She’s a beautiful girl, with bright red hair, grass-green eyes and freckles dotting her nose.
Something about her reminds me a little of Addie, and I nearly walk right back out and crush my fist in Mark’s face just for touching her.
“Get up,” I say firmly. She gets to her feet unsteadily, looking much like a baby giraffe walking for the first time.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” I say. Her brow puckers and she frowns.
“Sir—”
“What’s your name, sweetheart?”
She stutters over the question. “Cherry.”
I shake my head. “Is that your real name or stage name?”
She rolls her lips. “Real.”
Her parents are really fucking unoriginal. Like might as well have a second child and name her Strawberry or Watermelon.
Anyway, besides the point. “How would you feel about getting a fresh start in life, yeah?”
Her eyes widen, and it seems like the prospect of escaping this one has some of the drug-induced fog receding from her gaze. But then she turns wary, and then resigned. Tears line the edges of her lids, and the sight will forever haunt me.
She looks down, seeming to collect herself. “I know what that means. I-I’m really sorry. I didn’t realize I was leaning that far down.”
“I’m not going to hurt or kill you, Cherry,” I cut in. “I’m going to help you, but I need you to listen to exactly what I say.”
She shifts on her feet, peering up at me through her lashes and bobbing her head frantically. I slip out the Bluetooth earpiece I had hidden deep in my inner suit pocket. All of my jackets have a special lead lining in them that deflects radiation. Meaning I can walk through any body scanner without the devices being detected.
I pop it in my ear, press the button that immediately calls out to Jay, and wait for him to answer.
When he does, I explain the situation. It takes fifteen minutes before he has a car ready to pick her up. In that time, Cherry tells me about her family. About her younger sister that has cancer and her poor single mother. She works this job to pay the medical bills, but she confesses that she doesn’t know if it’s worth it if she’s killed and the extra income stops.
She won’t ever have to worry about taking care of them again. Or being killed because of a broken glass.
Jay watches the camera feed and directs me towards a back door exit without detection.
I grab her wrist before s
he walks out of the door. The nondescript black sedan is waiting ten feet away, and the door already open for her.
“I know,” she says softly. “I don’t know your face. I’ve never seen you before,” she guesses.
I shake my head. “Cherry, you’re not going to a place where you’ll ever be questioned about something like that. You and your family will be taken care of and safe. I promise. All I ask is that you do something meaningful with your life. That’s all.”
A single tear slips from her eye. She hurriedly wipes it away and nods. Her brightened eyes shine with hope, and doing this shit, involving myself in the worst of humanity—it’s all worth it when I have a survivor look at me like that.
Not like I’m a hero, but like they can actually envision a future.
She stumbles off to the car, and I make my way back inside, making sure no one spots me.
“Jay, clear the cameras,” I say before taking the earpiece out and slipping it back in the hidden pocket.
The cameras will be spliced. If anyone reviews them, they’ll see me dragging a dejected Cherry into a room and us walking out separately.
It’s one of my specialties that I mastered and then trained Jay in. Taking parts of a camera feed and manipulating them to look exactly how you want them to, without even the best hackers being able to detect manipulation.
I crack my neck, and ready myself for a very long night of shooting the shit and becoming BFF’s with a fucking pedophile.