by Marata Eros
A heartbeat of silence drives between us, and a sick grin spreads across his face. “Does he know?”
Oh my God. Play dumb, Sara. Play it like you mean it. “I don't know where Snare is. Why would I care?” I care so much I can hardly breathe through the days without him.
Riker's smile widens. “Because that's his kid. She's a Locklear if I ever saw one.”
He cocks his head to the side. “You spread your legs for him, but not me, you little whore.”
I cover Jaylin's ear that's not pressed against my chest. I hear a sound and realize it comes from me. A whimper.
My body remembers Riker. My armpits, crotch, and hands begin to moisten. Not from excitement, from terror.
Snare's not here to help me. I’m swamped by shame and the desire for Snare's protection. “Are you going to rape me in the middle of the hall in front of my daughter?”
Riker smiles. “I don't need that as much as I need your cooperation.”
“Then go away. Just leave me alone. I've done nothing to you. I left.”
Riker's fists clench, and my stomach tightens at the movement—remembering. “Your mom left too.” His smile leaks satisfaction.
Thank God. At least she got smart.
“By ambulance.”
Oh no. That ball of anxiety in my stomach hardens. “Is she okay?” I hear myself ask.
“I don't know. She's not awake enough to answer questions. What with that nasty tumble she took down the stairs.”
I close my eyes, sick. When I open them, he's in front of me.
I yip, jerking backward. But the load of Jaylin has me unbalanced, and Riker's strong hands grab my shoulders. “Careful, little Sara.”
I mewl, and Jaylin begins to cry again.
“You're gonna come to the courthouse and testify.”
I blink up at him, momentarily surprised out of my terror. “What?”
He nods. “Fucking Micah and Denny are testifying—lying about how things were.”
The two faces of the twins float into my mind's eye.
“Goddamned brats lied their faces off to the foster parents and got all the bleeding hearts all riled up. They're looking to press charges.”
I gulp back my fear. For Jaylin. “What—” I clear my throat, the heat of his flesh bleeding through my shirt. I've never wanted to be somewhere else worse than I do at that moment. “What do I have to do with Micah and Denny?” They're the much younger half siblings of Snare. He took plenty of beatings for them too.
He gives me an abrupt shake, and Jaylin's head lifts from my shoulder, bouncing back down on my collarbone.
She cries out at the impact, and Riker takes a hand off me to touch her.
I yank back. “Don't touch her.”
Riker stares, seeming to consider. “She's mine like you're mine, Sara.” His lips twist. “Or is it Kitty?”
I feel all the breath leak out of my body. I flatten my palm against Jaylin's head and back away.
“If you testify that Micah and Denny are lying, then I won't tell Snare about your kid.”
“Snare knows,” I bluff, lifting my chin.
He laughs.
I shudder, remembering him coming through the house, searching for me. The scent of alcohol preceded him like a foul perfume. He's stone sober now. Meaner than ever.
“If that fuck of a son knew where you were, he'd be here playing white knight. We're cut from the same cloth, Snare and I. We don't give up shit we own. Especially pussy.”
I gasp, pressing my daughter's head against my chest. Willing her not to hear and understand this nightmare of a man.
“But he's not here, is he, Sara?” His voice is soft. “You weren't happy with his dick, no-oh. You had to have a whole shit ton of dicks. Right... slut?”
I'm dizzy from his names, his assumptions. Riker's presence.
“Lots of strippers use drugs. Heroin, coke—meth.” His change of subject is abrupt, and my body goes still. “Hell, your mom was using heroin. That's how she took the swan dive down those pesky stairs.” His grin widens. Tobacco stains his teeth. But a raw intelligence burns in the gaze he directs at me.
The kind of intelligence that someone from the street might have.
I was too scared of him when I was younger to ever notice if he was smart. He was my drunken abuser, and I needed to survive. It's funny how the finer things are lost when one is fighting to stay alive.
“Nobody will think twice about another stripper biting the dust because she had to end it all.”
I suck in a starved breath, not even realizing I'd been holding it. “What do you want?”
