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Wearily I fished out my last ten-dollar bill. Mercifully, or perhaps sensing the kind of day I’d had, the bartender waved me off. I smiled gratefully as he popped the cap from the beer and placed it down in front of me.
“That one’s on me,” he smiled, “but the guy over there wants to buy you one too.”
He jerked his thumb. I only partially looked.
“No thanks.”
“I told him as much,” Travis nodded. “But I figured a beer’s a beer, so…”
I stifled a laugh. On a good night I could normally score a drink or two from a potential suitor, but tonight I looked like utter shit. I was still in my work shoes. My hair smelled like parmesan and fried ravioli. It had been a long time since I’d entertained the possibility of a free drink and some random conversation. But right now wasn’t that time. Especially tonight.
“Hey… Travis?”
I caught him just as he was about to turn away. The tone of my voice told him exactly what I was about to ask. The look on his face told me not to ask it.
“Never mind.”
The bartender paused for a second then bit his lip. “No,” he answered anyway, letting his voice drop practically to a whisper. He glanced left and right before continuing. “He hasn’t shown up at all, Brynne. Sorry.”
I nodded, taking a long pull from my beer. If Evan was showing up anywhere for a quick drink, it was certainly here. This was our little place, my brother and I. A hole-in-the-wall bar just big enough to get lost in, but small enough to fly under the radar of the rowdier, douchier bar scene.
We’d come here to talk, to unwind, to reminisce. To escape my tiny apartment, made even tinier by his presence. But he was mybrother.My only family. Of course I would’ve put him up, even if I lived in a closet.
I waited for the bartender to come back, then pointed my beer at him. “You know that gym in the middle of town?” I asked for the second time today. “The one without a name?”
“It has a name,” Travis countered, sweeping up his latest tips and dropping them into a big glass jar. “Everyone calls it ‘the Garage’.”
“And why’s that?”
My favorite bartender shrugged. “No clue. Used to be a parking garage, maybe.”
“Really?”
He laughed. “Fuck no. I just made that up.” He leaned forward, resting both hands on the bar. “I didn’t make up the name, though. That part’s true.”
For a while I just stared at his hands. They were a worker’s hands; long and lean, calloused and strong. His skin was dry from doing every dish in the kitchen. He practically ran this place.
“A couple of mercenaries run that gym,” Travis added offhandedly. “Or at least that’s what’s going around.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Mercenaries?”
“Yeah. Ex-military for hire, that sort of thing.”
“You mean like Special Forces?”
I’d looked up the tattoo on the way out of the gym, right after learning what the banner said. All signs pointed to exactly what Travis was confirming.
“Sure,” he shrugged back at me. “Army Ranger. Green Beret. Whatever it is, they run the place and probably use it to recruit others like them.”
These men weren’t just military, they were the cream of the crop. The top one-percent of all soldiers, from everything I’d read. And on the way back downtown, I’d read a lot.
“And they’re really for hire?” I asked.
“That’s the word going around,” Travis confirmed. “It’s not like they can really advertise something like that — not overtly, anyway. But Oakland’s a big city with a lot of people. And when people are inserioustrouble?” He whistled and shook his head. “They go to them.”
I waited for Travis to turn away before scowling into my beer. I needed help more than anyone! And they’d turned me away. They hadn’t even offered or advertised their services, or given me a price for—
You have no money,I thought to myself bitterly.Like zero dollars.
