by Rissa Brahm
*
“Excuse me for a second, Jasmine. If you wanna go take a seat at a table?”
“Sure thing.” She smiled and wiggled her way stage-side.
“I was going to tell you that Sugar and Laynie are done, but now we might need them. I caught them in the back—”
“In their fuck-party snorting my coke? Yeah, I know, and they’re fine. More ready to dance than ever. Especially our little Laynie. But since you couldn’t find sixteen replacements, let alone two, I’m gonna need you to dance tonight too. After I take you in the back, get you primed and fucked real good, you’ll be star-level like the old days.”
Jana’s chest searched for oxygen as her mind raced. Which way around this asshole to get to the exit door?
This was retribution for last night. Of course it was. He’d invested in her dress and didn’t get his return by helping her out of the thousand-plus dollar frock. Well, whatever the case, she stood up, slammed his phone on the bar along with his key, and without a word, skirted to his left toward the exit.
But his arm caught her elbow just as quickly.
“I know you were with Antonio at his place last night,” he hissed. “GPS tracker and phone tap. Every moan, every conversation.” He nodded at the phone in her hand. “You’re a whore, but you’re a whore who chose the wrong cock. I’m the one. Would’ve given you everything. But instead, you insult me.”
“Let. Me. Go, Johnnie. I’m done here.”
He reached his arm behind his back and pulled out a small pistol. “No, you’re not.” He slid the point of the gun up her side. Then he put his lips to her ear and hissed quietly, “You won’t go. You need the money. And anyway, Ms. Winter Snow, your little Laynie needs you to dance.” The gun tip pressed hard into her hip now. “No one will miss her if she disappears. And if she does disappear, it’ll be because you left me stranded. I swear to God, you dance, or she’s done.”
He was high. Made no sense. Laynie bought her coke from him, pulled men in for his club. None of this was about any of that, though. It was about power. The power that he’d never had. Not over her, not at the club, not with his father, and hell, not even with his father’s chauffeur.
Antonio. Outside. Right outside in the parking lot. Twenty minutes had come and gone, right? No clocks, she couldn’t know. But she was certain Antonio would know she was in trouble and would come in. Any minute now.
But if Antonio did come through those doors, Johnnie’d have a field day.
Oh God help me, please.
Johnnie narrowed his eyes at her. “Oh, Jana…Jana, Jana, Jana. You looking to the door, huh? For your chauffeur savior? He won’t be coming, my fuckable little Winter Snow.” He nuzzled her ear with the gun’s tip pressed harder into her hip now, then he whispered, “My guy’s got your Mexi-Man by gunpoint right now. Yeah, he’s done. That’s gotta be. Disrespect comes with a cost, baby. Everything comes with a cost.”
*
Her lungs deflated. Life-breath thrust out like she’d been kicked in the gut.
Johnnie was bluffing. He had to be. Jana had to believe that.
Antonio is too skilled, too smart, too strong.
And Johnnie was high, delusional. Sick in the fucking head! Playing a wise guy, like in a bad mob movie. Coked out and emasculated and pathetic and—goddamn him!—in complete control now. Because he had the gun.
Johnnie pulled Jana away from the door by her wrist to the tables by the stage. He threw her in a seat, commanded her to stay with a look.
A few of the girls came out on stage then, their soft, barefoot steps contrasting sharply with the bullet train of blood smashing through Jana’s veins. They came out to practice pole moves before the rush. Fucking great! Of all times she wished they’d been late!
Run! Go! But mind readers they weren’t, not like her Antonio.
Instead, just like Jana had taught them, all four girls got down on the stage floor to stretch out, freeing their hands of keys, water bottles, phones, and all tossing their stilettos on the floor with rapid-fire thuds. With each thud, Jana jumped, heart pounding triple-time, her eyes glued to Johnnie’s gun.
None of them had a clue about the situation, none except for the new girl who was outside of Johnnie’s peripheral vision.
His phone rang. He fumbled with it in his free hand with the pistol discreetly held by his side. He squinted at the phone screen as he tried like hell to silence the ringer and answer it. He turned toward the office stairs, his back was toward Jana, but he was still only feet from her. Too close for her to run.
