Nightshade, p.18
Nightshade, page 18
I untied my apron, counted my till and tips, divvied them up to share with the bar-backs and dish washers in the kitchen. Marcus walked up as I grabbed my bag from the locker area.
“What are you doing, Kins? You can stay. You should.”
“I’m leaving, Marcus. I don’t want to give him an answer because everyone expects me to. He deserves better than that. When I respond, he’ll know it’s real and not for show.”
“I can respect that, Little Red. Pray about it, or whatever you do,” he told me in awkwardness, but I loved his thought.
When I opened the back door, he followed me while insisting I could stay, even as a patron, adding that I should face my fears. Did he want me to give Jase a chance? What happened to that junk about making Taylor work his butt off?
“No, Marcus. That crowd is crazy. Besides, with the Inferno stuff going on with Sara, it’s best I leave while the bar is full. You were right earlier, and I’m sorry I gave you crap.”
He sighed and ran a palm over his forehead, then jogged ahead of me. Jarrell paused his bouncer duties at the door to join us. His hand touched the small of my spine while he paid strict attention to everything.
“You guys okay?” They walked me the entire way to my car, making me paranoid.
“Kins, I don’t want you scared. I promise we’ll talk, but not yet. I’m still working some things out,” Marcus assured me like a father pushing away questions from a five-year-old. “For now, save your energy so you can keep running from Taylor’s hot pursuit.” There he is ladies and gents! What the heck?
“I’m not running! I’m thinking. There’s a difference.”
Jarrell’s laugh echoed over the empty vehicles. I almost demanded an explanation, but my mind was so heavy, I conceded. Marcus’s laughter joined. “Right, when you earn that metal, you show it so I can slap him upside the head if the rock is too small.”
“Back and forth. Honestly, you guys need to make up your minds. Nice pun on the medal, by the way.”
Marcus asked me to stay once more, but I shut the door on further arguments and watched him in the rearview until the bar faded.
Chapter 25
KLIVE
The air inside the small apartment should have hollowed with dead silence, but the quiet filled my ears like cotton. I sensed an invisible presence occupying space, shifting and blocking the ticking of a bedroom clock and the conditioned air heaving through a vent.
The front door pressed closed at my back. I released the knob with the same calculated millimeters that I had used to open the portal, assessing obstacles while my eyes adjusted to the darkness. In the living area, golden light from a neighboring streetlamp spilled through sheer curtains over the two sets of French doors. Two couches covered in pillows and throw blankets faced each other, and a vase with dead flowers adorned the coffee table between them.
To the left, blue digits on the microwave displayed the wrong time. A curtain was drawn over the window above the sink. Dirty dishes lined the length of the counter. The kitchen island filled with mail and papers, a laptop, candles, and the crystal vase from the roses I’d gifted her for Valentine’s Day.
The interior door beside the refrigerator leading to the garage below locked tight at both intervals. Sure, love, secure the entry that doesn’t matter….
I joined the pistol with the silencer and crept toward the shallow hallway. Movement! I jolted into a bathroom, nearly tripping as I wrapped my foot in a pair of panties!
Me. That was my own bloody reflection in a full-length mirror at the end of the hall. Tosser!
At least the shower curtain wasn’t drawn. No one hiding there.
The washer and dryer across the hall sat between open accordion doors. Kinsley’s laundry flooded the floor. I bent and yanked the knickers from my ankle and tossed them back into the mess.
This meant the wanker lurked behind one of two cracked bedroom doors. Each flanked my reflected image. Carpet absorbed a repeated struggle with another pair of Kinsley’s obstinate undergarments! This bloody woman and her laziness!
Rather than tossing the booby-trap, I hung onto the bra. My patience expired! Instead of kicking in doors, I strode to her front entry and ripped the door open with a resounding slam shut a second later. “Kinsley, baby!” I called with no accent, mimicking Taylor. “Did I beat you here? You left your door unlocked.” Unwilling to dance in the dark, I flipped the light switch that supplied enough glow to illuminate the living, kitchen, and hallway.
