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“What?” I look at her in brief confusion, and the look on her face says clearly that she’s trying with everything she has not to roll her eyes at me.
Whatever happened to good customer service?
“Thedog.” She looks at me as if I’m a complete idiot. “When are you getting it?”
“Oh. Today. A mastiff.” I give her a pleasant smile. “You never know when you’re going to need to keep someone from breaking into your house.”
Her eyes widen a little as she flinches back–the response I was hoping for–and she finishes ringing up the items, reading off my total. I hand her cash, and take the items out to the car, keeping an eye out for anyone who might be watching me. I’m not averse to killing or tying up loose ends, but bodies leave a trail unless carefully disposed of. I have no intention of letting anyone find a path back to Natalia, or allowing anyone to glimpse anything that might put me at risk of suspicion, but neither do I want to spend time taking victims back to my warehouse to question and dispose of.
I don’t want anything cutting into my time with Natalia, while I have it.
I already feel itchy, fidgety, ready to get back to the house and her. I have two more stops before that’s possible, and I drive as quickly as I can to the first–the all-too-familiar dingy stone facade of theCat’s Meow.
It’s closed at this hour, of course. It’s closed entirely for the time being, as a matter of fact, thanks to the death of the man who had owned and run it, a blackmailing bastard called Igor who I had enjoyed killing entirely too much.
His body had been left for Natalia to find. A present, as way of apology for how I’d dismissed her the night before, choosing to take my anger out on her instead. I’d found a more appropriate target for it in Igor, teaching him the lesson of what it meant to extort and threaten what was mine.
She hadn’t appreciated it as much as I’d hoped.
There’s no telling when anyone might be back to see Natalia’s things in the dressing room, but I don’t want to leave the possibility of it happening at all. I want all traces of her erased, to look as if she’s vanished of her own accord, leaving her old life behind. It’s not such a surprise that she would–in fact, that’s what I think she’d been planning all along.
I pop the lock with the ease born of long years of practice, pushing the back door open with gloved hands and slipping inside. The club has a faintly musty smell, overlaid with bleach from the deep cleaning that had no doubt been done after Igor’s body was found. It’s tempting to go down the hall, to look in on his office and recall the pleasure of that particular kill, but I can’t linger. I don’t want to risk anyone finding the door unlocked, and besides that, I have somethingmuchmore pleasant waiting for me at home.
I know which table she used from the last time I snuck in here, when I’d stolen some of her lingerie. There’s not much there to take. Some makeup that she’d left behind the last time she was here, a hairbrush, a pair of heels she must have forgotten. A quick search turns up a trash bag, and I fill it quickly with the handful of items.Easy enough. In and out.An even shorter trip than the one to the store.
I’m halfway down the hall to the back door when I hear footsteps.
What the fuck?
I flatten myself against the wall, looking for a place to hide as my pulse leaps into my throat.Out of the places I’d considered that I might need to worry about being seen, this hadn’t been one of them. It should have been empty at this time of day even when it was still operating, and especially now that it’s temporarily closed. But I can hear the sound coming closer, and the soft lilt of feminine voices drifting down the hall.
I grab the doorknob closest to me, gripping the trash bag close to my side to try and make as little noise as possible. The moment I step into the room, the harsh smell of chemicals assaults my nostrils, and I realize that I’ve ended up in Igor’s old office anyway.
Good. Maybe they won’t be inclined to come in here.I can’t imagine many of the girls want to go back into the room where I left that grisly present for Natalia. Especially not as it is now. Someone tried to clean this place to within an inch of its life, but there’s still dark marks on the carpet where the blood was, and worn places in the paint on the wall where it was scrubbed too hard.
I leave the door cracked the tiniest bit, peering out to see if I can see who it is as they make their way down the hall. I can feel the weight of my gun at my back, the knife stashed in my pocket, all waiting for the moment when I might need them. If one of the girls starts to open the door–
The footsteps pass, and then stop just shy of it. I freeze in place, not wanting to let them see any movement, anything that might give me away. I see a flash of blonde hair that belongs to a tall, willowy girl–and then the red hair that makes my adrenaline momentarily spike all over again.
Natalia’s friend. Ruby. I’d know her red hair, curvy figure, and smart mouth anywhere. I can see and hear both from where I’m standing, and I once again have the thought that I could make all of this so much easier if I simply killed her, and eliminated any chance that she might go poking around where she shouldn’t and cause problems for me and Natalia.
If she was alone, I might have done it. But I don’t relish the thought oftwobodies to deal with, or the idea that the blonde might run screaming for help while I deal with Ruby. The smarter thing is to remain where I am, still and silent, and not give in to the violent urge.
“They need to let us open this place back up,” Ruby says to the blonde, crossing her arms over her chest. “I don’t want to work at any of the other clubs on the street. Igor wasn’t great, but at least he didn’t make us do anything we didn’t want to do.”
The blonde purses her lips. “Speak for yourself. You know he was taking money from the girls that made some on the side. None of them were happy about it. You can’t have been either, no matter how much you pretend.”
“He didn’t force us to do anything with the clients.” Ruby shakes her head. “We chose whether we wanted to do extras or not. Most of the other clubs don’t make it a choice.” She lets out a long breath, looking around, and I have to force myself not to shrink back lest she catch a glimpse of me through the crack in the door. “We should just open it up ourselves. Run the place like we want to. What are they going to do?”
“Put us in jail for running an unauthorized business that doesn’t belong to us, in a building we aren’t paying rent on?” the blonde suggests.
“I happen to know that Igor had the rent paid through the end of the year,” Ruby says archly. “There’s no investigation into what happened to him. We cleaned it up well enough that even after Jasmine called the police, they were willing to believe he’d just disappeared. So what? We’ll say he came back in and just hasn’t been seen much around the place. We get the place running again. Fill orders using his accounts. We can keep it going like that for a little while, at least–long enough to make enough money without him taking a cut that we can make some of our own choices when we can’t keep this up any longer.”
“And you think the girls will get on board?”
“Some will.” Ruby’s eyes flick towards the door again, and I see a hint of suspicion in them, but she doesn’t move to open it wider. “And the ones who don’t, I’ll make sure they’re threatened silent.”
Her eyes narrow as she looks towards the door again. “I thought we closed up the office and locked it.”
