Page 51 of Ballistic

“Yeah.” I turned slightly away from her, but not so much as to draw too much attention to what was becoming obvious. “First time.”

Thankfully, she turned, too, hiding herself against the bar top. “I can tell. You look out of place.”

“You know a Jasper? Comes here, sometimes?”

With a trill chuckle, she shook her head. “You are new. Only the men call each other by name. We’re not allowed to ask.”

Probably for the same reason the men wore the masks. Kept it all anonymous and impersonal. In case some bigwig politician, or some shit, showed up. Girls couldn’t identify them.

My stomach spooled tight at the thought of the girl with some pig four times her age. I wanted to scoop her up and take her the fuck outta there. Get her cleaned up and bleach her brain of however many years she’d been subjected to that depraved hell. I couldn’t, though. Had to stick to the plan.

“Look, you wanna hook up, or not? I have to meet my quota for the night, and you’re holding me up.”

“Quota? How many?”

“First tier is five. If I do more than that, I get a bonus.”

A bonus? For letting a bunch of sick motherfuckers do whatever they wanted to her for the night?

I could feel my chest tightening again, the muscles clamping down the way they did just before a fight. “Think I’m gonna have a couple drinks, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” She strode off, and the sudden ease of my muscles told me I’d been tense throughout the whole encounter. Three guys down from me, she sidled up next to a slim-built clown, whose grease-stained fingers told me he worked mechanics.

My foster dad had been a mechanic, his fingernails constantly black, no matter how hard he’d scrubbed them. Always the last thing I’d see before he’d strike me across the face. He’d clocked me in the jaw once, and all I could smell was motor oil, over the coppery tang of blood in my mouth.

The guy sized her up, eyes scanning through the mask, and when he touched one of her breasts, I had to look away to keep from throttling him.

Black curls of smoke shifted behind my eyes as something dark and evil brewed inside me. It taunted me to grab my gun from the car and shoot up the place, starting with the fat fuck at the door. I breathed hard through my nose to calm the rage. In the mirror behind the liquor, I caught the reflection of a few men lined against the wall, their holsters sticking out from the waistbands of their pants.

Couldn’t make a scene in the place. Not when all I had was a knife stuffed inside my boot.

A body slammed into the bar beside me, and I twisted to see a guy wearing a mask, his wedding ring sunken into chubby fingers. “Hey, Griff, you see where Jasper went?”

My ears piqued as a shot of victory swam like a school of wriggling goldfish through my veins.

“Nah. Was just here with a girl a minute ago,” the bartender answered.

“I run to take a piss, and the asshole leaves.”

I spun around on the barstool, eyes skimming over the crowd. He’d be impossible to detect, but not her. At the entrance, a tall slim guy walked toward the door with the young girl at his side—a disgusting sight, the two of them. If not for the clothes, they’d have looked like a father and his young daughter walking off, the way he held her hand.

I pushed through the crowd, eyes latched onto the two of them, as one of the rifle-strapped men, likely a guard, placed a gun-shaped object onto the band across her wrist and a red laser beam danced over the metal. A scanner of some sort.

The two disappeared through the door.

Someone’s hand brushed my arm. “Hey, wanna hook up?”

Giving a dismissive wave, I kept on toward the exit. As I pushed through, the bouncer gripped my arm, and I paused, my muscles poised to draw back and pop the fat bastard in the nose.

“Your mask. Gotta leave it.”

Asshole.

I peeled the mask from my face and tossed it to him, before pushing through the second door. I’d have to scrub the shit out of my skin later, knowing those things were probably shared amongst the men.

A sliver of light cut through the darkness up ahead, signaling their exit out of the hotel, and I upped my pace to a light jog, following after them.

No matter what, I couldn’t lose them.