With the gun behind my leg, I marched straight to both doors and kicked the right open. Her study rested empty except for a corner desk and the normal at-home office supplies, sleeping desktop computer. The curtain billowed before the open windowsill. “Guess no homework tonight?” I taunted. “What a shame, I wanted to play the naughty teacher again. Figured that serenade hit your target, baby.”
I traversed the laundry pile like a mountain goat, then drummed my fingers against the other door. The hinges yawned as I pressed into her bedroom. “Perhaps you’re ready and waiting in there? This is a sexy game of hide-and-seek.” All right, that sounded fun.
Would Kinsley know where to hide or how to defend herself from men such as the one who peeked like a nightmare beneath her bed? Come on. What was I working with, here—a total amateur? Without a doubt, in the tritest of hidey-holes, I spied the unmistakable sheen of metal glinting in a telling gray against the light spilling into her room.
“Oh, naughty girl. You’re keeping a secret. Perhaps I am not enough for you?”
Just as he took aim, the steel toe of my boot kicked the gun from his hand, and the cruel grain of the textured sole ground onto his fingers, ripping a cry of pain from his lips. Lucky for him, his face wasn’t within reach. He had no choice but to expose himself.
I strolled into her en suite to give him a sporting chance and check that he was flying solo. My quarry rolled into the open with a clumsy dash for the hallway. Endorphins rushed like a feeding frenzy with the thrill of the chase!
“Not so fast, you sick—” Threats and names rained from my American imitation until I pinned his wrists behind his back by C-cups and straps. Wadded panties stuffed in his mouth muffled his pained screams. Each knuckle-bruising blow to areas of great reaction, with no exterior bloodshed, sent tingling pleasure spiraling like foreplay for the torment that lie ahead for him while I imagined the happy endings that lay in store to keep him from getting his hands on her. “Shall we take this back to my place?” I asked with suave sadism as I placed him into a chokehold and chopped his neck and shoulder with a brachial stun—pausing our cat-and-mouse play as he crumpled, passed out.
Hoisting his frame of no meager size over one shoulder, no sooner had I turned off the lights, did light of a different type shine into the windows and curve onto the walls before vanishing. Someone was home!
Shit!
The man’s limp body jostled with my hustle into the study to pry that window wide open. He had come in this way because there was no screen to keep me from dropping him from the second story to the sprinkler damp soil below. Had I not written him onto the list myself, I may have felt sorry for the shoddy landing with nothing to help break his fall. Who knows? Perhaps the impact had done the rest of my job for me?
Now to get the hell out of here and inspect the bastard!
At the sound of her humming and the thrum of every step up the stairs, Kinsley had arrived, and our fates were in peril if I didn’t find a place to hide this instant!
Chapter 26
KINSLEY
The driveway was empty.
“Thank God no one’s home.” I’d be able to slink back into my apartment without Daddy spying my naughty appearance. A late weeknight never stopped my parents from having fun with their friends. When my mom’s SUV slept inside the garage, that meant that they’d gone out for drinks. If she took her vehicle, she left the garage door cracked at the bottom. No cracks tonight. Daddy was designated driver. Mom would be a handful.
So glad Daddy couldn’t pester me about my evening at work with Jase.
Across the street, the slutty teen-aged dream from a few doors down was sucking face with a guy at the top of the slide. His hand was up her shirt. Her father would shoot him if he realized she wasn’t the angel asleep in her room on a school night. “Hey, guys, you mind keeping it clean for the littles that play there in the morning?” I called, never having much tolerance for watching someone trash their self-esteem.
“Aren’t you one to talk, daddy’s girl,” she sneered.
Huh?
The guy took off with the promise to call her. She gave a prissy pout and flipped me off while I shrugged her attitude off and mounted the stairs. What was her damage? She should be thanking me for doing her a favor.
When I walked inside, I swiped at my eye makeup and smacked the light switch with frustration at my sloppy mistake. I turned to snap the deadbolt. Wait! I hadn’t used my keys to get in!