“Mommy,” Jaylin says in a pitiful voice, “I wanna go nigh-night.” Her tiny hand fists my T-shirt. Her bright blue eyes flick at Riker then back to my face.
“Yes, baby,” I whisper.
“Sissy kid you got there,” Riker comments, swinging his gaze toward Jaylin.
I hug her tighter. “What do you want?” I ask again in a quiet voice.
“I want you to go to the courthouse and say what a sweet home life you had.”
I have an idea. “You said nobody would take the word of a stripper.”
We look at each other for a space of seconds, like opponents on a chessboard.
Finally, he nods. “But Snare never gave me up. They removed me from the home, but they couldn't make dick stick. Without you ingrates backing the evidence, they had to let me go home.”
Snare wanted to protect the twins. Me.
I cast a lustful glance at the door. Just when I think I've lost, and Riker will physically overpower me, I hear the sound of treads being slapped coming up the stairs.
Two cops appear at the landing. They see Riker and pull their weapons. I flatten against the wall, my heart trying to escape my rib cage.
“Stay where you are.”
Riker lifts his arms, and I notice for the first time that he's wearing neater clothes than I've ever seen on him. Hair fixed in a traditional braid. His new look is like a costume. Can't hide his evilness. Not from me.
One of the cops levels me with his gaze. “Miss, did you dial 9-1-1?”
So many thoughts swirl in my mind like snow, falling to the ground of my memories. No matter how lightly I tread, I can't use Snare again. I'll have to figure it out on my own.
I make a split decision. “I did. This guy scared me—he's not from my building—and I panicked, I guess.”
It kills me to lie. It hurts so much more than I thought it would. I bleed to not tell the truth to these cops that I called to protect me.
But Riker threatened me. And then where will Jaylin be? He's already said he'd get Snare involved, maybe mess up whatever life he's managed for himself. My eyes burn, and my vision goes blurry.
“Miss, hey now—calm down.”
I hear Riker, “Can I go now?”
“ID, please,” the other officer says.
“Where do you live, miss?”
I lift my finger toward my door. He walks me there, his strong arm around me and Jaylin.
His partner turns to Riker.
“Sure, officer. I must have got the wrong building.” Mr. Cooperation's eyes travel over me then away as he digs for his wallet. “Sorry about that,” Riker says to me.
I don't reply. Instead, I let myself be led to my apartment door with a mild chastisement about not using 9-1-1 for every strange man who appears.
“After all,” the officer continues, “if you're not being threatened in any way, it's a loss of resource.”
“Yes,” I agree easily and shut the door. I use every bolt I have and back away from the locked door.
I turn, walking a now-sleeping Jaylin straight to her bedroom. It's really just an oversized closet, my apartment being a one-bedroom plus “den.” In downtown Seattle, that's code for a closet and a smaller closet.
But I'm grateful.
I don't break down until my baby girl is all tucked in. Her favorite book is underneath her pillow, and the bunny I gave her for Easter i
s clutched in a hand just the old side of babyhood.
I move back to my dinky living room and lower slowly onto the couch. It's angled toward the door. I wait for Riker to break it down.
My eyelids get heavy, and my crying turns to the jerking of sleep's approach.
I dream of Snare.
When I wake in the morning, there's a piece of paper underneath the door.
A date has been written on it. A time. An address. I recognize the handwriting.
Riker has again decreed what I do.
Somehow.
7
Snare
“Want me to beg? Fuck, I'll do it,” Noose says, his head cranked back, one hand dangling from his knee, the other sucking on his cig.
“I can't not go see her, Noose,” I say, my eyes tracing the big dipper in the sky. We're waiting on a gun meet. Just me and Noose. Same place, different time. We switch out the meets about every third time.
Random is key.
I quit counting stars and glare at Noose instead. “If Rose was doing this? You'd what—wait until the timing was right?” My grunt is its own vocabulary. Basically that noise is fuck no.
Noose flicks an ash, sears me with a hard stare, and runs his palm over the top of his long hair. “Fuck, if Rose was stripping, I think my IQ would drop a hundred points.”
