a different pair of shoes.

“Everything is pretty lax around there. Clean up after yourself kind of thing is really it. Even that… the prospects are supposed to do the cleaning.”

“I probably won’t be around that much anyway. I want to work.”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why do you want to work if I’m already paying you?”

“What else am I going to do all day? I’ll go crazy just sitting in a room, twiddling my thumbs. I was only going to do grocery delivery and that sort of thing. Gig work. Nothing that would get in the way of you needing me at your place or parading around town.”

“Speaking of,” I said as she looked at her car, holding my hand out to her.

She looked at it, uncomprehending for a moment.

“Oh, right. Duh,” she said, shaking her head at herself as she slipped her hand into mine.

This part sounds crazy as hell, but I swear I felt a sizzle move up my arm at the contact.

“So, this is Shady Valley. Named for the mountains,” I told her, gesturing out toward where they sat way back behind the prison. “This used to be a manufacturing town. Then the warehouse closed, the town collapsed, and things got real bad around here for a while.

“Eventually, the prison came in, creating jobs. And things have slowly been building since then. Mostly just the families of the guards, nurses, all that. Most people don’t want to live this close to a prison.”

“Is it maximum security?”

“Nah. It’s medium. Which is why there seems to be developers sniffing around lately.”

“I noticed a lot of blue-collar guys in the pub last night.”

We moved past the open storefronts, and I told her what I knew about them. I wasn’t a native of the area, and since she wasn’t either, I didn’t think it mattered that I didn’t know the history of every one of the abandoned places.

“We should probably get you linked in more around here,” I said. “Show our faces at the diner, get you a gym membership. Even if all you want to do is go there to use the massage chairs. The more people who could claim to have seen you before, the better. And I’m going to work on a fake mental history for the past two years just outside of the area, so if she asks around and not many people recognize you, it would make sense that you just recently moved here.”

“I have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Where am I supposed to say I’m living? I mean… I can’t say I’m at the clubhouse…”

“I’m gonna look into that. See if we know someone who can say you’re renting a room from them. If that doesn’t work, I can just rent you a place for a while. Might be nice to have your own space.”

“I’d actually prefer to stay at the clubhouse. So long as I am welcome, anyway.”

Who the hell would turn down a free apartment and stay at a noisy clubhouse full of strangers instead?

“I’m kind of used to the pace of a clubhouse, y’know? And, well, living alone in a strange town…”

Yeah, something about that wasn’t sitting right. She wasn’t telling the whole truth.

But given the favor she was doing me, it felt invasive to pry. Maybe as she got to know me better, she would let me in more.

I mean, not that I needed her to let me in. That wasn’t part of the deal. Despite that, though, I found myself curious. About her past. About the shit she was clearly keeping to herself.

If she was so forthcoming about her mom being a club girl who slept around so much that she didn’t even know who Tessa’s dad was, that she struggled with addiction, that she’d been in filthy-ass clubhouses growing up, what could she be keeping to herself that she thought was ‘worse?’

“Okay,” she said after we’d covered the walk about the town and climbed into her car to check out the suburbs, the apartment buildings, the mobile home community, and the farms, wanting her to have as complete a tour of the area as possible. Which happened to work out for her since she wanted to do food and grocery delivery as a side gig. The better she knew her way around, the quicker she would be and the more money she could make. It was a win-win. “So, tell me more about your time in prison. In case Nancy asks about that kind of thing.”

---