“What the hell?” I whispered and held my breath. Nothing moved. The only sound came from the ticking clock. I rushed to the refrigerator, then sighed with a hand to my chest.
No creamer. Mom must’ve stolen my coffee creamer again and forgotten to lock up after herself. “Thank you, Jesus, but good grief is Mom a hypocrite.”
Irritated and relieved, I spilled every heavy cent and business card from my apron onto the coffee table, then heaved the tight shirt over my head. I shifted my shoulders as I adjusted the girls inside this crazy bra, half-tempted to pull the heavy curtains and unburden myself of this under-wire and lace. All I wanted was a shower and sleep.
“Son of a bitch!” I toppled over my own feet and caught myself against the floor as I tried to peel my legs from these damn shorts. In a bit of a fit, my tennis shoes flew from my feet against the baseboards in the hallway while I vented about Marcus’s uniforms the way I wanted to. “Let’s dress Marcus in nothing more than Spanx and see how his frank and beans feel after being smashed and outlined for hours with women copping feels! What am I saying? He’d love that. Ugh! I hate reeking like a beer-drenched wench!”
I peppered the laundry pile with the stinky uniform, then sank down before the mirror at the end of the hallway like my reflection was my only friend. “You look tired.” My fingers reached out to touch the glass where wisps of hair rested against my forehead.
“Isn’t life just so charmed because you make bank on tips? And all those medals! My, how many do you have now? Like a hundred? Oh, a hundred and two? My mistake. You’re lucky. You don’t even have to try. Scholarship, good looks, outrunning everyone in everything, aren’t you babes? And isn’t it just heaven how Jase Taylor sang to you? I bet you’re not even grateful and probably still won’t sleep with him. Then again, it’s common knowledge you’re a snobby prude who thinks you’re better than everyone else around you. Poor thing. Alienated on that island of achievement with no one to keep you company.”
I touched my face and pushed the wisps away like my mother would, tried seeing myself from her eyes. She’d been so afraid of that necklace. I grinned at my reflection.
“But wait!” I said to myself. “There’s more! Hold, please.”
I sought the velveteen box and opened up to show my reflection the necklace inside. She gasped and asked, “Is this real? Who gave you such pretty jewelry?” I tossed my head on an uppity laugh and waved my hand like this were nothing. “Why, I haven’t a clue, love,” I told her in a British accent. “But perhaps they came from the expensive man in the expensive suit with the best cologne in the world. Who’s that you ask?” I scoffed at her and removed the necklace, secured the clasp at the nape of my neck, then admired the way her chin lifted and how her heavily made-up eyes sparkled with the emeralds and diamonds. “He’s dangerous,” I said, my chin and voice dropping. “Like this necklace. And the way you stare at me from stranger’s eyes. Where’s your innocence? You are scary.”
I ran my fingers over the jewels, the flesh plumped by this bra, trailed my hand down the line between my abdominal muscles, stopped at my navel.
“Who are you, and what do you really want?”
How many times I’d asked myself that question at crossroads, but never in this capacity. As a grown woman. No more where do I want ‘this’ to take me in adulthood? I need a solution.
Does Jase have a place in the new phase, or will his recipe for a relationship call for sacrificing dreams? Do we even match?
My previous internship ended three months ago. Now I’d received letters of acknowledgment and consideration from the ones I’d applied to. Suspense was a nasty thing. I could always become Daddy’s assistant. That also kept me here for Mr. Taylor if the internship downtown wasn’t mine. The other one was upstate.
Was Jase ready or capable of hanging up that notched belt for a long-distance relationship neither of us knew would work?
Mom would have smacked my bottom at the direction my thoughts headed.
“You talk and think too much,” I muttered to my reflection. Rather than remove the necklace, I wore this persona while I closed the heavy drapes in the living room, then scooped the tips in my hands and hauled the money to the lock box in my closet. The change went into a five-gallon jug. On the way to my room, the twenty-dollar-bill with the writing fluttered to the floor. I squatted to read the handwriting: “Kinsley, you’re a fire starter. Call me. Pat.”
