“Really?” He looks impressed. “I guess I never got the manual that came with the job. Neither did you, from what I recall.”
I give him a half-hearted grin and suck the bitter smoke deep into my lungs. I’ve smoked so much in the past two weeks my mouth tastes like acrid ash and my voice is rough like sandpaper.
“What brings you over here?” Jason’s eyes glimmer over the lit end of his cigarette. “In my empathic whore role, I’d ask if it’s woman trouble, but not in your case. So what’s up?”
I frown. “And if it is? Woman trouble?”
He laughs long and hard, choking on smoke. “Okay. That was a good one.” He throws his cigarette to the ground, steps on it, and coughs. “Almost got me there with the serious face, dickhead. One day, though. I have hopes for you, pretty boy.”
One day that has come and gone.
“Just checking on you,” I mutter. “S’what friends do.”
“Yeah, well. We’re doing okay. Though I was gonna come find you. Rumor has it you reported Simon.”
“I did.”
Jason does a double-take. “The hell you did.”
“What? You said I should. In fact, if memory serves, you said if I don’t do it, more people will get hurt.”
“Shit. I thought it was just rumors.” He shrugs. “Not that it makes any fucking difference.”
“What do you mean?” My cigarette has burn
ed to the filter, scorching my fingers, and I throw it away. “A difference to what?”
“To Simon knowing you reported him.”
I was about to pull another smoke and I almost drop the pack. “What the hell do you mean, Simon knowing? How could he know?”
Jason shakes his head, not a hair moving out of place in his perfectly styled hairdo. “Had you followed? Followed you himself? Happened to be there when you entered the police station? Fuck me if I know.”
I remember the feeling of being watched at the station, and out, on the street, and suppress a shiver. “Why would he be following me?” The scars on my arm ache. I rub one of the deeper ones absently. “How the fuck would he know where to find me? It’s been years since the attack.”
Jason shoots me a shrewd look and cocks his head to the side. “You tell me, J. You never told me much about that night, or what happened afterward. You and Simon, you have history, don’t you?”
I press my lips together and lean back on the wall, kicking a foot up to rest on the smooth surface. “History. Sounds dirty.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Time you told me the story. It’s been years, man.”
I sigh. These are things I never told a soul. I hedge, rub my face, search for my smokes in my pocket.
Jason waits me out, until I start talking.
“That night wasn’t the first time Simon came to me,” I finally say. “Somehow he’d decided I’d be a good fit for his gang. So he cornered me again and again, insisting I join. I said no. I don’t do gangs, guns and drugs.”
The rules Helen set for me before she vanished.
Jason is leaning forward, brows lifted. “Go on.”
“That night… he wanted me to submit to him.” I open my mouth to say more, but the words fail me. Dammit.
Jason lets out a low whistle. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”