His relaxed, youthful face seemed to melt away in front of me as he looked at the photograph, his eyes flashing between mine and Jocelyn’s.
“We don’t make a habit of welcoming police into this place,” he said, leaning in a little closer and lowering his voice. “I could get in a lot of trouble for helping you out. Sorry.”
He slunk back and began hastily buffing at the bar top like one of those bartenders you see in old western movies. It was comical in a way, but I couldn’t bring myself to laugh.
“I’m not with the police,” I replied, already knowing he wouldn’t believe me.
“I guarantee anyone that brings a physical photograph into a bar is a cop. Sorry love, I don’t fancy getting myself fired.” He morphed from the warm young man I’d been chatting to a few moments ago into someone cold and closed off. If I wasn’t so suspicious by nature, I may have overlooked it. I had a feeling he knew something about Jocelyn, but I was also certain he wasn’t about to share it with me.
“Look,” I began, grabbing a business card out of my clutch and scribbling my mobile number on the back of it. “If you know something about this girl, please just call me. I’m not a cop and your boss doesn’t have to know about it.”
He eyed the card as though it might explode, but eventually, he pocketed it and studied his surroundings, presumably to see if anyone had seen him.
“I gotta get back to work.” He shrugged.
“It’s fine, just… think about it. If you remember anything, call me. If not, I won’t take it personally.”
This made the innocent smile tweak at his lips once again as he turned to walk away. Moments later, he stalled and looked over his shoulder at me.
“Be careful around these people. She wasn’t the first girl to go missing and she won’t be the last.”
The young bartender’s words echoed around in my head alongside the music. Just one more reason I wasn’t cut out for nightclubs. My brain already felt like it was about to drip out through my eyes if I didn’t find some place quiet soon.
Realising I would not get anything more out of the bar staff and knowing that the patrons of the club were too intoxicated or too busy to pay my questions much attention. Aware of the fact that time was ticking on, and I needed to get at least a couple hours of sleep tonight, I paid my bar tab and left the nightclub feeling deflated. I was no closer to figuring out why Jocelyn frequented Omen so often or whether the place had anything to do with her disappearance. It seemed the staff were under strict instructions to keep their mouths shut, at least that was my interpretation.
The night was crisp, a fine misting of rain pouring from the cloudy sky. It was a welcome relief from the warmth of dancing bodies inside Omen and I drew in a long breath as I stepped outside. I was just a few feet away from the exit when I heard the voices behind me. At first it was just footsteps, then muffled conversation and raucous laughter that reverberated off the darkened buildings surrounding Omen.
“How is a girl wearing a dress that short leaving this place alone?” A hoarse male voice called from behind me, a poor attempt at a stage whisper. I didn’t glance back, having already determined that there were two men following me. I didn’t want to give them the impression that I felt intimidated. Creeps like these guys were only further encouraged by the vulnerability of a woman. My car was just around the corner, and I could take care of myself just fine if they caught up with me. At least, that was what I thought.
In honour of all the terrible horror movies I’d watched throughout the years, my ridiculously high heel caught on the uneven ground, and I found myself just managing to put my hands out before my face met with the rain-soaked tarmac.
“Fuck,” I muttered, ripping the shoes off my feet as the two men that had been following me stopped and stared down at me. I gripped one shoe in my hand, bracing for the moment one of them would grab me. Much to my surprise, they didn’t immediately reach forward and hoist me up, nor did they ask if I was ok. Instead, one stood deathly still as the other circled around me—I had an inkling that the one who kept his feet planted on the ground, his black eyes on me, was in charge. They were the wolves. I, unfortunately, was the prey. I hated being the prey.
“Listen, guys, I didn’t come here for any trouble.” I sighed, finally getting myself back to standing. I had a good view of the men now. The one circling me less so, but the one stood opposite and staring at me with a crooked smile, was tall and emaciated. His light brown hair was slicked back from his face, which I was certain comprised 70% cheekbones. His nose tilted off to the side as though it had been broken one too many times, and he wore a startling ensemble of double denim. If the situation hadn’t been so tense, I might have laughed.
