Made for Breaking (The Russells Book 1)

by Lauren Gilley

  In an almost rude haste, she pulled the tub of citrus from beneath the bar and did an about face.

  She did not rush away from the boxer, she reasoned. She slowed her steps purposefully, putting some hip action into her walk as she made her way toward Trish. And she did not keep her eyes down as she moved around to the other side of the bar and pretended to search for a bottle of Patrón.

  Lisa shuffled bottles around until she glanced up through the gaps in the glass pyramid and saw Trish in front of Lynx and his friend, winding a lock of red hair around a finger, one wide hip propped against the bar. She was laying the charm on thick, and Lisa felt both relieved and agitated.

  Disgusted with herself, she untied her apron and stowed it beneath the bar. “I’m taking my break,” she told a fellow employee, Jackie of the giant fake breasts and streaming platinum hair, who passed behind her.

  “You’re gonna miss the Roundup!” Jackie called to her retreating back in a sing-song voice.

  “Good.”

  The Double Vision was a zoo at all times. Even on a dead night, the place was packed with humanity, and tonight was far from dead. Most of the girls took their breaks out back, in the dark shadows beside the dumpster, with a cigarette and pilfered beer. The actual break room was a dimly-lit, grungy dungeon of a room and Lisa only stayed there long enough each night to both stow and retrieve her bags. She didn’t smoke and the back alley that stank of garbage had no appeal for her, so she skirted around the dance floor and up an illuminated set of steps to the catwalk that ran around the perimeter of the bar. There, she climbed further up a narrow staircase that was roped off from the public, up to the glass-walled booth where DJ Twist spun live five nights a week, though most patrons assumed the music ran on a preset loop without any human involvement.

  Trevor Stiles sat behind the built-in electronics panel that controlled every aspect of the music he played – bass and treble, volume. There were black lights and disco balls that operated off switches he could flip. Lisa had long ago given up trying to figure out the function of every knob and dial of his station.

  “Hey, T,” she greeted, dragging a wheeled chair over beside his and plopping down into it once she’d sealed the door behind her.

  “What up, girl?” Trevor was six-three and as skinny as a broom handle. His mixed Hispanic and black heritage had left him with skin the color of milk chocolate that looked a shade darker up here in the deep, dark confines of the DJ booth. He wore his hair in short cornrows that ended at the base of his skull. Tonight, as on all work nights, he was dressed in baggy dark jeans and a long, Affliction look-a-like shirt that had the Double Vision logo done in bleeding orange letters surrounded by artistic swirls and leaf patterns. His headphones were hooked around his neck, the Rihanna song that was playing out in the bar sounding tinny and far-away as it whispered from them.

  “Nothing.” Lisa was straddling the chair and she folded her arms over the back of it, chin resting on her crossed wrists. “I’m on break.”

  He grinned, white teeth flashing, and turned back to his instrument panel. “You just happen to go on break right before I flip the Roundup switch?” He chuckled.

  “They don’t need me in the T & A parade down there,” she said with a disdainful snort.

  Trevor laughed again. “You sure? You can still make it down there if you want.”

  “Nope. Flip away.”

  As he stopped the track currently playing and began punching buttons, Lisa’s eyes swept out through the window to the shuffling crowd below. The regular lights dimmed and the black lights came on. The disco balls dropped. Colored lights began revolving, throwing spots of red, blue and yellow across the floor. Trevor pulled the mike on its little stand over in front of his face and Lisa chuckled as he donned his announcer voice.

  “You guys know what time it is?”

  Even through the walls, glass and wood, she could hear the roar.

  “Alright, girls, you ready for a Roundup?!”

  Lisa had no idea why this ridiculous, over-the-top, cheesy tradition had begun. Probably because the bar’s owner wished he owned a strip club but couldn’t get the license approval and wanted to push the limits as much as possible. But whether she disapproved or not, the Roundup was going to happen. As the opening guitar strains of Jason Aldean’s “She’s Country” flooded through the speakers and echoed off every flat surface in the place, bartenders and waitresses alike abandoned their posts and rushed to form a rough line that stretched from one end of the bar to the other.

