by Lisa Ladew
Soren’s back door was opened by a hulking bodyguard. She lifted her chin at him, ignoring the yawn of empty space she felt under the house, not her business, then wound through the house to Soren’s office. His handsome face, lined with the harsh wisdom of a man much older than she, broke into a wide smile when he saw her. He half stood, and for just a moment she was afraid he would come around the desk and hug her. That would not be good.
But he didn’t. He bowed at the waist minutely, then dropped back into his chair, his eyes on her bag. “Ah, Rogue, you never fail me,” he said, his voice a rough purr.
“I never fail,” she said simply, then sat in the leather chair where Rex had been just a few moments before. The seat was still warm, making her grimace in distaste. “There’s eyes on the house.”
He nodded. “We know. Two across the street.”
“Three. And another two houses down on this side.” She gestured away from Bradford’s house, keeping herself from casting a look at the mirror in the hallway that announced her as someone else that couldn’t be trusted.
He frowned. “Good to know. They are looking for my-” He waved a hand. “It’s not important. My file, please?”
Rogue raised an eyebrow as she watched him and fished it out of the bag.
He smiled. “Your fee is already in your account.”
Rogue took out her phone and pressed two buttons, entered a code, then put it away. It certainly was. Good.
Soren’s already-off mood shifted, pulling in on itself, like he was gathering his courage. Rogue let her eyes drift over the plaques and trophies, mementoes of appreciative sponsored local sports teams, on the shelves behind and to the side of him, knowing what was coming. Fuck. She really was going to have to get out of the business. Once she refused him, their relationship would never be the same. He was a businessman, first and foremost, and no matter how much he liked her, she wouldn’t be allowed to stay once she said no. Not unless she took up with one of his rivals. Fat chance. She didn’t mind working for people she didn’t like, but she had to be able to trust them at least a smidgen. Looked like she was back to being a free agent.
His silence pulled her eyes to his. When their gazes locked, he said it. “I want you to work only for me.”
Rogue only stared. He knew what her answer was and she resented him for making her say it out loud. Finally, she spoke. “You know I work for myself.” Fucking motherfucker. Never, ever, ever would she work for a man, the way he wanted her to work for him. Never would she be that reliant on another person, especially a man.
“I’ll double your fee. Monthly.”
Rogue did the math quickly, the balance-sheet queen in her head unable not to. That would put her to where she was trying to get twice as quickly as she was headed now. Ultimate freedom was her goal, and a crap-ton of money was the only fail-safe way to get there, in her eyes. The ability to live in any country she wanted, bribe anyone she needed to, hire any person or business she desired…
But no. She would never subject herself to the whims of another like that.
She shook her head slowly, drawing out each motion, her eyes locked on his. “No, Soren. Final answer.”
His face gave away nothing. She admired that. But not enough to give him the answer he wanted. She changed the subject. “How’s your mother?”
Now Soren reacted, his eyes hooding slightly. “She’s-”
A fiery smell reached both of them at the same time. Rogue looked up quickly, sighting the smoke alarms in the room. Neither was responding. She rose to her feet, but Soren only seemed to collapse into his chair. Before she could move, Rex stepped out from around the corner that led to the alcove where the pool table was, a smirk on his face. Rogue swore he hadn’t been in the room a moment ago.
Rogue stayed on her feet, turning to face Rex fully, waiting for him to speak first. His smirk grew wider. “Ah, so this is the lovely Rogue I’ve heard so much about. Your name fits your face, sweetheart, and your reputation. Tell me, how did you get it?”
Rogue stayed silent, flexing her forearms to better feel the knives there, ready for anything.
Rex watched her not respond, his hand playing over a wooden trophy on the bookshelf he stood next to, his fingernails running over the corners of it, picking at them. Rogue could hear the soft scratch sound they made every time he plucked a finger hard enough to bend the nail.