Without hesitation, he lunged forward and gripped his hand around my throat, tight enough to make me choke in a stunned breath. It wasn’t the norm for guys to go straight in for the throat, at least not at first. The second man continued his circling of us as the first kept me still, trailing his slimy gaze down over my breasts and bare arms as though considering his next meal. They both radiated an authority I hadn’t been prepared for. I knew Omen was dangerous and I had expected there may be some sort of scuffle at some point. Yet weirdly, this one still took me by surprise—maybe I’d been caught off guard by the classy clientele, or maybe I just wasn’t as streetwise as I thought I was.
No, I thought to myself. Thatch had trained me well, and I knew that the key to getting out of these sticky situations was to remain calm and consider every option for escaping safely. He’d also said one other thing that had stuck with me, if in a fight with a man, always aim between the legs.
With one motion, I thrust my knee up into the man’s groin and he buckled. Hands clasped to his balls as though his life depended on it. Not even a second letter, the other man moved in to strike. I barely dodged him before throwing a punch, only just missing his nose and hitting the solid mass of his jaw with my knuckles. I hissed in pain as the bones crunched and immediately swelled.
“Fucking bitch,” he yelled, taking a moment to spit out a mouthful of blood, saliva and what looked like a silver bullet. Only when he lunged at me again did I notice it wasn’t a bullet at all, but a silver tooth. These guys just got classier by the second. The distraction hadn’t done me any favours, allowing him to match my previous punch quick enough that I didn’t have a chance to dodge him. As blood pooled in my mouth and my eye throbbed, I nearly missed the cruel grin that lifted his lips.
“I’ll enjoy you,” he whispered so close to my ear that I could feel the spittle landing on my skin.
“What the fuck did I tell you guys!” a third voice, familiar this time, called from a distance away. The man holding my face in his grubby hand tossed me aside as though I were nothing, but I kept my balance.
“We don’t want your kind in here.” It was the doorman from earlier, big, burly and apparently far more talkative than he was a couple of hours ago. “Get. Go. Before I get the boss.”
It didn’t take any more than that to scare them off and they scattered like rats at dawn.
“You alright?” The doorman asked as he steadied me, eyeing my split lip and swollen face.
“I’m fine,” I snapped, wiping a droplet of blood from my lips with the back of my hand. “You should keep security out here at all times, you know.”
“Why don’t you come back inside and I’ll get someone to take a look at you?” He asked, ignoring my statement.
“Back inside?” I scoffed. “I’d sooner buy those guys a drink.”
He took a step back and folded his thick arms, studying me with a look that made me feel about two inches tall.
“People come here for danger, doll. If you can’t handle that, don’t come back.”
By the time I got home, the night sky was already lightening to a defeated shade of violet. The entire left side of my face felt as though it had swollen three times the size it was supposed to be.
I twisted the key in the front door behind me, check
ing three times to make sure it was secure, and grabbed a bottle of beer from the fridge. With my muscles aching and no doubt a bruise already darkening my cheek, I walked straight into the bathroom, switching on the lights and turning the taps on in the bath as full as they would go. Whatever was left of this night, I needed it off me, but first things first, I had to take care of my face.
“No way I’m keeping this from Thatch,” I muttered as I gazed at my reflection in the mirror. Although it didn’t look as bad as it felt, there was a good chance it’d look a hell of a lot worse tomorrow. Steam filled up the small bathroom whilst I dabbed at the minor cut on my cheekbone with an antiseptic wipe. It was the least I could do. I wasn’t in the habit of keeping a first aid kit on hand. Surprisingly, most of my work didn’t end up with me getting my ass kicked in a carpark. Visions of the two men replayed in my mind as I slipped out of the uncomfortable dress and discarded my underwear. They’d looked like they were on something. Their eyes had been withdrawn and their movements were so erratic, animalistic even. Yet they’d been wholly compos mentis.