  Trevor pushed the mike away and hooked his headphones around his neck again, still smiling as he reclined in his chair. “It’s a beautiful thing,” he said, more to himself than to her.

  “It’s a stupid thing,” Lisa countered.

  She knew the dance by heart – of course she did – she’d had to learn it as part of her interview process when applying for the job. So in her head, she counted off beats and imagined herself spinning and dropping and shaking her ass along with her fellow employees. It wasn’t that raunchy; the choreography wasn’t even worthy of a child’s theater production, and most of the girls were poor, poor dancers, but the male customers only seemed to care about the possibility of a wardrobe malfunction. And all the sultry looks the girls tossed over their shoulders between moves.

  “There a reason you’re extra uptight tonight?” Trevor asked. When Lisa glanced at him sideways, his grin was still there, but it had become probing and thoughtful. “Your bitch-ass boy didn’t come back in here, did he?”

  She had to grin, just for a moment. Several weeks before, Tristan had come in, and he’d been sure to toss verbal barbs at her across the bar for the benefit of his laughing friends. They’d been cheap, unintelligent barbs, but they’d stung all the same. “No,” she assured, glancing back out through the window again. “I just…” might have a mild crush on a total stranger who is no one I need to ever meet “…dunno,” she finished lamely.

  He shrugged. “You can stay up here till you figure it out, then.”

  Drew threw back three beers over the course of the two hours he suffered inside Double Vision. He didn’t really suffer, but he just didn’t care about the place. Josh got cozy with the girl he’d been sitting beside and disappeared for a while, leaving Drew to let his eyes wander over the crowd. The little brunette who’d brought him his first beer never came back, and he found himself thinking that was a shame because he would have liked to see her participate in the group line dance or whatever the hell it was. She looked like she could move – lithe and fit – and would have done the routine better justice than the wiggly redhead who served his drinks the rest of the night.

  “Where’d you go?” he asked Josh when the guy finally returned to the bar.

  The blonde boxer threw back the last of his drink that he’d left on the bar – Drew secretly hoped someone had drugged it, thinking it was a chick’s drink – and jerked his head toward the door. “Got a call from Ricky.” He had to nearly shout to be heard over the music as they began making their way toward the staircase.

  Drew lifted his brows in surprise as he stepped between two girls who were clearly drunk and dancing together. One of them made a grab at his arm, but he slid out of her grasp. “Really? What’d he want?”

  “That guy you’re supposed to meet tomorrow. Russell?” They reached the bottom step and started to climb.

  “Yeah?”

  “Rick says he used to be a lawyer.”

  “So.” Ricky sold stolen merch to all kinds of buyers, even high-and-mighty lawyer types.

  They paused at the top of the steps and customers coming in had to break around them, some throwing them nasty looks. Josh gave him what he thought was a very pointed, meaningful glance. “He doesn’t want you to meet him tomorrow night. He says show up at the guy’s shop instead – some garage in Alpharetta. He’ll email you the address.”

  Drew frowned. “Why? And why didn’t he call me?”

  “Dunno.” Josh shrugged and moved
toward the double front doors, leaving Drew to follow.

  Outside, the night was as dark and thick as swamp water, though it smelled faintly of honeysuckle and largely of exhaust fumes. The dull glow of street lamps kept the stars from being visible and the sky was a dull blanket thrown over the world. Patrons weaved between cars, laughing and talking loudly.

  “I’m calling him,” Drew said as they headed toward the van.

  Josh shot him a scowl, his pretty-boy face drawing up in a not-so-pretty way. “Do what you want. Just tellin’ you what I know.”

