Thick smoke curled throughout the converted dining room as I laid down a full house and reached to the center of the table to collect my winnings. Wick and Drakie laughed as they held up their beer bottles to toast my second win, but Thug-zilla eagle-eyed me from across the table.
“Beginner’s luck,” I shrugged and held up my untouched beer, accidentally bumping the low-swinging overhead lamp.
We played it cool the first three games, letting Tony and Wick win almost as easily as Kat gained our invite to their poker party. When we showed up at Tony’s door and I asked him what time I was supposed to show for my interview on Friday, he decided the interview needed immediate attention. Funny thing was, he didn’t direct any questions to me, only to Kat—and they had nothing to do with employment.
“If that’s what you wanna call it.” Tony rubbed at his short, dark goatee.
Damn. I’d have to throw the next hand to get him off my back and then try like hell to make up for it. I smeared on some cherry chapstick, giving Kat the signal that it was time for her to up the sexual tension with Thug-zilla.
Kat leaned into Tony, picked up the whiskey bottle, and refilled his cup. She took a fake swig and ran her finger across her wet lips as she gazed at him with her emerald green cat eyes. I wanted to laugh and gag at the same time—laugh because Kat’s move made him forget all about me and gag because the whiskey reminded me of how Logan tasted when he forced himself on me.
“Come on, Tony, your deal.” Drakie ran his fingers along the neckline of his UNLV Runnin’ Rebels t-shirt.
Tony clicked the deck on the table as he prepared to shuffle but kept his eyes on me. “So, you want a job as a dishwasher? Must be pretty desperate for cash, huh?”
I shrugged. “I could use some cash.”
“Desperation makes people do things they normally wouldn’t do.” He held the cards in one hand and reached for his cigarette in the ashtray with the other. “Or shouldn’t.”
Shivers crawled up my spine like millions of tiny spiders. “Haven’t you ever heard of beginner’s luck?”
“I don’t believe in luck.” A path of red ash burned brighter when Tony took a slow draw. “But I do believe in getting hustled.”
“Come on, Cuz, lay off. I ran into this girl at your restaurant filling out an application.”
Tony lifted an eyebrow. “What do you mean ran into her?”
“I literally ran into her and nearly knocked her down, spilled her purse.”
“What made you think it was a good idea to ask her to play a game of poker?”
Wick shrugged. “She had a deck of cards in her purse, so I asked if she played.”
“And that didn’t raise a red flag?”
“She said she didn’t play.”
“Yeah, you stupid fuck. She hustled you.” A slow grin crept across Tony’s lips as he ground his cigarette into the ashtray. “Think she’s gonna tell you before she takes your money?”
“She couldn’t have known I play poker.” Wick’s eyes flashed to me in sudden realization. “You were sitting in the booth behind me; you overheard me talking to Drakie…”
“A little paranoid, aren’t you?” Kat scowled at Wick. “Smoke too much weed?”
“It’s all good.” I started picking up bills. “We’ll just take back our hundred dollars and call it even.”
“Not the way it works, Princess.” Tony gave me a dead stare as he leaned into the table. “You don’t play me and walk away with money.”
“Look, I won those games fair and square.” I didn’t care about losing my winnings, but we couldn’t survive on $2.54, and I’d be damned if we’d come this far only to lose all our money to this asshole. “Not my fault you can’t drink whiskey and play cards at the same time.”
“And be distracted by three pretty girls,” Tony added with a haughty smirk. “You three make a good team, but not good enough.” Tony popped his neck to the right, then to the left. “You know what they do to cheats on this end of town?”
Before anyone had time to answer his question, Kat reached to the center of the table, snatched a hundred dollar bill, and took off for the living room. “Go! Go! Go!” she yelled and pointed to the kitchen door we’d come in.
Adrenaline shot through my veins when Tony shoved the table away from himself and took off after her. “Fuck, she pepper-sprayed me!” he howled a second later and stumbled after her with his hands over his eyes. “Get her!”
Drakie and Wick darted after Kat, and I swept a handful of cash off the table.
Billi Jo froze, and I yanked her out of her chair. “Go with Kat. I know another way out.”
“Hey, guys!” I waved the cash. “You want a hundred bucks or seven hundred?”
They turned back to me, leaving Kat and Billi Jo a clear path to the door.
“So help me God, Wick, if she gets away with that money, I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you!” Tony tucked his face into his arm as he staggered out the door after Kat and Billi Jo.
Shit! I couldn’t drop the money; it was the only leverage I had to ensure Tony didn’t hurt my friends. I sprinted for the interior staircase before Wick and Drakie crossed the room and sailed down the steps as fast as I could.
My heart pounded in time with the footsteps hitting the wooden stairs behind me. When I reached the bottom, I took a sharp right and pushed through the swinging employee doors and followed the lit exit sign. As fast as my fingers would move, I fumbled with the dead bolt until it clicked, then heaved the door open.
Warm air hit my face as I sprinted into the barely lit parking lot. I skidded to a stop when I saw that the lot was enclosed by a tall chain-link fence. My eyes darted wildly until I spotted a gate slightly ajar.
I glanced over my shoulder to see Drakie and Wick exiting the restaurant. Thug-zilla lurched around the corner, still rubbing his eyes. “Get her!”
Electricity buzzed though me as I raced for the metal gate. I tugged at the chain-locked opening, but it didn’t budge. Dammit! Gripping my fingers into the cross-hatched metal, I attempted to climb the fencing, but my boots slipped and sent me back to the blacktop.
My pulse swooshed in my ears so loud I could barely hear the sound of labored breathing coming from behind me. They couldn’t be more than twenty steps away. I attempted to squeeze myself through the narrow opening. God, it was so tight. Metal rattled as I shimmied and pushed until I finally squeezed through.
