Burned

by Natasha Deen

  “Hey, buddy.”

  A new voice. Deep. Confident. I kept my gaze on the fries but let my peripheral vision take over. Expensive jeans, judging by the stitching. Sneakers. Just as expensive.

  “Is that your Caddy by the curb?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” The pimp was partly suspicious, partly irritated. “So?” The challenge rose in the question.

  I felt rather than saw the second guy shrug. The wind shifted, set the leaves rustling and brought his smell to me.

  Cedar.

  Spice.

  Boxer Boy.

  Why was he here? And why was he talking to the pimp?

  Oh, man. He was either going to help or make it worse.

  Wait.

  What if he was getting rid of the pimp not to help me, but to get me alone—alone in a bad way?

  My life hovered on a sharp edge. The next thing this guy said could leave me a broken soul in the emergency room or a dead body in the gutter, and the possibilities pounded with every beat of my terrified heart.

  ELEVEN

  “Think the cops are towing it.”

  The pimp’s focus was on Boxer Boy, so I risked looking up. His gaze flicked my way. The unspoken conversation like electricity between us. I took a shallow breath as the knife’s edge sharpened.

  “Cops?”

  The pimp twisted his head and craned his neck to squint past the trees and to his car.

  Boxer Boy shrugged. “Plainclothes, I think.”

  Irritation squished the pimp’s face. “They wouldn’t tow my car.”

  “Oh.” Another casual shrug. “Then it must be someone breaking in. Hope you don’t have your wallet in it.” A not-so-casual pause. “Or anything else of value in there.”

  On cue, the shrill beep of a car alarm pierced the afternoon.

  My gaze flicked past the two guys. I could see ATM Guy on a park bench, hunched over a computer. Two guesses who had hacked the pimp’s car system and set off his alarm. The pimp took off running.

  Boxer Boy crouched by me, helped himself to my fries. “He’s a moron.” His dark eyes sparked as they flashed my way. “I’m not. First rule to pretending to be a guy—”

  My mouth went dry.

  “—learn how to look.”

  “What?” I croaked the question.

  “Guys don’t look at dogs like that.” He nodded at the puppy. “They may want to, but they won’t.”

  “I have sunglasses on. You don’t know how I watched the dog.”

  “Nice try.” He stood. “You’re a girl. I know it. You know it.” Turning on his heel, he twisted to move away.

  “Wait.”

  He stopped, looked over his shoulder at me.

  “I need your help.” I rose to my feet. “Actually”—I nodded at ATM Guy—“I need his help.”

  “He helps me. No one else.”

  I ignored the hard edge in his voice, the warning in his tone. “Listen, Boxer Boy—”

  His mouth quirked. “Boxer Boy?”

  “You’re a boxer. I know it. You know it.”

  “Jace,” he said. “Call me Jace.”

  “I wouldn’t ask for his help if it wasn’t important.”

  “Yeah right. It’s always important, isn’t it?” There it was again—the edge, the warning. “Find someone else. He’s not for rent or for sale.” He turned to stalk away.

  “I have an ATM kid.”

  “What?”

  “I have someone I watch over, someone who needs protection.”

  Jace stared at me, then stared at ATM Guy. “You have someone you’re looking after. Someone you guard. And you can’t do it unless he helps you?”

  “Yeah.” I breathed a sigh, relieved he understood.

  Jace stepped to me, crashing through my personal space until we were chest to chest. He pulled off my sunglasses and stared me down. Which was saying a lot. I’m tall for a girl. That he made me feel small underscored the difference in our sizes. Contempt scarred his face. “Then you should’ve done a better job.” He stepped back. “Protectors don’t need anybody.”

  He left me watching the back of him as he walked away.

  TWELVE

  Raven gave me five minutes’ worth of sarcasm in one glance.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “Did I say anything?”

  Now it was my turn to lift an eyebrow.

  She sighed. “For a girl who has spent two years on the streets, you’re such a newb.”

  I scowled. “For a girl who lives on a boat, you’re all wet.”

  She laughed, and I was surprised to find I liked the sound.

  “You want revenge, don’t you? Bring down Meena?”

  I nodded. Today was Sunday. The night before, I’d pulled out the paper with Raven’s number, called her and rolled the dice on trusting the climber. I still wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, but I needed a partner. By the time we’d finished trading secrets and stories, I knew two things. She could be trusted, and she could be a pain in the butt.

  Just like me, she was carrying the need to avenge murder. In her case, it was the death of her apprentice, a kid named Supersize. It was a long story involving her drug-addicted parents and Raven seeking solace in a gang of car thieves. The main point was that she’d wanted out, and the leader, Diesel, had promised her freedom in exchange for training Supersize in the art of using urban climbing to get into the higher-end lots to steal cars. Except Diesel had set up Supersize to die in a fall. Then he’d blamed Raven.

  And that had been his fatal error.

  Raven was going to bring him down, and I was going to help. So was Jace, though he didn’t know it yet.

  “Then we get that kid to help.”

  Raven’s voice brought me back to the present.

  “And getting him means keeping Jace on side.”