Jana scanned the room. Think, dammit. Breathe and think.
Johnnie’s voice rose to a shout into the cell, then lowered, apologizing to the caller. Pacing now, he seemed increasingly agitated. Back and forth, back and forth, huffing, sighing, and muttering as he shuffled. But even with his back still to her, she couldn’t muster the nerve to run or even to get her cell phone from her purse. It was clear across the room. And she couldn’t alert the girls on stage, as they were chattering, giggling, joyfully oblivious.
Antonio…oh God. She shuddered. Hush, Jana. The little prick is bluffing. All talk. No proof. No chance Antonio’s in danger. Keep focused until he comes.
Across the room by her purse, Jasmine, the new girl, eyes wide with fear, caught Jana’s attention. The other woman nodded at her. Jana swallowed hard. Then Jasmine stood up silently, slowly, her heels in hand. Jana watched Jasmine take a deep breath, clip behind Johnnie without looking back and sprint to the doors. The other woman slid out of the dark red-lit club to safety.
Oh God, thank you. Now please, get help!
*
Daylight let in by Jasmine’s quiet exit caught Johnnie’s attention. He let his phone fall to the floor and spun around, his arms extended and shaking, finger on the trigger of the pistol.
“Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he called over his shoulder, “No one else move!”
He didn’t turn back to the stage, to where Jana sat. “Jana!” he yelled in the direction of the entry doors. “I’ll do what I told you! I swear it!”
Jana’s heart rammed her ribs, waiting, preparing for him to spin back around. But it was as if he’d forgotten where she was; he just maintained his TV cop stance, gun still pointing, or rather waving, between the entry door and the bar. In his coked-out daze and fury, had he thought Jasmine the new girl, the escapee, was Jana?
*
Erin, the bartender, stood frozen, paralyzed in his wavering line of fire.
Johnnie swayed and muttered.
The girls on stage huddled, whimpering.
Jana could jump him from behind right then, but she knew she wouldn’t be strong enough to make a next move.
But shit, Erin was a welcome and waiting target.
The door opened again—new light streamed in.
A series of shots rang out as the door hissed shut, bringing back the neon red illuminated darkness.
CHAPTER 48
No sound, just sight. Tunnel vision in a deafening vacuum. Jana felt her heart slamming inside her, but she couldn’t hear it in her ears.
She blinked, swallowed, and gasped for air while her eyes caught a view of the sparks from the far wall spew then fizzle out as all the main and secondary lights shut down in sinking unison. The glow of one lone emergency light highlighted the soft smoke simmering from the shot-up metal panel. Then as the light yellow smoke rose to the ceiling, so did the brain-shock muffling all surrounding sound.
And the chaos broke through.
Screaming bounced off the walls and glass bottles crashed and shattered. She swung her head in the direction of the bar. Erin was no longer standing behind the bar, but the woman’s wailing lifted above it, making Jana’s instinctual alert system sound like a siren in her head.
She had to get to the injured woman.
But Johnnie was still too close, the gun hot in his hands.
Think of something, dammit! Do something!
As her hands went up to her ears to find
quiet enough to think of a move, she heard a deep, low groaning coming from the entry doors, from the ground. Her line of sight was blocked by a large column, but she knew it was a man. From the sound of it, a dying man.
Oh dear God.
Johnnie had been bluffing. Antonio had come and was now gasping for air, for life.
He’d been shot. For her. She still couldn’t see him to know how bad it was, but she needed to get to him. Her mind whirled, soul dove, eyes glazed, while her heart wrenched under the weight of planets and stars.
Don’t you dare take him from me!
Antonio, hang on. Please….
CHAPTER 49
Johnnie slowly turned back toward the stage.
Jana?
His eyes dry and wide, shocked to see her, he let his gun slide down to his side. “You didn’t leave me?”
She glared back at him as if damning him to hell. Raw abhorrence.
His free hand raked through his hair over and over again, yanking as if clarity would come from pain. He was totally unsure of who was where, and who the hell was shot, but he knew one or two were down. Because of him.