Behind me, Tony cursed. “She won’t make it far in that direction. We’ll get my car and head her off in the alley.”
After running what seemed like a mile, I skidded to a stop where the alley intersected. Oh God! Now what? Surrounded by darkness with only scattered street lights, I’d lost my sense of direction. All the buildings looked similar: concrete and graffiti painted on crumbling brick buildings. Wait. Crumbling brick, graffiti… Suddenly, I remembered the building Kat had pointed out when we parked our car, the tallest building in the area that would serve as an easy marker. Our North Star.
I climbed on the hood of a junked car, and my heart skittered when I spotted it in the distance. As fast as I could, I darted left and took off in that direction, hyper-aware of what Tony said about catching me in the alley. Not knowing whether it was a trick or the truth, I ran like I was on fire. And when I finally got close enough to see our lone car parked where we’d left it, with Billi Jo sitting on the hood and Kat pacing in front of the parking lights, I nearly leaped out of my skin.
I made it another block and was about to run for the car when a canary yellow Camaro rumbled around the corner, slow and searching. When it passed under the streetlight, I saw Tony in the passenger seat. Cold chills rocketed up my spine. If I didn’t do something quick, they’d see Kat and Billi Jo and go after them. Without hesitation, I veered under a light where they could see me, then ducked into the building that, I’d decided hours ago, was my safe haven.
In an instant, tires screeched to a halt, doors swung open, and tennis shoes slapped the pavement. “We’ve got her now,” Tony snarled.
One of the heavy wooden double doors moaned when I pawed it open and slipped inside the dilapidated structure. Moonlight filtered in through the door, and broken windows shed an ominous light on the cobwebs and inch-thick dust. Pieces of shelves and broken chairs scattered the wooden floor like an obstacle course as I made my way to the hall, searching for a place to hide or an escape route.
The door squealed as they entered, and muffled voices whispered about the different routes they could take. “Drakie, you take the stairs, Wick, you…”
I ducked into a room with a busted-out window and stood still as stone while I strained to listen. My heartbeat jackhammered in my chest so loud I was sure it would lead them straight to me.
The loud crash of wood furniture made me shudder. “Son of a bitch!” Tony cursed, and then another loud crash followed.
Idiot, that’s what happens when you explore dark, abandoned buildings after you’ve been pepper-sprayed.
Broken glass popped beneath my boots when I inched closer to the edge of a tall window. My stomach somersaulted when I peeked over. The windows weren’t that high by most standards, maybe six or seven feet off the ground, but for somebody who hated sliding boards as a kid, I might as well have been contemplating sky diving—without the parachute.
“This way,” Drakie called. “I heard something.”
My heart slammed against my rib cage as I stood motionless at the window ledge, holding my breath with each of their crunching steps. I braced my hands against the brick wall to steady myself, crumbling mortar gritty and warm beneath my fingertips. Sweat trickled down my forehead, stinging my eyes, but I was too afraid to move to wipe it away. This place was no safe haven; it was probably never a library but a damn insane asylum.
When the door creaked behind me, I squeezed my eyes tight and jumped into what seemed like ten minutes of airborne hell. My body jolted with the shock of impact, and I pitched forward on my knees, my hands burning as I skidded across crumbling shards of brick and debris.
I pushed myself up and only got a few steps before something large and damp clamped onto my upper arm, causing me to spring back like a rubber band. Fear shot through me, and I went into fight mode. “Get off of me! Get off of me!”
“Calm down, I’m not gonna hurt you.” His voice was familiar, and it gave me the sense to focus. It was Wick.
Relief flooded me when, in my peripheral view, I saw Kat and Billi Jo still parked in the same spot less than thirty yards away. “Take the money.” I unclenched my hand and let the wadded bills drop to the ground. “Just let me go.”
“You’ve gotten me in a hell of a lot of trouble tonight,” he growled. “Why should I?”
Because I had good intentions tonight—making money so I could keep my friends from starving, then protecting them after everything went to shit. “Because I could’ve gotten you in a hell of a lot more trouble. I could’ve told Tony about your little diversion scheme, but I didn’t.”
Wick narrowed his eyes, skeptical. “Why?”
Because I understand what it’s like to make a mistake so big you can’t fix it. “Because he would’ve hurt you.”
He scowled. “I’m not afraid of him.”
I looked up, doing my best to make eye contact in the poorly lit parking lot. “Well, you should be.”
Something crossed his face; maybe an understanding that he had good reason to be afraid of his cousin, or maybe an understanding that I’d been hurt by someone like his cousin. Whatever the reason, his fingers loosened their grip around my arm.
“Wick, did you catch that crazy bitch?” Thug-zilla yelled from somewhere in the shadows above me.
Wick allowed me to ease my arm away but watched me like he was an attack dog questioning his job. “You’re not like him,” I assured him before I slipped away and took off.
It was true. In the restaurant when we ran into each other, he stopped to help me pick up my things. And now, he let me go instead of feeding me to the waiting crocodile. His intentions for inviting us to play cards were naïve and reckless, but he wasn’t a bad person. I understood this all too well.
Tires squealed out into the street when Kat saw me coming, and I raced to meet her. She pulled to the sidewalk, I jumped in the back, and she floored it.
My shoulders fell when I glanced back at the three guys standing under the lamppost; Drakie and Thug-zilla pointing and cursing, and Wick staring.
“Hot damn, that was some crazy shit!” Billi Jo drummed her red Chucks on the dashboard, then broke out into a crazy hyena laugh.
Kat looked over and grinned, then started to snicker, and before I knew it we were all some version of hysterical. As messed up as it was that we were laughing, in that moment it didn’t matter what we were laughing at, or who, or why. It only mattered that we were doing it together.