He spoke. “When someone lobs you a ball, you really should catch it or hit it back, you know. It’s just polite.” He picked up the trophy and threw it to her underhand. She caught it by the golden body of the boy throwing a pitch, a real screamer, only to keep it from hitting her in the face. She put it down on Soren’s desk, throwing him a hard glance.
He stood. “Rogue, this is my brother, Rex. Rex, back the fuck off.”
Rogue nodded once, face a pissed-off mask. Politeness was not in her job description.
Rex’s eyes narrowed for a moment, then he walked through the room, carefully picking his way around Soren’s wooden mahogany fox statues, the hand-carved wooden stool with the sleeping fox for a seat, and the strategically-placed wooden tables, all with carved foxes somewhere in the art of the creation. Her favorite was the one that they were hidden in the curlicues of the lattice covering the table legs. You had to search for them, but once you saw them, they were everywhere. Cavorting, leaping, sleeping, hunting. Rogue turned her body to follow Rex through the room.
He stopped near the door. Blocking her? “I have a job for you.”
She nodded her head, like something had just come to her. “Rex Brenwyn… weren’t you in jail?”
He flicked her an impatient smile. “I got out on good behavior.” The lie slipped through the air, and he covered it with a fast follow up. “The job is in Serenity. It’s a very simple job. Won’t take an expert like you more than a few days. I need you to get something back for me. Something very important that was stolen from me.”
Rogue flicked her eyes toward Soren, wanting his take on it. This was the perfect kind of job for her. What she was best at. But Soren would not give his approval if he thought it was a bad job. He looked defeated, but did not give her a yay or a nay. Did not even look at her.
She turned her attention back to Rex. A few days. Serenity. He was speaking her language. She loved Serenity, and took every chance possible to get to the city.
Rex sat down and put his feet up on Soren’s fox table. Rogue’s favorite. She restrained an impulse to kick them to the floor.
He spoke as if bored, not even looking at her. “I’ll double your fee.”
That got her eyebrows moving north. “You know my fee?”
He yawned. “Of course I do. Or we wouldn’t be speaking. My brother assures me you are worth every penny.”
“Let’s hear it,” Rogue said.
Rex laid out the details, never once gauging her reaction. Barely even looking at her.
She couldn’t see any reason not to do it. It was way too much money for something so simple, but that was the best kind of job, wasn’t it? She’d once beat the shit out of a guy in an alley outside of a bar with a dildo for almost as much. He’d been the one to pay her to do it. People with too much money were different than normal people, and she’d learned not to question it.
“Who is this guy?”
Rex shrugged. “Drug dealer with a penchant for his own product.”
“Half now, half on completion,” she said, knowing if he didn’t balk at that, she would take the job.
He nodded once.
And she was on her way.
Chapter 13
Almost four hours later, Rogue took the last exit to Serenity, her destination, the Honey Depot, the Serenity restaurant that was her starting place for looking for the guy Rex wanted her to find. She would go there before she headed home, so she wouldn’t have to leave the house again that evening. Serenity was the only place she considered a real home. The only place she would keep if she had to leave Illinois. She hoped someday to retire i
n this town.
She’d had to stop to see Father Macleese, but that had gone quickly. He’d asked her to fix his toaster, which she’d happily and easily done. She’d been fixing stuff for him since she was young, a definite sinner on the streets of Chicago, hiding out from a controlling uncle and a doormat aunt, both of whom, when they could catch her, would demand things from her that she knew were wrong, but that she was good at. Picking pockets. Sneaking into houses. Hotwiring cars. She’d been doing that one since she was nine, what, like it was hard? Not. Just looking at the wires had told her which had done what and what simple twist would make the car run.