  The mention of his name made me think of him on the park bench, the sun kissing his hair and turning the dark strands to copper and bronze. Great. Too much time on the streets, surrounded by drug addicts and pimps, had made me weak. One stupid guy with a nice smile and awesome eyes turned me into a moron. I dragged my mind from the memory of his face, the sound of his voice, and considered my plan of action.

  Not plan of action.

  Plan of attack.

  Jace wasn’t stupid.

  And that was going to be a problem.

  A major problem.

  Unless…

  “You okay?”

  We stood on the grass, the ocean and downtown at our backs, clouds dirty with rain scudding the skies above, and the intimidating stone edifice of Bishops Prep standing before us.

  “Yeah,” I said, irritated at my inability to cover my nervousness. “I’m fine.” What a lie. But if I was right about Jace and his trust-fund ways, he was all about status and appearances. Going to him for help and asking privately hadn’t worked. Maybe some peer pressure would help. I figured if we went at him in public, he couldn’t turn us down. Not with everyone watching. He’d have to come on board. After all, what kind of guy would refuse to help a couple of girls?

  “Yeah right.”

  I caught her smirk and scowled. Raven was strong, and I didn’t like that she’d seen the weak side of me. “We gonna do this?”

  Another smirk.

  I ignored her.

  She glanced at her phone. “Let’s go. Security patrols the halls every fifteen minutes.”

  “That’s what the student IDs are for.”

  Her mouth pulled to the side.

  “I know what I’m doing. The IDs will pass inspection.”

  As usual, she ignored both me and my skills. “They catch us and
these uniforms won’t help.”

  I didn’t know who the uniforms did help. Maybe the gray skirt, white shirt and red tie helped Raven blend into the school population, but I was sure I stuck out at Bishops Prep. Mostly because Raven’s inside connection hadn’t quite gotten my size right. The skirt was too short, the shirt too tight. I looked like some twelve-year-old boy’s favorite midnight dream, and I wasn’t impressed.

  Two years of wearing men’s clothing, of hiding my shape so I didn’t attract the wrong kind of attention, and I felt every rub of the cotton fabric against my skin, every puff of air against my legs. “Wish I could wear my regular clothes.”

  “We have to blend in or security will kick us out for sure.”

  I pulled at the hem of my skirt. Raven brought her elbow to my ribs.

  “Stop it. You’re going to get us caught.”

  She didn’t get it, and I wasn’t going to explain.

  Raven watched me for a second, then turned away. “You clean up nice.” Her voice was soft.

  Okay, maybe she did get it. I stopped adjusting the skirt.

  Raven put her hand to the small of my back and shoved me forward. “Go.”

  Go. I repeated the command. Go for Emily. Go for Mom. Go for Danny. Go for Amanda. Oh man. Why were there so many names? How had my life become this…thing? I shoved the questions into the cold-storage compartment that was once my heart and stepped to the doors.

  Then I took a breath, gripped the metal handles and stepped through.

  The smell hit me. Or maybe the lack of it. Bishops Prep was a place for prime ministers in waiting, a place where Nobel Peace Prize winners had first grappled with quantum physics and future Fortune 500 CEOs had practiced the art of hostile takeovers. For these princesses and princes, no regular air-filtration system would do.

  No. These precious ones demanded the highest air quality money could buy, and judging from the heady effects of the cool, clean air I inhaled, Mommy and Daddy were paying to have the atmosphere pumped full of oxygen, with a nitrogen boost for blood circulation.

  I inhaled, then inhaled again, waiting for the other scent to hit. The one I’d come to know too well—the smell of the streets. No matter how much I scrubbed down at the Y or how much detergent I put in the washing machine, the scent lingered. Despair and grime, mildew and hopelessness—it clung to me with the resistance and corruption of black mold.

  Raven watched me take another breath.

  All I smelled was the mandarin, cashmere wood and ginger of the body soap she’d lent me.

  “You going to stand there or work?”

  Her words were harsh, and I wondered if the sympathy I heard was real or imagined. “Let’s go.”

  She checked her phone. “He should be in a part of the cafeteria called Lounge A. Down the hall, to the left.”

  She turned in a smooth motion and strode down the hall.

  I followed her, walking slightly behind so I could watch and mimic her confident stride. Life on the streets meant being an interloper in society. I’d learned to keep my head down and my gaze averted, and I was grateful—not that I’d tell her—for Raven’s company.

  By the time we reached the entrance to the lounge, the small tear that had ripped my heart when I’d stepped inside the school had become a full-on gash. On the edges of my awareness, memories tingled, reminding me of a time when I was a cheerleader and an A student, when the monsters were under my bed and not in the cardboard box next to me, and security was a word I looked up in the dictionary.

  “You need a minute?”

  “No,” I gasped. I gathered the embers of my lost life, pushed the dying coals into the dark place inside me. The task at hand needed doing, and mourning a lost life wasn’t going to do anything but break me down.

  I was broken enough.

  Pushing back my shoulders, I said, “Let’s go.” I stepped through the doorway, scanning the pockets of seating areas for the guy who could help me and who I feared could end my search for justice. “See him?”