Pushing the thoughts aside, I slipped into the scalding hot bath and let the tub fill until it covered me right up to my chin and eventually, my taught muscles started to relax. I slipped my hands out of the water just long enough to twist the top of the bottle of cheap beer and down half its contents. Funny what a fist fight did to ignite a thirst in a girl.
Only a couple of things had come out of tonight. The first was that there was still an infinitesimal chance the young male bartender from Omen would call me with some information. The second was the doorman. More specifically, what he said.
“People come here for danger, doll.”
The same question had been going through my head since day one of this case—why a good girl like Jocelyn would go to Omen. The letter that had been hand delivered to me had to have something to do with it. A love interest or a debt that needed to be paid… I couldn’t be certain, as the tone of the letter was so strange. While I soaked my exhausted and battered body in boiling hot bath water, there were just two questions I still couldn’t find a reasonable explanation for.
Why were Jocelyn and Beth looking for danger? And why did they choose to go to Omen to find it?
Chapter Five
“For once in your fucking life, will you take a telling?” Thatch scorned, his face reddening more and more with each passing moment. Every time he looked at me, he seemed to grow even angrier, and I quickly realised that I hadn’t had enough coffee this morning to deal with the lecture I was about to be given. Thatcher’s patience with me had been wearing thin for much of my existence. I’d always put it down to him feeling protective over me—it was nice having someone who cared for me, even if it felt overbearing at times. Still, though, these last few months his temper had continued to shorten, tightening to the point of fracturing all together.
I paced slowly over to the rusted pot in the corner and poured myself a hefty mugful of the dark liquid, topping it off with milk and too many sugars. Despite my best attempt at ignoring Thatcher, he continued shouting at me like I was some petulant child. In his eyes, I probably was.
“I told you not to go to that club. You agreed. That should have been the end of that story, but no. You take it upon yourself to get dressed up like a common street walker and totter on over there, anyway. What is the point of me being your boss if you don’t listen to a word I say?”
“I thought I could get a better feel for the place. How was I supposed to know I’d be rugby tackled by a pair of creeps on my way to my car?” I replied, knowing how ridiculous I must have sounded. Thatcher wasn’t wrong. It had been a risky move, and it hadn’t paid off. There was still time for the bartender to call, but I dared say that to Thatch. The thick vein on his forehead was already writhing beneath the skin, something it only did when he was truly enraged. Usually, I made bets with myself if and when he’d drop dead with an aneurism, but I wasn’t in the mood to make jokes today, even with myself. There was a crumb of guilt in the pit of my stomach that was threatening to double if I even so much as thought to make light of the situation. So, I bit my tongue.
“Don’t play that card with me, Quintessa.” Thatch waggled his finger at me, wheeling himself out from behind his desk as I sipped at my coffee. “We both know you’re smarter than that. It was reckless and stupid, nothing more, nothing less.”
“I couldn’t just sit around looking at pictures of the place online, Thatch. We both know that wouldn’t have got us anywhere,” I replied, my confidence waning a little.
Thatcher seemed to deliberate my statement for a few seconds, but it was no use trying to decipher what he was thinking or what his next words would be. When he started chewing on a hangnail on his thumb, I started wondering if he didn’t want to say the things running through his mind.
I’d drained my mug of coffee by the time he spoke again.
“The least you could have done is tell me you were going there. If something had happened to you, I’d be none the wiser. Given your reputation in the last few months, I’d be more inclined to believe you’d taken yourself to Vegas for a holiday as opposed to murdered or worse.”
I walked over to him and sat down on the corner of my desk with a small smile.
“What?” He snapped, averting his gaze.
I poked him in the shoulder before speaking. “You worry about me.”
“Yeah, of course I do. You’re the only working set of legs this damn business has to stand on.”
Again, I poked his shoulder. “You care about my wellbeing.”
“Shut up,” he hurled back, but I could see his expression softening.