Father Macleese had fed her often, so she only had to go home once a day, if that, only had to deal with her ‘family’ when she had nowhere else to go. She’d never gone to school, but Father Macleese let her attend all the Sunday school services at St. Joseph’s, insisting the teachers help her learn to read but ask her no questions. He was old-school, Father Macleese, a man she’d watched grow more wrinkled and bent with every passing year, even as his heart had grown kinder. And now he was nervous that he was going to lose St. Joseph’s. She’d grown up in Chicago, moving all over the city when her uncle had decided they needed to go, but she’d always found her way to St. Joseph’s as often as possible. She hated the thought of Chicago without Father Macleese to make it a more livable place. The bishop wanted him to retire, the bishop thought his parish couldn’t support the shelter for women and children he wanted to build. The bishop this and the bishop that. The bishop could go fuck himself. Father Macleese did more to help people who needed it than the bishop had ever done in his life, and when Rogue’s life calmed down, she would figure out a way to help him.
She rolled onto the main drag of Serenity, heading left and out of town immediately. Her mind went to the pendants, left in Chicago, and for the twenty or thirtieth time since she’d left the city, she told herself she’d made the right decision. She wanted them with her. Wanted them at her house in Serenity. But Boe was at her house in Serenity. And he was a complete enigma. Something told her the pendants had a lot to do with the mystery that she didn’t understand but that she was smack-dab in the middle of.
She already knew Boe was part of the mystery, the one that she used to think she was on the outside of looking in, but now she was realizing that she might be a key player in it, with someone else pulling the strings. There wasn’t much more she hated than feeling like someone else was in control of her life. Maybe being ignored, but that was it.
As she drove, her mind ran over what she did know.
One. Almost six months ago, on her 25th birthday, she’d begun having… images come to her. Images and emotions and… knowings, that she didn’t understand. The mind-pictures had become more intense with each passing week, and the ones she’d had recently had made her do some sort of a blackout-drunk routine. She would think of cops, or wolves, and then lose herself completely. Sometimes for almost an hour. Once she’d “woken up” in her garage here in Serenity, painting a wolf onto a wooden sign she must have made herself. Another time she’d found herself standing in front of that stupid art sculpture in the park downtown, a can of yellow spray paint in her hand, graffiti scrawled on the metal thing that looked like a flag or a blanket in front of her. It had said, The wolves are guarding the sheep, wake up, sheep! What did that even mean?
Two. She’d realized that she’d started to believe in werewolves, and she wasn’t sure when or how. Like one day she was all, werewolves? Yeah, right, if she thought of them at all. And the next day she was all, werewolves? Where? What did they look like?
Three. Boe had come into her life. She’d been out on one of her excursions one evening, waking up in Sinissipi Park at almost four in the morning, graffiti all over the playground, but something else had drawn her attention, making her pocket the Sharpie she’d been using on the side of the building and whirl around in the dark, trying to pick out whoever was watching her do what she’d been doing.
He’d been hiding in the trees far enough away that she knew he couldn’t see her face, but still, he might be able to ID her well enough for a cop to arrest her for vandalism. Her heart had sunk at the thought of being arrested in Serenity, for the first time ever, her fingerprints finally on file, and for something so stupid! She didn’t understand the graffiti. Didn’t get her sudden compulsion, her inability to discipline her own mind like she’d done all her life. She’d stood there, hating the underground obsession that drove her to do it for whatever reason, wondering if it was some sort of guilt about her profession manifesting in this silly midnight need, maybe a desire to get caught so she would have the opportunity to admit all her other crimes.
But no, that didn’t make sense. She didn’t feel guilty about what she did. She only stole from people who had too much, only took jobs after researching them first. She’d already looked up the guy Rex wanted her to find and confirmed what he’d said was true. The target was a small-time drug dealer, liked to hook kids early and bleed them dry. Been arrested for a multitude of other equally nasty things. She had no problem feeding one criminal to another criminal, no problem hooking back property that had already been stolen once.