  Raven frowned and peered at the mob of kids clustered in the center. “Go right. I’ll go left. He’s got to be here.”

  I did as instructed, walking the rectangular space and eyeing every kid who sat in a leather chair or lounged by the wall. A collective gasp caught my attention. I turned, curious to see what held their focus, and moved toward them.

  The crowd rippled and parted, creating a space. A girl with porcelain skin and delicate features moved from the center of the circle to its exit. Taking advantage of the gap, I deked past her into the embrace of the crowd and searched to see what had everyone’s interest.

  I didn’t have to look long.

  Jace.

  He sat at a table. The flat light streaming from the windows shouldn’t have had the strength to reach his form, let alone edge his frame. Yet there he sat, a dark god framed in silver, his gaze focused on an ornate chessboard.

  From the tight posture of his opponent, the hunch of his shoulders, I guessed Jace was winning the game.

  Figured.

  Slowly Jace lifted his gaze. Dark eyes the color of wild mustangs, framed by long, thick black lashes. For a long—too-long—moment we stared at each other.

  Jace, looking at me.

  Into me.

  Through me.

  Just as slowly, he turned his focus back to the chessboard, effectively dismissing me in the deliberate movement.

  Jerk.

  “How do you want to play this?” I asked Raven as she came up beside me.

  She grinned. “Bond him.”

  I was hoping for something more Ravenish—like smashing his head against the table or hanging him from a tall building by his toes. Blinking, I said, “Bond?”

  “James Bond.” She lifted her shoulder. “Bond-girl him.”

  “You think that’ll work?”

  “He’s a guy, isn’t he?”

  Too much of one for my taste. “Yeah, I guess.” I tried to keep my voice neutral.

  “You go left, I’ll go right. Angel and devil. Got it?”

  I frowned. “Like good girl, bad girl?”

  She gave a sultry laugh. “More like bad Bond girl”—she jabbed her thumb in my direction—“and badder Bond girl.” She jerked both thumbs at herself.

  I’d never been bad in my life.

  Raven turned and moved through the crowd, flashing a smile at random guys, then grinning with satisfaction as they gaped at her.

  I pivoted on my heel and hoped I could pull off bad—or at least do a satisfactory job of “naughty.” C’mon, I told myself. I used to date, to flirt. There was a time I’d worn tight jeans and heels.

  For Amanda and my family, I’d channel that girl, do what I needed, take the heat of Jace and suffer the burns sure to come.

  I got to him at the same time as Raven.

  She put her hand on his right shoulder.

  I followed her lead and put mine on his left. The feel of him beneath my fingers zapped me with awareness, and the warmth of him made my body temperature rise.

  If he cared, if he noticed, he didn’t show it. No happiness. No contempt. His indifference was as hard as the muscles under my hand.

  Raven bent close to his ear.

  Oh man.

  The wood and spice of his cologne was already unhinging me. Now she wanted me to get closer?

  I was going to lose my mind. Not enough to forget about justice for my family or Amanda, but enough for me to go from Bond girl smart to Valley girl stupid. He wasn’t a guy who’d respond to my flipping my hair and giggling.

  Too bad.

  That I remembered how to do.

  Raven kept whispering in his ear, and my brain spun as it tried to come up with
a plan.

  Deciding to use the too-tight clothes to my advantage, I twisted to the side, popped a button, then faced forward and gave his opponent the brightest smile I could manage.

  The kid stared, jerked back and blinked. Then he looked over his shoulder—probably checking to see it was really him I was aiming my pearly whites at.

  I flipped my hair.

  His eyes widened.

  Under my hand, Jace remained motionless.

  I leaned forward as though inspecting the board.

  Every vertebra in the kid’s neck popped as he strained to see down my shirt.

  He couldn’t, of course, but it was the idea that had him fixated.

  Jace didn’t turn his head, didn’t move his gaze from the chess pieces.

  I bent forward.

  The kid’s face went slack, and he took his hand off the chess piece he was holding.

  Judging from the crowd’s gasp, he’d just done something super stupid.

  I pushed my mouth close to Jace. Still focused on the kid, I misjudged where Jace began and I ended. My mouth brushed the cartilage of his ear.

  The kid gave a small groan.

  I stifled mine and ignored the tremor of excitement that thrummed through me at my accidental kiss. “See?” I whispered to Jace. “I can help you if you help me.”

  That got a response.

  His irritation zapped me as hot and fast as a lightning strike.

  Man, seriously? Great. Between him, ATM Guy and Raven, I was surrounded by a bunch of lone wolves who’d rather bay at the moon than hunt together.

  “Please, Jace—” I stopped, hearing the begging tone scratching at my voice box. “The one I look out for, my ATM kid—Amanda—she wouldn’t just disappear.”

  He ignored me and pushed a piece across the board.

  The crowd murmured its approval.

  I thought of him at the park bench, the moment I thought we’d had, and I realized how totally stupid I’d been. Out for himself and screw the rest of us. It had never been about him helping me. It was just about him proving he could pull one over on a pimp. Anger simmered, bubbled.

  What a loser I’d been.