He’d only meant to scare, not to kill. Only to scare! His father’s phone call—fuck!—got him all messed up, distracted. But he swore Jana had snuck out, and a man had come in. He started shaking his head, trying to gain clarity and quiet in his cloudy, screaming brain. “Everyone shut the fuck up!”
*
She heard her pulse in her ears, blood threatening to boil over. The man at the door—her man!—now let out only short, hardly-audible wheezes from the floor. Erin’s moaning behind the bar was becoming quieter, fainter.
“Let me go check on them? Please, Johnnie?”
“Don’t you move,” he snapped, the pistol being used as an extension of his pointer finger.
Pleading with him wouldn’t work. He was beyond irrational. He was psychotic, and she didn’t want anyone else hurt. She had to separate him from that damn gun, which he was practically juggling between his hands as he shook his head erratically and shuffled back and forth again.
Do something, Jana! Code fucking silver, for Christ’s sakes!
All she saw around her were chairs, tables, napkins, water bottles, and shoes.
Shoes. Spiked high heel shoes. Right in that bastard’s fucking heart!
She reached for one of the girl’s spiked heels at the edge of the stage while his back was turned, then right as Johnnie pivoted toward her, Jana tilted her head, switching on an expression of sugar sweetness and light. “Johnnie, listen. I’ll dance for you,” she said swallowing back acidic bile and hate. “I’ll dance on stage, or just for you. Whatever you want. I know I was wrong to not go with my feelings for you. Please, just put the gun away and we’ll get everything—”
“Everything, what? Fixed?”
“Yes, fixed,” she said as a sliver of light streamed through the entry doors and was gone the next instant.
Help is here? Oh God, please.
She kept her eyes on him and only on him. It seemed that Johnnie hadn’t noticed and she had to keep it that way.
“Together, Johnnie, we can fix this. I’m a nurse, remember? And we work perfectly together, as a team, right?”
He rubbed the sweat from his brow and scrunched his eyes at her, a skeptical glare. Or was he just unsure if she was real or not? Either way, his gun remained in his trembling, deadly hand.
CHAPTER 50
She tried like hell to ignore the dark silhouette that came around the wide column at the corner of the bar. A tall, broad-shouldered man in a cap, a police cap?
Oh, thank the Lord.
Jana felt air flood her lungs.
But Johnnie’s glassy eyes shot her direction the next beat like he’d heard or sensed the saving presence.
Please no.
“You know, Jana,” he said with a sharp focus on her. “My father can go fuck himself. Fuck his clubs, too. It’s you, I want you. Only you. And I learned from him to take what I want. I’m taking you. Right now.”
He went to grab her wrist, but she beat him to it, voluntarily extending her hand for him to take.
“Yes, Johnnie, I will…I will go with you, just put the gun down and let me take care of the two injured, okay?”
With his eyes still piercing hers, Johnnie’s gun-hand lowered to his side, but he kept the piece in his grasp. She shut her eyes and took a deep breath for courage as she felt Johnnie’s other hand connect with hers. His touch alone sent her stomach into a tumultuous fit, but she swallowed back her nausea with all she had.
“Come now,” Johnnie said with victorious pleasure in his tone as he pulled her up from the chair.
She rose to her feet, and when she opened her eyes, the silhouette, the cop, was right behind Johnnie. A millisecond later, the other man grabbed Johnnie’s wrist and squeezed some pressure point, making Johnnie drop the gun to the floor. In the next beat, Johnnie was face down on the ground with the other man’s knee in his back, one arm pinned behind him, while she could only stare through the near-darkness as the cop struggled to get Johnnie’s other flailing arm secured.
All the while, Johnnie screamed insanities and profanities that jostled her thoughts, her breaths, her nerves.
Block it out, Jana!
She could hardly see in the darkness or hear anything over Johnnie’s yelling, but the cop was still struggling to keep the coked-out maniac down and away from the pistol.
Move, Jana! Go! Move the gun!