What about stealing the file from the cops? Rogue shrugged in her car, with no one there to see it. Soren had already known what was in that file, he’d said, and he just wanted it out of their hands. She’d peeked at it, and it was exactly as he’d said. Pictures of his place, speculation about whether or not his brother would go there, and some personal details that hadn’t seemed to make a lot of sense. Besides, the cops had to have copies of that shit, didn’t they? She knew that and she knew Soren knew that, so what she had finally decided was that the stealing of the file was for a message. A kind of ‘fuck you’ to Chief Lorenzo. A big slap in the face that said, you’re not as smart or as good as you think you are.
Rogue didn’t mind being part of something like that at all. As much as she loved cops, she hated them, too. She loved them for their big bodies, their I’m-the-shit attitudes, and their total lack of a problem with knocking someone on their ass if that someone was asking for it. She hated them because you couldn’t be in her business and not hate someone who had the authority and the balls to take everything away from you with one arrest.
But the only man she’d ever gotten off with had been a cop. Most men she slept with knew her as someone she wasn’t, like Bradford, who thought she was a sweet, shy librarian and so he had sweet, shy librarian sex with her. Always missionary position with 42 pumps per minute, and 52.2 seconds of cuddling afterwards. She liked the closeness, didn’t mind the sex, but always had to finish herself in the bathroom after. Except for that one guy…
He’d been a cop, a big one, he’d had no idea that she was a criminal, and he probably wouldn’t have cared. He saw her free-climbing in Yosemite, on her own, and had broken off from his group of friends to spot her. He’d never once told her she shouldn’t be out there alone and she could see his admiration for her every time she looked down at him. He’d been digging her hard. He hadn’t spoken much, but the one time she had fallen not-on-purpose, she’d been glad he was there to lead her to the pad. That evening, as the sun had been setting, she’d dropped to the ground, exhausted, and said three words to him. “You a cop?” His haircut and clothes telling her it was that or military, his cocksure attitude and the shit on his belt leaning toward cop.
He’d nodded, and she’d flashed him a slow, predatory smile, one that said, good for you, if you’re gonna do it, do it now. I’m waiting.
He’d done it, pushing her against the rock she’d been climbing, taking her hard and fast and standing up, and she’d screamed out her pleasure with the light of the setting sun in her eyes.
If he’d said no, he was military, she might have gotten his name and number. Instead, they’d walked out in silence and gone their separate ways, but she always remembered him when she thought about her werewolf problem, as she liked to call it. In fact, it was sometimes his fa
ce that flashed in her head just before the images began to play. His handsome, rough-hewn face and cocky smile that turned on the mind-movie, frequently spitting her into a darkness she couldn’t control.
She shook her head in her sedan. Fuck! What had she been thinking about before she’d gone on the world’s longest trip down memory lane. Her mind was shot and she hated it, but she never lingered on shit like that. Get up, brush yourself off, rail and bail and leave no trail. In other words, action, not words.
But still, she had to drag herself back to reality. There was no action to be done, which was her strong point, but plenty of thinking to be done, which she didn’t enjoy near as much. But no one else would take over the job. She was the only one available to try to worry the mystery she was wrapped up in into the light of day.
Oh yeah, she’d been thinking of Boe and the night she’d found him.
Ok, starting over. Three. She’d been doing her own version of the dirty in the park, felt someone watching her, but instead of taking off, she’d sought him out. Found a grown man of about sixty, thin skin, bruises everywhere, terrified expression and mannerisms, cowering in the woods, his clothes drenched through. She could see the outline of his ribs under the ratty t-shirt he wore. He’d had no shoes on his feet.
Rogue walked silently into the forest on the path, her ability leading her right to the man who was watching her every move. He was no threat, every sense in her body told her that. She stepped off the trail and found him cowering at the bottom of a large evergreen, pushed up against the trunk. He’d been trying to gather leaves to use as a blanket for his bare feet and the dirt was showing through in large circular patches. Snow hadn’t flown yet, but the chill in the air said it could be any night. Tonight, even.