“Just don’t do anything like that again. This case is bizarre enough without you going getting yourself killed.”
“Pinky promise,” I added with a sigh, which he met with an equal amount of enthusiasm.
Thatch groaned and tied his grey hair up into a messy ponytail at the base of his skull before shaking his head. “I don’t give a dog’s bollocks if it’s only 11, I’m going to get some lunch down at The Friar Tuck.”
I hopped down off the edge of my desk and walked around to my chair, collapsing down into it and spinning aimlessly.
“Tell Barbara I said hi,” I said as he pushed his arms through the sleeves of his worn leather jacket. “Promise you’ll consume something other than Guinness for a change?”
Thatch nodded with a huff as he wheeled over to the door and opened it up, stopping it just before it could close behind him.
“No more stupid shit, Quinn.”
“Didn’t I just pinky promise you three seconds ago? How much trouble can I get into in the next hour?” I tilted my head and raised an eyebrow as I waited for his smartass reply.
Thatch laughed apathetically. “I don’t even want to think about that.”
Half of me was expecting to investigate Omen and find out that there was no sordid history or suspicious past. The other half figured some retired gang leader or mob boss ran it. The organised crime factor would certainly explain why the police haven’t been more involved with its colourful clientele. None of these options would explain why Jocelyn found herself there almost every weekend. It seemed so out of character, but I was no stranger to pretending to be something you’re not. Maybe Jocelyn wasn’t as innocent or naïve as her sister assumed or as she portrayed herself online. It was reasonable, I mean, what young adult didn’t hide some dark part of themselves from their closest family and friends. If Thatch knew even half the shit I got involved in, it would kill him.
Barely fifteen minutes had passed as I scrolled through page after page of information on Omen. I was so focused on the blur of words in front of me, I didn’t even lift my gaze when the door opened.
“That was the shortest lunch I’ve ever known you to take, Thatch,” I called with a smile, still flicking through articles on the computer. “Did you persuade some poor woman to push you all the way to Friar’s?” It was typical of Thatcher; he had the
charm of an aging heartthrob and despite his rough exterior, he could talk the trousers off pretty much anyone, given the opportunity.
When he didn’t answer and I didn’t hear the telltale squeak of his wheelchair on the creaky floor, I finally looked up. No wheelchair, no Thatcher, but a man whose silent presence alone demanded my undivided attention.
He was smirking down at me from his towering height, only exaggerated further by the fact I was still sitting down in my desk chair. Even in the dull light of the office, the light crystal blue of his eyes glowed as they stared deep into mine.
“Sorry, can I help you?” I asked, hating that my voice held the slightest tremble. I swallowed, trying to shake it off and remember that despite this man’s size and, oh god, his face, there was still a good chance I could beat him in a fight. Although, given the thick muscle of his arms and broad shoulders, it would be a challenge. Not to mention that my confidence had taken as much of a beating as my face had last night.
The gentleman didn’t answer, instead choosing to arch an eyebrow and pull a small piece of paper out of the breast pocket of what looked to be a very expensive suit. With one fluid movement, he tossed it down on the desk in front of me. It spun against the rough wood for a second before finally stilling. I recognised my own messy handwriting immediately. It was the business card I’d given to the bartender at Omen.
Fuck.
Silently, he unbuttoned his suit jacket and sat down in the chair opposite me. He leaned back; his hands clasped against the armrests as he crossed one leg over the other. His curt smirk stretched into a wide grin, revealing rows of pearl white teeth.
“I don’t appreciate people coming into my place of business and asking questions.” His fierce stare was unblinking, only softened by the low volume of his smooth voice, delicately accented to match the superior quality of his clothing. It was the kind of accent you hear in period dramas, not the kind broadcast on the BBC on a Sunday afternoon, but the gritty type you find solely in independent theatre and modernised Shakespearean plays. It was a particular type of well-spoken that didn’t suit a private education, but years upon years of well-bred, upper-class assholes.
Silver Vein: Beneath the City Sleeps Book 1 Page 4