I bark out a laugh.
“Shut up, fucker. Just because I don't have your gift of fucking gab doesn't mean I can't express myself.”
I think of Noose doing one of his knots. And what he can do with a string. He expresses himself when he wants to. My humor dies.
“True dat. But, and don't get me wrong, the sweet butts are great. Always good tail, always easy—no complications.”
A ghost of a smile graces Noose's mouth and is gone almost before I notice.
“But Sara—Gee-zus.” A breath I'm holding blasts out of me. “She's naked without my protection.”
Noose chuckles. “In more ways than one.”
“Fuccck offf,” I sing, raising two middle fingers in his direction.
He turns toward me, moonlight striping his face like blades carved from shadow and light. “Promise me you won't drag your dick downtown and sit in when she's doing her stuff. Believe me, you will kick some ass.”
“My dad is trying to go after her again. I have to move in—I have to—”
Noose shakes his head. “No. We move in together. If your dad is half as smart as you, and you've told me the history—we've already lost the element of surprise. Any male willing to beat the fuck outta his own kids and try to rape his stepdaughter…” Noose shrugs without finishing, lighting up another smoke. “I know the fucking type. Dealt with ʼem. They got a certain cunning to them.”
I just look at him.
His eyes narrow, the irises like slits of silver. “Tell me I'm wrong.”
“My dad is a fuckinʼ drunk nate.”
“Huh?”
I hate this part. The part where I confirm a stereotype. “My dad, he's Native American. There's nothing he likes more than the booze.” I say the last two words like they should be in all capital letters.
Noose points at me. “Hey, pal, I'll let ya in on a little secret. Don't have to be a certain race to be a shitbag. Lots of them around, and with almost all of them, race doesn't seem to be a factor.” He lifts his shoulders, flicking his cig to the ground at the same time.
Noose dismounts, easing off his bike like water made of black leather. The man is smooth.
Everything I do, I do to protect the club. I have a black belt in judo, lift, run. I wouldn't touch a cigarette under threat of torture. But Noose's smoking doesn't seem to compromise him.
Just makes him meaner than fuck.
He gauges my expression. “Something I say funny?” His eyes scan the darkness, waiting for my answer.
I shake my head. “No, only thinking about how you get shit down to the brass tacks. There's no prettying anything up for you.”
“Nope.” Noose straightens, and I know he hears something. A heartbeat later, I do too.
Our guns are coming.
*
Noose's fingertips lovingly run over the cold metal barrels of the AK-47s.
“Nice.” That's his one word. As usual.
“Noose,” I say, “stop petting the guns.”
“Yep,” he replies with a wink, loading the last box into the utility van.
He jams a cig in his mouth and slides on the bike. I flick a hand in mock salute from the driver's side.
We roll out of the spot in the woods. A shit ton of collateral’s tied up in this deal. Nothing to bankroll after the fucking Ned situation got blown up. If Noose and I can run these guns, we can get a little desperation cash shored up for Road Kill, and all will be well.
We make for the warehouse. It's just how it sounds. A huge building like the one Chaos has that we rescued Rose from. But ours is hidden in the outskirts of the west hill of Kent, right up the ass of Federal Way. An armpit of a city that got the hind tit of zoning. There's pockets of unclaimed, unnamed parcels. People feud over zoning while we use it for our purposes.
My mind wanders on the ride over. Thinking about Sara, wondering what I can do.
Whatever it is, I got to make it fast. If Riker is trying to keep his ass out of prison, going after Sara doesn't make sense.
I should have never lied to keep that sack of shit in the house. But the twins needed food. Sara's mom needed something.
Hard not to blame the kid I was. Sometimes... I do anyway.
I can take the blame now, if I don't protect Sara. If I don't make her mine.
Fuck it if she says she's somebody else's. I won't accept that. I'll never accept that.
*
The warehouse door gives a metallic cough as I lock up, and Noose stomps his feet on the concrete stoop, trying to knock the dust off the treads of his boots. “Fucking mess inside. Gotta get a prospect in there to sweep up.”