“Ugh! Do guys think this works? I can’t believe he had the nerve to say that to me before he left. Hmm…Jase pro: he’s big and mean enough to scare jerks like this. Then again, that could also be a con for my guy friends. He might scare them all away. Which doesn’t make sense because this guy, Pat, had been in front of Jase and had no problem giving me this with him watching.”
I rolled my eyes and scaled the mountain of laundry. Only—?
Fragrance sucked through my nose like I should have had lines chopped on a table and that twenty as a straw. I’d never done drugs, never would, but I wasn’t an idiot.
“Oh, God, please tell me he brushed off on me somewhere! How had I not smelled him before?”
I rushed into my bedroom and dumped the change on the foot of my bed, then hastened out to the laundry pile. On my knees, I flung dirty clothes, not caring where the stray twenty landed in the mayhem. “Where’s my shirt? It must be around here! For goodness sakes! I smell him now!”
In the elevator and stairwell, the pirate had the most wonderful cologne I’d ever gotten my nose close to. His scent was a stain on the pirate coat I’d never wanted removed but faded after some months. Since then, I’d been on a secret quest to pin his fragrance down in stores without luck.
At my father’s building, I’d smelled him twice since. The first time I hadn’t given credence because he hadn’t studied me with an ounce of recollection. Days ago, I’d complimented him, and he’d brushed my hand with his fingers. We had an undeniable chemistry, and he knew who I was and wasn’t running away. Instead, he played games like a guerrilla fighter. Dart in, dart back out, repeat. To what end?
In my madness, I cursed about Jase, about the pirate, about men such as Rustin, and who I expected Jase to still be. Every stale liquor-stained uniform made me cringe. After five minutes, I realized there was no single article of clothing. Tears collected in my eyes as I stared down my reflection in the mirror again. That dangerous queen reduced to a desperate princess, she appeared confused.
“Longing for something you can’t have? Shouldn’t have, and won’t have if you respect the man who poured his heart out tonight?”
But here, I didn’t have to pretend to be a better person. That reflection could be whoever she wanted to be, and deep down, the give a damn was getting harder to care about along with every ‘should’.
When the phone rang, I ran to answer as if the person on the other end would pull me from this defiance and place me back into the skin of the good girl I’d always been. The one who’d choose a longtime crush over a mysterious stranger and never keep expensive gifts she could never wear in the light of day.
Chapter 27
KLIVE
Time’s up! Kinsley’s coming!
As I grappled for a place to hide, I understood why the rogue fireman picked such a childish space to conceal himself; there was nowhere to hide! I settled for the window and was about to take the branch when a teen shouted down the street as she looked back this way with her finger in the air.
Bollocks! Because things weren’t perilous enough!
The closing windowpane slammed too loud. Shit! I was damn near tempted to reveal myself and deal with her! She was closing in on a situation that neither of us wished for. Marcus was supposed to keep her at work, dammit!
Instead of being as cocked-up as the Inferno novice, I leapt into the laundry area, whittled into the small space between the wall and the washing machine, at war with the clothes pile as I wrestled the accordion doors closed. Several articles of clothing hung from hangers on a bar over the washer and dryer, and I silently slid them close to further conceal myself. My fingers touched crushed velvet, and I knew. My pirate coat! I pat the inside pocket for the Bowie knife but found the pouch empty.
Through the slats, the living room became visible when she hit the lights. A terrifying thrill came with being able to see her without her seeing me. Like a two-way mirror, so long as she kept the bloody doors closed. More trepidation, not of the thrilling variety, accompanied the ways this might end. What would I do if she caught me?
Bile burned my esophagus when Kinsley turned to examine the door she’d slammed shut and placed a hand to her chest. Had she not left the door unlocked?
As she disappeared into the kitchen, visions played of these doors pulling apart. My hand smothering her scream of horror while she tumbled back against the wall or into the bathroom, every soft emotion vanishing with the instinct to survive. Would she run? Fight? Faint? Would I knock her out, try to reason with her, mistakenly kill her in the mayhem?
