Page 44 of Double Trouble
“How’ve you been liking your accommodations?” he said in a low voice.
When I didn’t respond, he continued, “Unfortunately for you, your friends have come into some money problems.” His gaze surveyed me appraisingly. “Luckily for you, I may have a solution for all of us.” He grinned, showcasing a silver grill.
“I already told your guards here that I have money. I can pay what they owe,” I said.
The fat man shook his head and donned a fake look of concern.
“Now how is that going to teach them their lesson? They don’t have to pay a dime and their girl comes back. They’re not going to learn not to fuck with me that way. No, I have another idea.”
I almost didn’t want to ask, but I had to. “What is it?”
“You work off the debt for them.”
A thousand horrible images flashed through my mind in that moment. What could he possibly want from me that was worth whatever money the guys owed? “How exactly?”
A smile twitched at the corner of his lips. “You know Roxanne’s?”
The strip club. I gave my head a small inclination of assent.
“Well,” he said. “It just so happens they have a back room that’s horribly understaffed and if you were to, say…”
“No,” I said sharply, cutting him off. “No way.”
I wasn’t going to let myself even think about what he was suggesting. I didn’t care how desperate things were – no way was I going to give into that.
The boss gave a resigned shrug. “Suit yourself. Just thought I’d give you a chance. Just remember that when the clock runs out.”
As he strode off, I consoled myself. Whatever these assholes said, I had a chance otherwise. A big promising chance – two ones, in fact. Owen and Jake would come for me. They had to.
32
Jake
As we stared at the dismal ‘district’, Owen summed things up nicely: “It’s even worse than I thought.”
And it was. Most buildings here had been demolished entirely, while only a few sad husks of structures remained. As far as people, there seemed to be none in sight, although Owen and I knew better than to let our guard down. We’d gone home and changed into black clothes and grabbed anything we thought we could use to our advantage in a fight.
After leaving the Army, we really didn’t want to deal with guns again and so we didn’t own them. We had our fists, the two knives I’d found in the car, and a crow bar. Our sore excuse for an arsenal would have to do. Fortunately, we were both angry enough to do some real damage with our bare hands if necessary.
I nudged him, our gazes going to the one place that showed any signs of life – Roxanne’s. There were a couple cars in the parking lot, although that could’ve just been all the employees.
“The strip club it is,” Owen said.
Roxanne’s exterior looked like a nod to an earlier era, and its interior wasn’t much different. Everything had an old dusty quality; even the girls looked like they could’ve been old enough to be our aunts beneath their layers of makeup. One thing I noticed, as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, was a man at the bar glaring at us.
“He look familiar to you?” I asked Owen quietly.
“Him?” A glittered dancer said, striding right up to us. “That’s Kade’s dad. Both of them come in sometimes.” Her thickly kohled eyes paused on me. “You’re Jake Powers, the one who beat him, right?”
At my questioning look, she gestured to a sputtering TV in the corner. “We tried watching the match, for what it was worth.”
“Kade’s manager here too?” Owen said, the excitement audible in his voice.
He was thinking what I was, clearly. This had to be the place. Whether it was a back room, a storage closet or the basement, this had to be where they were keeping Cin.
“Nah,” the woman said. “He comes in here often enough, but not this time.”
I frowned. It didn’t look like she was lying, but then again people here were often hardened skillful criminals, so it was hard to say for certain.
“You come here to talk or get a dance?” she was asking now, glittery hands on her hips.
The ‘or else’ part of that equation was clear – either we pay for a dance and make our presence here worthwhile, or else we had to screw right off.
“If we pay for a dance, can we talk some more?” Owen asked.
She shrugged, fluttering long fake lashes. “Suit yourself.”
So we paid up and she led us over to a semi-private velvet seating area. As she shook her gemstone-thonged butt in front of us, I quizzed her some more.
“You seen Rodney around here lately?”
“Naw.”
“What about anything else unusual?”
She paused her twerking to twist around and fix us with an unimpressed glare. “You know what kinda town this is? ‘Course I see unusual shit. I see it every day.”