“Remember Trainer when he fell asleep and had to clean up the puke and cum fest?” I laugh.
Noose roars, clutching his ribs. “Fucking hilarious.”
We nod. It was. Fucking prospects. They got to learn the ropes.
Suddenly, I get an awful idea. “You don't think that dumb fuck fell asleep now—on Sara?”
The laughter dies from Noose's lips, and he grips my arm. “Hey, man, stop fucking worrying. We'll get over there and approach her when she's not at her job—when daddy fucking dearest is least expecting us.”
“She got a man?” I ask in a low voice.
This is why I think Noose is a good human being. Not even a hint of jerking my chain. “Nope. Squeaky clean. Lots of broads who strip are gettinʼ the beef fuel injection”—I wince, and he smirks—“but your girl seems to play it straight. Pretty impressive, considering.”
I fold my arms, waiting to hear what fucking thing could ever be impressive about stripping.
He reads my look. “She's been working her way up for a few years. That first year after she took off is murky, can't get a bead on where she was or what she was doing then. But she started showing up at all the usuals a year after she ran. Sara just got this gig at The Crawl. Best club in town.”
I don't want Sara working at any club.
“Anyway, man”—Noose flips his hair back—“she's not some sweet butt type, spreading her legs for every swinging dick who crooks his finger.”
I dip my head to my chest. Fuck, fuckity, fuck.
“Don't like your silence, man. Seems you're thinking rash thoughts.”
I raise my chin, looking straight into his eyes. “You got that right.”
“You're such a pain in my ass. Vince was like, ʻDon't let Snare go off half-cocked—get his dumb ass in jail.ʼ” Noose raises his eyebrows.
I look away. I'm so planning to go straight to The Crawl and get ahold of Sara.
“Devil's advocate,” Noose says, interrupting my thoughts as he lifts his palms. “You run down to The Crawl, see your girl shak
ing her assets, and a bunch of guys with boners, shoving money in her G-string. What ya gonna do?”
Rage descends.
Noose nods. “That's about right.”
“Kill them.”
“Oh?” Noose asks, not without sympathy, “Then the cops come, bust your ass, and Sara is still”—he catches my eye—“unprotected.” His last word vibrates between us like a tuning fork.
Fuck. “I got to see her.”
“Uh-huh.”
We look at each other.
“Nope,” Noose says in clipped response to my unspoken question. He doesn't light up. He sits on his bike, the rumble a purr of sound, overlaying the nighttime noises of small animals who live near the warehouse.
I hold my breath. It whooshes out of me. “Please.” My voice is quiet. Just the one word. The one hope.
“Fuck.” Noose stands.
I hop into the empty truck, and he taps on the window. “I'm going to kick your ass myself if you do something stupid.”
There's no doubt I'll do something stupid.
*
Noose and I travel side by side. Except when he needs to travel in “stealth,” he tells me. What that really means is I'm a bull in a china shop.
I knew that.
I'm no soldier. But I'm a fighter. I'm as steely as any of the Navy Seals that Noose comes from. Lariat, Wring, we're the same type of men. But I had a different path to take. I don't have the training they do.
Noose tells me I've got heart. Whatever that means. I'm thinking it's a certain level of thick-headed stubbornness.
We move through the night like black shadows, our rides hot and quaking between our thighs.
There's a certain peace to riding. If people don't ride, they don't know. It's not something you can explain to someone. They have to be on the bike, live to ride. Like we do now.
Even knowing I might see Sara soon—See more of her than I thought possible, I think with grim humor. I can still let the ride ease my frayed senses. I'm so raw right now I feel like I'll explode. Like a glass heated up to a point that it becomes as frail as crystal paper. Ready to be scattered by the tap of a fingernail.
We pull up to the Market then head past. The neon sign is lit, but the vendors and fish tossers have gone home. The murk of the city breeds darker at the perimeter, circling the outskirts of the pier and the low-lying buildings that frame the waterfront like black ink.
