“Just smile, cupcake,” she snickers. “You'll figure it out in a minute!”
Chapter 3
Daniel
It's getting late.
My flight was delayed. And trying to get through the warehouse district during peak fraternity club hopping hours is wearing down what’s left of my patience. My driver, Freddie, maneuvers my Mercedes around small groups of college kids who stumble through the poorly lit streets. It's a wonder more of them don't get flattened in traffic accidents every weekend. Idiot kids.
Freddie could have gone around the district, but he knows I like to run through it. This is my neighborhood, and I can't help but feel responsible. At one point or another most of these old rail yard warehouses belonged to me.
The last thing I expected when I sold the first one to some jackass with a trust fund and a pinheaded idea for a nightclub, was for the whole block to end up being the center of university nightlife. So, you could say I feel responsible. I should have seen it coming.
At this point, there are eight clubs in this half-mile stretch, and they're always up to something. Somebody's always trying to arrange some new underage drinking scheme or coming up with the brilliant idea to trick sorority girls into going topless. A de facto strip club, is what they want.
Unbelievable, these kids.
You'd think with a whole Internet full of porn, they'd at least find ways of entertaining themselves that didn't involve ruining the lives of underage girls whenever possible. But no. Like the old saying goes, you can never go broke underestimating the depravity in men's souls.
As Freddie rolls slowly down the street, I stare into the lines of young people, looking for troublemakers I know, catching a glimpse of the interior of the clubs. For the most part, it seems like a low-key Saturday night. None of the obvious signs of an amateur pornography video studio springing up in the middle of the block. Not again, anyway.
That's only happened three times in the last four years. Luckily, our local sub-geniuses don't seem to realize that kind of broadcast bandwidth leaves a signature that's easy to pick up. Easy for me, anyway.
Not that I'm spying on them, but it is useful for me to keep at least a finger on the pulse of what's going on. I at least need to keep aware in case somebody needs to step in. Most of these kids seem like they left their parents’ house way too damn early. Before they learned any real sense, anyway.
A flash of white and pink catches my eye up to the left. As Freddie rolls up to the Crow Bar, I see the sign they've got stretched over the door. My mouth fills with bitterness.
Goddamnit. Not again.
“Freddie, stop,” I growl. He saw it too. He doesn't even need me to tell him. He swerves to the curb and I get out, my fingers already twitching like I’m about to clench my hands into fists. But I don't. Not yet.
Big Boy, the bouncer, turns around as I'm coming, like he heard me. Maybe he did. Maybe I'm making some kind of sound. He's got about six inches on me so when he stands there, more or less blocking the entrance, I can't see in.
But I already know what's going on. He's bigger than me, but that doesn't always mean anything. And if he wants to keep standing there, he's going to have to make a decision about how he wants to treat the situation, because I'm definitely getting inside.
“Mr. Lockwood,” he says, his voice low and even.
I don't say anything. I just stand there as his eyes finally flicker to each of my shoulders and then my knees. It's an old military thing: checking out your opponent’s corners to see how committed they are to the fight. You want to see if they’re actually re
ady — rigid and coiled to spring. And I am, so he steps aside.
Once inside the bar, I stand outside the circle for a full fifteen seconds, taking deep breaths and counting backward from one hundred. It's worse than last year. There are sixty guys in here, all in a circle. In the middle of the circle are three young… I don't even know what you call them. Women? Girls? They’re on these little stages, dressed up and painted like Christmas hams, ready to be eaten.
And all these… I don’t know what you call them either. Men? Certainly not men. Boys? Animals?
Yeah, animals.
These animals think they’re bidding. They think they're buying these girls.
“Daniel!” I hear, and I don't want to look, but she's right in front of me. I won't lower my chin, so she steps back, right into my eye line. It's Claudia, from last year. She's not a girl, she's a woman. She might be a little on the young side, but she's got something going on that’s way beyond her years. And not in a good way.
She’s about half evil. Not genetically, but like she’s play-acting something she saw in a movie. She’s playing with things she doesn’t truly understand and if she doesn’t watch herself, she might just end up this way forever.
She knuckles her hips with her fists, casting her weight to one side and bouncing subtly, a move that probably works on simple-headed males. It doesn't work on me.
“Aren't you going to say hi?”
She quirks an eyebrow at me. I start to move past her, but she sidesteps deftly, landing right in my way. She is so close that if I didn't stop I would have bumped right into her. Which is what I'm afraid she actually wants. I don't have a lot of choice but to retreat, so I do.