“I think about you and I worry about you all the time, Crystal. And it’s not just because I want to help you. And it’s not just because I want to protect you. I care about you. A lot. No matter what, don’t forget that.”
I feel the same way, she thought. And probably even more. But she couldn’t give voice to those thoughts. That would make them all too real. And after years of ignoring and boxing up her emotions, she was bad at feeling them, scared of admitting them, and worse at expressing them.
“’Bye,” she whispered, instead. As she started the truck and watched Shane walk away in her side-view mirror, she had the biggest sense of having just lost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Silly, really. They’d be seeing each other again. And he’d agreed to help, so she should be happy.
Right? Right. So, then, why wasn’t she?
THE BUSINESS LUNCH was just that—a liquor-laden schmoozefest of three-piece suits trying to impress some mucketymuck by slumming it at a strip club. Harmless and good-tipping. The perfect combination.
They’d finished eating a half hour ago, and Crystal was keeping them well lubricated with top-dollar, top-shelf labels as the girls danced.
Despite the fact that the nine of them were relatively easy to handle and that her tip escalated with every new drink order, Crystal was itching for the men to leave. Because something had taken Bruno and the rest of the Apostles off-site until later this afternoon. This was her chance to try to help Shane the way he was helping her. She spent time alone in Bruno’s office all the time. Nobody thought anything of it.
So she had a very rare, very important window of time.
But she couldn’t do anything until these guys decided to return to their upper-middle-class lives on the other side of town.
Twenty minutes later, the older man at the head of the table finally pulled out his platinum credit card and handed it to her to settle the bill. Thank God.
At the register near the bar, Walker gave her a smile. “They treat you okay?” he asked.
“Tame as kittens,” she said with a grin. And then she thought, I’m going to miss you, Walker. There weren’t many people she would miss from this life, but Walker might be one. He’d always been nice to her, looked out for her—looked out for all the girls, really. As ordinary as that seemed, though, it had been the exception rather than the rule in her life.
Until Shane.
Crystal waited for the credit-card slip to print and wondered who else she’d miss. Howie, the food-and-beverages manager, was another guy around here who’d looked out for her when he could, or offered her cautious words of advice when he couldn’t. But really . . . that was about it. Her feelings for the rest of the people she knew here were either neutral or negative. It was a sad testament to how much she’d been floating through her life the last few years.
But that was about to change.
The printer chugged out the receipt. Crystal placed it inside a leather folder with the man’s card and returned to the table. “Thank you very much, gentlemen. Come again,” she said with a smile and a wink that earned her a few appreciative chuckles.
When they were gone, she set about clearing the table as she would any other day. No faster. No slower. Back at the register, she opened the billfold and nearly shrieked with happiness—the men had not only left her a huge tip but they’d left it in cash. A little of her regret at not being able to spend the afternoon with Shane melted away. At least the time spent had been worthwhile. Quickly, she folded and slipped one of the three fifty-dollar bills into her skirt, securing it with the band of her panties on her hip, then she handed the billfold to Walker. The normal process for accounting for her cash tips so Church could take his cut. Walker accepted it with a quiet nod and Crystal swallowed her usual resentment toward losing income she’d earned for a debt she hadn’t created.
“See you in a few hours, Walker,” she called, forcing normalcy into her voice. With lunch out of the way, she could put her plan to help Shane into action. Which explained why her heart had lurched into high gear. “I’m on at five.”
He pushed his dark hair back off his face. “Right on. See ya.”
Taking a deep breath, she made for the dressing room and quickly changed into her street clothes. She hadn’t had time to pick up Jenna’s prescription from the pharmacy this morning, so she had to get it and drop it at the apartment before her evening shift began. And that wasn’t an errand she could do in her uniform.
Making sure she had everything, she left the dressing room. But instead of turning right to head down the hall to the back door, she turned left, came to the secured door to the senior office suite, and punched in the key code.
The metallic click caused another spike in her heart rate. Blood rushed loud behind her ears. Head down, pace normal, she made her way to Bruno’s office like she had so many times before. She often waited in his office for him to take her home after a shift, so no one would think twice about her being there. Nothing unusual here. Nothing going on. At least, that’s what she wanted any security cameras that might be tracking her movements in here to see.
Just docile, submissive, trustworthy Crystal hanging out in her longtime boyfriend’s office.
Once she closed herself inside Bruno’s workspace, she relaxed. She knew for a fact that none of the Apostles’ offices were monitored by camera. That way they could keep their drugs and their women and any other unusual proclivities private. They’d earned that right through many years of working in the Church gang. It was a sign of trust and respect.
She wanted to be long gone before two o’clock, just in case Bruno got back earlier than expected. That didn’t give her long. Five minutes. Ten, tops. Problem was, she had no idea what she might be looking for.
Coming around Bruno’s side of the desk, she carefully sorted through the papers on top, first observing how they’d been situated before she touched them. Schedules, spreadsheets, inventory lists. Nothing that looked interesting. Then again, Bruno wouldn’t leave sensitive documents sitting out on top his desk, would he?
Crystal sat in his desk chair and pulled out the drawers one by one. On the right side, office supplies filled the top two drawers and dozens of keys on rings suspended from little bars filled the third. Shifting to the left side, Crystal found the big drawer on the bottom largely empty, the middle one filled with various kinds of medicine, and the top one filled with more paperwork. She shuffled through it, and the label on a folder caught her attention.
Charles and Becca Merritt
Becca. Hadn’t Shane said his friend’s girlfriend was named Becca? It could totally be a coincidence. The name wasn’t that unusual. Still, Crystal turned the papers on top the folder sideways to mark its spot in the pile and slid it out.
Maybe a dozen pages of information sat within. Home and work addresses, surveillance pictures . . . She paused on a close-up of a blond-haired man looking over his shoulder. Crystal had seen this man. Bruised, bloodied, and bandaged, yes. But she had no question that this was the guy Shane had rescued from Confessions last weekend.
That was all she needed to see. Rather than take the time to read everything, Crystal fished her iPhone from her purse so roughly the bag fell to the floor, but she couldn’t worry about that right now. She opened the camera app and took shots of every page. She repeated that process with another folder labeled Merritt and a third labeled Nunya, whatever that meant, because it had been sandwiched between the other two. With each shot, her adrenaline surged until she was shaking so bad she found herself having to take multiple pictures because the images blurred. Then she returned everything to where she’d found it.