  The roundabout message delivery didn’t sit right with Drew at all. He was a straightforward kind of guy – he met the people he was supposed to meet, delivered the product he was supposed to deliver without question and without incident. Ricky should have called him, rather than going through Josh – who couldn’t be trusted with anything. And Ricky should have stuck to protocol, or at least offered some sort of reasoning for the break…

  Something caught Drew’s eye across the parking lot and he couldn’t say what it was until he halted and pivoted toward it. There was a dark Ford truck parked beneath a streetlamp and there was a girl standing beside it. She closed the partially open truck door and hiked a bag up on her shoulder, turning to head back toward the bar. She was dressed like the waitresses and bartenders, in short cutoffs and a yellow halter top that showed a lot of skin. He registered the petite frame and long, thin, tan legs. The flash of dark hair that looked coal black in the shadows as her locks flipped over her shoulder and fanned across her back.

  It was the brunette who’d brought him his first beer and he was again struck by how much he liked looking at her. A smile touched his lips as he watched her fidget with the straps of her bra and make a face. She paused to bend forward at the waist, her hair tumbling like a waterfall, and adjusted her bra, top and breasts before straightening.

  Her head came up and even across the shadowed parking lot, he knew she saw him because she stopped mid-stride, a platform sandal hovering over the asphalt.

  Her expression changed – self-conscious or nervous or just plain curious, he couldn’t tell – but then she started forward again, her steps quick and ground covering, athletic.

  Drew watched her until she was back to the sidewalk, and by that time, she was nearly jogging in her haste to get back inside.

  He frowned, released a sigh through his nostrils. There were two types of women he came across in his line of…”work”: the ones who loved him for purely physical reasons, and the ones who were terrified of him. It looked like this girl fell under the terrified category, and that was a shame…

  “Dude!” Josh called. “You coming or what?”

  “Yeah.”

  7

  Hektor looked like a dead dog, flopped on his side on the asphalt of the parking lot, unmoving, soaking up morning sun. If Lisa squinted, she could see his ribcage swell with each breath and knew he was alive. She smiled. She didn’t bring him to work every day because the patrons of the shops on either side of them, though separated by grass medians, were terrified of the Doberman. The deli bitch next door had threatened to call animal control one afternoon when Hektor had wandered over into her parking lot after a scrap of dropped sandwich.

  “He’s supposed to be in the office with you,” Ray commented as he stepped in through the connecting door from the first garage bay.

  Lisa had her feet propped on the desk, reclining in her swivel chair, and tipped her head over the back of it so she was looking at her dad upside down. He was in jeans and a short-sleeved plaid button-up that he wore open over a black t-shirt. Though it had been three years since he’d worn a suit and tie to work, Lisa still half expected to see him in Armani with Gucci wingtips when she glanced his way at the garage.

  “He likes the sun,” she countered, and sat back up in the chair, looking out at her dog over the pointed tips of her Tony Lama cowboy boots.

  “He’s gonna get heat stroke.”

  “Nope. He’s smarter than Johnny.”

  Ray snorted; Johnny had taken a nap in the backseat of a car two summers ago and had to be rushed to the ER for IV fluids after a literal bout of heat stroke. “I coulda killed that little shit that day.”

  “Almost didn’t have to.”

  “True.”

  She listened to his boots on the gritty tile as he moved around the side of the desk. He crossed to the window and blocked her view, presumably looking at Hektor. “Slow day?” he asked, nodding toward her very non-busy pose, the flying toasters screen saver that was up on the computer.

  Lisa took note of the casual way he propped a shoulder against the wall and knew it was a ruse: He might have been a high-priced attorney once upon a time who made a living fooling other people, but he couldn’t fool his family. Blood recognized blood. “Classic car restoration’s not exactly in high demand.”

  “True.”

  Lisa frowned and pulled her boots down off the desk, sitting fully upright. “What’s up?” she asked. It wasn’t like Ray to repeat himself, unless it was to make a point, and he looked too distracted at the moment for that to be the case.

  He stared out at the parking lot. Lisa followed his line of sight and saw that a car had pulled in and that Hektor had gone to greet the driver. The driver who had the door open and was contemplating whether it was smart to climb all the way out.

  “Why don’t you take an early lunch? And take the dog with you,” Ray said. It didn’t sound like a friendly request.

