Page 113 of Vicious Arrangement
I barely register it as I push past them going into the building. I don’t stop at the clerk, who’s watching TV and smoking like it’s the seventies behind a wall of glass.
“Fifty,” she says.
Asher shoves three twenties through the slit at the bottom, and she pockets it. No change, but I grab his arm. “This way.”
I don’t care that I’m in an expensive suit and Asher’s smartly dressed. I don’t care what the fucking hookers or two-bit criminals and junkies think of us.
We pass them all along a hall where two people shoot up in a room, the door open. There’s another room with a girl in it, and the door’s open too because they’re clearly filming, and naked men in masks and shoes line up to just outside the door.
It’s not her.
I keep going.
There are three floors, and we try the handles of the doors on the first one as we go. Most don’t seem to lock, and there are screams, silence, invites, in every room people are doing fuck knows what… some fucking, some doing drugs, others… I think in some of them people live there.
Aria isn’t on the first floor, so we head up the worn stairs and hit the second floor.
A junkie rolls out of a room, needle in his arm, as a girl starts throwing things. The guy shoves me, and I lose it. I grab him by the throat and throw him into the wall.
“Where the fuck is she? My wife, have you seen her?—”
“Dude.” Asher puts his hand on my arm. “You’re choking him.”
With horror, I look at my hand wrapped tight around the wastrel’s neck, his face turning mottled red and blue. I let him go, and he sinks to the floor, head lolling, and he starts laughing.
I want to kick him but restrain myself.
Fury’s unleashes now, and it’s whipping up one hell of a storm. I fling open the doors I can and kick open the ones I can’t.
“She’s not here, Noah.” Asher grabs me and shakes me. “Calm down, and don’t do anything stupid. Jail still takes rich men, you know. Remember you’ve got a wife and a kid on the way. Don’t mess it up with someone who isn’t worth it. Because Aaron’s not worth it.”
I nod, and we head up to the third floor.
It’s quieter here. Someone screams and laughs in a room, and there’s a lot of moaning and banging sounds from a lot of the rooms.
I’m betting this is where the girls rent themselves out in the rooms. Or their pimp does.
Suddenly, a door near the end opens, and I grab Aaron, dragging him back to the side, pressing against the wall.
“Fucking hot, airless room. Piece of shit bitch. Do they have ice here? No. Fuckers, all of them.”
I nudge Asher. “Aaron,” I mouth to him.
And before he can stop me, I take off down the hall, risking a peek inside.
He’s clearly trying to get air, and I can see him muttering things to someone. I risk another peek. The bathroom wall blocks most of the view, but I see the corner of a bed.
And I press back against the wall.
It’s Aria, it’s got to be.
The door slams shut, and he’s talking again, but I can’t make out the words.
She’s okay, she’s okay, she’s okay.
But no matter how much I tell myself that, he might be talking to her dead body, and that’s killing me. I don’t have a weapon, and I don’t care.
Asher comes up. He’s got two pieces of wood that look like legs off a chair. He hands me one.