Jana shot forward and kicked the gun away from the scuffle. The man on top finally got Johnnie’s other arm pinned. With Johnnie finally contained, Jana made a beeline for the door, to her Antonio. To her love.
*
As she made her way to the front doors like a blind bat in a dark cave, the strip club flooded with sunlight. More police officers, half a dozen, streamed in, thankfully, but their bum-rush kept her from her Antonio, who was assuredly bleeding out on the club’s filthy floor. She had to get to him.
She pushed on, his body now in her sights, laid out flat on the floor to the right of the entrance doors. A paramedic entered then and knelt down. Then another. Thank God.
I’m coming too, Antonio. I’m coming for you.
*
She dreaded seeing his face, the pain, the brink, the end.
Her world without him, oh God, horror and despair flashed and burned through her.
She came up on the two medics, opened her mouth to announce herself, and forced herself to look at her Antonio’s face.
It was Brandon, the bouncer.
Fluttering freedom one heartbeat, frozen fright the next.
Johnnie hadn’t shot Antonio—thank God!—but Antonio wasn’t here. And he sure as hell would have been after so much time had passed. So Johnnie wasn’t bluffing about keeping Antonio somewhere else, with someone else, by gunpoint.
Flashing rings of light filled her vision and skewed the scenery. Then she was out.
*
He had her cradled in his arms now. “Jana,” he whispered. “Princessa, come back to me.”
Her lashes flickered and a large flood of air filled her chest. Then wide eyes as large as the universe looked up at him. “Antonio?” She blinked. “Am I dead? Are we dead?”
“No princess, we’re okay. We’re alive and well and together.” Alive, together. Thank God, because he didn’t know what he would have done. Forget driving home to Mexico, he’d imagined driving off a high cliff. If he’d lost Jana, ending it like his mother had didn’t seem so far out there. Unfathomable…his life would’ve been unfathomable.
But with her alive and breathing, unharmed in his arms, he’d go or stay about anywhere as long as she was with him. Manhattan or Calgary. It didn’t matter—however, with the insanity that had gone down tonight, he’d sure as hell make his case for them to go anywhere that was far away from there.
He looked down at her. Still so out of it, a soft smile reached her weary eyes as she reached up to his face. The gentle
stroke of her finger down his cheek and along his jaw made him warm, made him whole.
She reached up for the cap on his head. “What’s this?” she asked with a look of wonder and remembrance spreading across her stunning face.
“My chauffeur cap,” he said smiling. The replacement for the one Jocelyn Carlson had taken. He’d had this one in his trunk since Monday. “When the one dancer came out of the club screaming about the gun-wielding maniac inside, I wasn’t waiting for the cops, not a chance with you inside. So I grabbed the cap, figuring any head cover was better than nothing, and it resembled a police officer’s cap at any rate. Stupid, I know, but hell, here we are, right?”
“You…you almost killed me,” she mumbled.
“What’s that?” he asked, not really expecting much of a coherent answer from her. She was in shock, confused, obviously and understandably out of it. Thank God he’d come up behind her to catch her when she passed out minutes ago.
“You were the Jersey limo driver. In SoHo. Chauffeur cap. Hunky. But dangerous,” she murmured, smirking softly.
Holy shit! The night he fired Jocelyn Carlson. “Midnight sunglasses?”
“Midnight sunglasses? Yes, yes, sunglasses at night…to hide…” Her blanched cheeks were now gaining color back, rose color.
“Jesus, Jana!” Unbelievable! “I nearly killed you before I got the chance to fall for you!” He took her hand and pressed it to his lips. “Mi amore, lucky that I’m a damn good driver, able to avoid even the most exquisite of jaywalkers,” he teased, then kissed her on the bridge of her nose.
She laughed lightly, sat up slowly, and slid her arms tight around his neck. Locked and holding him for dear life, he felt her tears on his neck.
Then in a deadly serious yet hushed tone, she said, “I thought…I thought you’d been shot and I couldn’t get to you, and then that Johnnie’s guy had you, to kill—”
“Shhh. I’m here. I’m here and everything is okay.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her lips gently, a feather brush. “We’re okay.”
