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It was an area I’d never been to before, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find it again if I wasn’t with Colton. The street lights didn’t work, a lot of the buildings were abandoned and the alleys looked like dark, gaping mouths. As we climbed out of the car, I looked up and saw the gray clouds that stretched right across the sky. We were in for a massive storm. Great.
Colton led me towards a squat, red brick building that looked like it had been there at least a hundred years. “What’s this place called?” I asked.
“Butchers.”
The guy standing watch outside the double doors frowned as we approached. He was almost as big as Colton, and his tattooed arms bulged beneath the sleeves of his t-shirt. He did a complicated fist-bump-handshake with Colton but shook his head apologetically at me. “Former military only. Sorry, rules are rules.”
“I am former military,” I told him. “Just not American.”
He looked doubtfully at my dress. “Got any ID?” he asked. “Or some ink?”
I was too tired for this. I snatched the knife from his belt, then grabbed his wrist and pulled it behind his back and up between his shoulder blades. I held the point of the knife a finger’s width from his eyeball. He froze. “I suggest you take my word for it,” I hissed. He nodded minutely and I let him go.
Inside, men—and a smattering of women—sat at long, sturdy-looking wooden tables, some of them eating and all of them drinking. They all had the hardened, ready look of military service. I saw Marines and Army tattoos and there were several guys and one woman who I pegged as former Special Forces straight away.
“The guy at the door knew you,” I said.
Colton nodded. “I bounty hunt. Some of the guys they send me after are former military. And if they run off to the East Coast, sooner or later they wind up here, looking for work, so it’s a good place to check.” He led me through the crowd. “‘Bout a hundred years ago, this used to be the biggest butchers in the city. That’s where the tables are from.”
I looked closer as we passed a table. The surface was a complex pattern of thousands of tiny grooves, made by butchers bringing their cleavers down.
“The story I heard is, there was a group of mercenaries who’d made their money and wanted out. They were looking for a place to turn into a bar. Some folk call soldiers butchers…I guess they had a dry sense of humor.”
There was a pool table and a TV, but most people were just talking. I saw two guys who’d just arrived, heavy packs still on their shoulders, being back-slapped and hugged by people they knew. Colton had been right, everyone was talking about work: I heard place names I recognized from the Middle East, Eastern Europe and a whole slew of African nations. Two weeks close protection, three months guarding an oil field and always the question, how much are they paying? It felt close-knit and safe, despite how intimidating some of the men looked.
I took a look at the food. There wasn’t a menu, just a guy ladling out chili from a steaming pot. Pretty basic…but comfortingly familiar, if you’d spent a lot of time in mess halls.
Colton started asking if anyone had been approached by a white-haired Serbian guy. Between his intimidating size and his low, no-bullshit country growl, everyone listened politely. But no one had heard anything.
Then one guy, sprawled in the corner with his feet up on a table, overheard us and said, “I heard about that guy.”
We looked up. The man was tall and his arms had the veiny, pumped-up look of a bodybuilder. His blond hair was shaved on the sides and stood straight up on top a full inch, like the bristled head of a broom. He was shelling pistachio nuts and crunching on them noisily. “My friend’s working for him right now, bru.” he said in a lazy South African drawl.
We walked over to him. “What’s the job?” asked Colton.
The man gave us a big, white-toothed grin. “Nothing’s free, my friend.” He was younger than Colton, late twenties. He looked at me. Then, he threw a nut into the air, caught it in his mouth and crunched it down, not bothering to close his mouth. His eyes never left me for a second and I shuddered inside. “Is she yours?” he asked Colton.
“I’m mine,” I snapped before Colton could answer. I had a pretty good idea where this was going.
Colton’s expression darkened. He stepped closer to the man, looming over him. But the guy didn’t look intimidated at all. “It’s important,” he growled.
“Well then, you’ll be willing to do a deal, bru.” said the guy calmly. He raised his voice, showing off to his friends. “Your girl comes into the back room with me and gets my cock up her, and I’ll tell you everything I know.”