  She stood, the wheels of the desk chair clacking as they rolled across the tile. Through the window, she watched the car’s driver finally get up the courage to wave Hektor away and stand. Lisa knew who he was in an instant. She slowed down the whirring gears in her brain, took stock of the unremarkable late model blue Impala he was driving, the navy t-shirt that was visible beneath the halves of his unzipped hoodie. It’s too warm for a sweatshirt, she thought to herself. But then her eyes went to his face and she stopped prolonging the inevitable conclusion that the boxer who called himself The Lynx was giving her dog a wary glance and starting toward the office.

  “Shit,” Ray muttered, shoving away from the wall. He didn’t run and he didn’t look panicked – that would have been too out of character – but he crossed the office in three strides. “Stay in here,” he told her, voice clipped. “When he comes in, don’t get up. Tell him none of us are here.”

  “Dad.” Her pulse kick started in her ears as she read his sudden urgency. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing you need to worry about.” He paused halfway out the door and gave her a commanding look over his shoulder. “Do not get up,” he repeated, and then disappeared into the garage.

  Lisa half rose out of her chair, and then sat back down, cursing her own obedience but too startled to do anything but listen. A glance out the window revealed that Lynx was drawing closer, Hektor trailing at his heels, hackles up, ready to leap on the stranger if need be. The office ran perpendicular to the garage bays and gave the building a shortened L-shape. The front door was glass, but tinted, and she knew Lynx couldn’t see her through it. So she took a moment to compose herself, hands on the desk, deep breaths moving in and out through her nostrils with measured slowness. To her left, past the water cooler and mini fridge, the partially open door that led into the garage gave her ears access to an unusual silence. The radio had been switched off and the momentary surge of voices that had stirred up at Ray’s entrance had quieted as well. There were no clangs and bangs, no whines of air hoses and hydraulic lifts. The garage had gone dead as if with a flick of a switch.

  She wasn’t afraid of the boxer – as strongly as he’d fought in the ring, there wasn’t anything outwardly threatening about him – but her stomach sank as he reached for the door handle, a kind of dread she couldn’t name catching her breath. She had the sense that something bad was about to happen, and hated that the sensation was so vague as to be bad, and not more certain than that. But she took one more deep breath an
d squared her narrow shoulders as Lynx pulled open the door and stepped into the office.

  The boxer hesitated a moment, the door propped against his shoulder, to let his eyes adjust to the dimness of the office. Hektor took the opportunity to slide past the guy’s leg and come in, his nails clicking against the tile. He came to Lisa’s side at the desk and sat, ears pricked, watchful.

  “Hey.” Lynx stepped fully inside and let the door swing shut, the little chime above sounding again. “I’m looking for –” She knew he recognized her then, because his eyes widened to the size of half dollars, the dark chocolate of the irises looking almost black in the shadows. He has nice, good-sized eyes, she thought. When he’s not freaked out. She hated little pig eyes on horses, and on people too, apparently.

  “For…?” She pretended she’d never seen him before in her life, hoping that, given how dark it had been in the bar the night before, he would start to think maybe he’d never seen her before either.

  “Um…” He reached up to scratch at the back of his head, the bunching of the muscles in his arm visible even under his sweatshirt. “Is Ray here? Ray Russell?”

  Lisa wondered, idly, if her father ever took for granted the fact that she would cover for him at all times. “No,” she said, and made a deliberate show of swiveling her chair toward the computer, hands going to the keyboard.

  “Oh.” She snuck a glance from the corner of her eye and watched him wipe the confusion off his face. When he spoke again, he was more composed than he had been – her coldness had had the intended effect. “When’s he gonna be in? I need to talk to him.”

  “Don’t know.” She could sound like a real bitch when she wanted to, as Eddie and Sly often pointed out to her. “Pretty sure he’s not coming in today.”

  She heard his sneakers shift on the tile. “Doesn’t he work here?”

  “No, he owns the place.” In a feat of acting that made her both proud and remorseful, she did a slow half-turn and forced her eyes to move up from his shoes to his face in a way that would appear almost disgusted. “Unless you have business for us – which, judging by that soccer mom thing you drove in here, you don’t – then I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”