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“We’re helping Joker with that too,” Karma says. “It’s good money.”
“And I guess now we are too,” I say and laugh. Edge is looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. He doesn’t yet realize that we’ve just successfully completed our mission and have a good chance of taking Joker down on top of it. We got an in with him now, so he won’t be a threat to us much longer.
I lean back in my chair and take another long swig of bourbon, finishing the bottle. What I really want to do is celebrate this breakthrough by informing the MC and then spending the night with Ariel.
But leaving now would look suspicious even to Fossil over here, let alone all of Joker’s guys keeping an eye on us.
28
Ariel
Eden and I had one drink at The Horse’s Mouth bar then ended up back at her place—a cozy little apartment above her bookstore that’s even more dolled up than the bookshop downstairs. She’s got simple white bookshelves lining all walls, a sofa covered with pillows and snuggly comforters and a bed by a window that overlooks the forest in the distance and a quaint little alleyway with a flower shop at one end.
“When I move out of my parent’s place, I want an apartment just like this,” I say.
She giggles and pours some more gin into my glass. “Sure, I’ll give you the name of my decorator. It’s me.”
We both find that incredibly funny and laugh so hard my stomach hurts. By some miracle I managed not to spill my glass of gin and juice which we’ve been throwing down since we got here. I’m thinking it’s been hours, but I could be way off base. Though I sure am drunk enough to suggest we’ve been drinking for hours. But that’s not saying much, since I’m a two drink kinda girl these days.
“So, are you trying to tell me you read all these books too?” I say, pointing at the full bookshelves all around us. I’m slurring my words so badly I’m not sure she can understand me.
“These are just the ones I’ve read twice or more,” she says and laughs. “They’re my faves, the ones I want to keep close to me.”
“But there’s like a hundred of them,” I say.
She giggles again. “I read that many in a month, usually.”
“Wow!”
Somewhere in the back of my mind a voice is telling me I could read a hundred books a month if I hadn’t been abducted and sold and fucked by men I hated for years. But that truth doesn’t sting as badly as it normally would. Maybe that’s because of the gin. Or maybe it’s because I’ve finally faced the darkness.
She tries to stand up, but promptly plops right back down on the bed, laughing. Then she fixes her gaze on the windowsill behind me that’s decorated with tiny white and gold lights shaped like stars and hearts.
“Now that’s new,” she says. “They’re dancing, look.”
I look out the window, expecting to see actual people outside, dancing.
“There’s no one there.”
“No, no, the lights,” she says. “It’s so pretty.”
She’s right. I see it too. Swirls of light making shapes all around the windows. Bunnies and swans and flowers and all sorts of other pretty things made of light.
We admire them for a while. Then we drink and laugh some more.
And the next thing I know, my head feels like it transformed into a bowling ball overnight and the light streaming in through the windows is massacring my brain as I try to open my eyes.
Only, the sky outside the window is still dark. It was a flashlight that woke me and it’s still burning holes into my brain. I can’t see anything other than its bright white beam.
“Come on, sleeping beauty, you’re coming with us,” a gruff voice says into my ear.
I jerk up, the room spinning alarmingly as I try to leap off the bed. But a pair of strong hands grips my arms painfully.
“Not this shit again.”
Several guys laugh as they hear me say that. I wasn’t even sure if I spoke aloud or just thought it.
“That’s right, you’re an old hand at this,” the guy says. “So how about you just come quietly and not make it hard on us?”
