Logan (Federal Protection Agency #9)

Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

Clay

Two hours later, with cash in hand and my most recent client snoring on the motel bed, I slipped into the bathroom to steal a shower. The water pressure was shit, and the provided shampoo was barely better than soap, but at least the temperature was decent.

I turned the shower to its hottest setting, letting the bathroom fill with steam until the walls were barely visible and the mirror was clouded over with moisture.

I didn’t need to watch myself as I cleaned away the reminder of my latest job.

My skin was pink by the time I stepped out of the shower, and I quickly dried off before slipping back into my clothes. My blond hair was nearly long enough to touch the nape of my neck and took a while to dry. I didn’t even bother to try and after ringing out as much water as possible I just tied it into a messy ponytail.

After double checking once again that the money was in my pocket, I slipped out the door without waking the man on the bed.

It was still too early for the first buses to run in this area, so I was forced to walk. I was wearing sturdy shoes, and the motel was in an area I knew so there was no chance of getting lost, but several miles was still a long distance to travel on foot when I was already tired. It had been a long night, and I just wanted to sleep, but the moth-eaten, lumpy mattress waiting for me back at my apartment wasn’t exactly enticing.

The first light of dawn was just starting to show in the sky, so the shadows between streetlights didn’t look so dark. It would be easy to fall into a false sense of security and think that the approaching light meant safety, but that wasn’t true. In this area of the city, I would be just as likely to be mugged during the day as at night, especially since I’d just come from a job and had a few hundred dollars of cash sitting in my pocket.

I kept my eye on my surroundings, my head on a swivel, ready to run if anyone even tried to approach me. I wouldn’t feel safe until I had a locked door between me and the rest of the world.

Well, safer . True safety was impossible.

The sun had fully risen by the time I reached my apartment, and I was once again cursing my decision to live in a place with so many steep hills.

It hadn’t really been a decision. After getting away from the traffickers that had held me for four years, I took what little money I’d managed to squirrel away and bought a bus ticket for as far away as possible. My money had run out at San Francisco, and I’d never bothered to leave since then.

So, yeah, not really a decision, but I liked to think of it that way.

My hair had mostly dried in the California heat by the time I opened the door to my apartment. I shared the space with three other roommates who I rarely saw. The apartment technically only had two bedrooms, but plywood walls had been positioned down the middle of each bedroom to turn it into four spaces. I wasn’t lucky enough to get one of the spaces connected to a door, so I had to first tiptoe through my literal roommate’s space until I reached my own.

On the other side of the plywood wall, there was just enough space for a mattress, a few milk crates I’d stacked into a makeshift shelf, and a clothing rack that I’d stolen from the dumpster behind a clothing store.

The shit hole cost me way more than it was worth, but it was better than being homeless, and the ‘landlord’ didn’t ask questions so long as rent was paid on time.

Changing out of my clothes and into an old but clean pair of shorts and a T-shirt that I used for sleeping, I collapsed onto my bed. I was exhausted, but I was too twitchy to sleep. It had been a slow week before tonight, and I’d had too much time to think. Thinking meant remembering, which I didn’t want to do. If there was a way to open up my brain and scoop out all my memories from my skull like it was a pint of ice scream, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

Unfortunately, such a procedure hadn’t been invented yet. So, I turned to the next best thing for achieving mindlessness.

Social media.

A large crack ran through the screen of my phone, but it still worked. I could barely afford any minutes, so I only used the phone in my apartment where I had access to Wi-Fi. My fingers moved automatically as I opened a familiar Instagram.

Jason Dahler. My brother.

He still looked just the same as I remembered him. Familiar blue eyes and sandy brown hair were always the first things I noticed; similar to mine but a few shades darker. There were several images, but I focused on the one where the man was facing slightly sideways so the notch in his ear, that he’d gotten when he’d mistaken a wild bobcat for a house cat and tried to pet it, was clearly visible.

I hadn’t seen Jason in person since I was fourteen, but I’d kept up to date on his life by stalking his social media pages. I never dared to interact with anything he posted, but I looked at the pictures and made a mental note of all his milestones.

He still lived in the small Maryland town where we’d been born, had gotten married a few years ago, and owned a construction business that seemed to be doing well based on the size of his house. Of course, he may have built the house himself, too. There were bags under his eyes in his latest pictures that he’d tried to cover with makeup, but overall he seemed to be doing okay.

Every time I saw that Jason was still out there in the world, living his peaceful ordinary life, a sense of relief filled my chest.

When I’d first been released, I’d briefly considered finding my way back to Maryland. The urge to return home was so strong I was nearly choking on it. However, when I tried to picture what a homecoming would look like, I could only imagine myself as the fourteen-year-old boy I’d been before I was taken. My brother wouldn’t recognize the man I was now. I wasn’t the same person anymore. I was barely a person at all. Most days, I felt like a ghost walking around in a human body. Someone who died nine years ago yet kept living.

No, Jason didn’t need me around. He had a happy life with a spouse, a respectable job, and a nice house with a white picket fence. That wasn’t even a metaphor. I could literally see the white picket fence around his house in some of his pictures.

Everything in Jason’s life was so proper and clean, two words which didn’t describe me. For all I knew, he’d probably forgotten about me. I was likely just a passing thought that entered his brain every now and then before disappearing just as quickly as it came.

I told myself over and over that I was staying away for his sake, but that was a lie. The real reason I’d put myself on the opposite side of the country from him was fear.

What if I did go back, and he rejected me?

That would hurt worse than anything a client had done to me in the past. I’d survived a lot of pain, but I wasn’t strong enough to survive Jason’s rejection.

Turning off my screen, the pictures of Jason’s life were replaced with my own reflection. The crack in the screen cut right across my face, scattering my image into fractured pieces.

I snorted in disgust.

Why was I being so maudlin today?

Nothing had changed. Today had been the same as yesterday and would be the same as tomorrow. There was no reason for me to be more upset now than any other time. This was my life, and I would just have to keep living it until someday I died.

End of story.

Shoving my phone under my pillow, I threw myself down on the bed and shut my eyes, determined to get at least a few hours of sleep before one of my roommates inevitably woke me up.

It seemed as though I had barely closed my eyes before I was startled awake by a loud noise.

“What the hell?”

My brain wasn’t fully awake, so it took a moment for me to realize what I was seeing.

There was someone in my room, riffling through my stuff. In their hurry they’d knocked over one of the milk crates I used as furniture, which had woken me up.

It was one of my roommates. For a moment, I wondered what they were doing here, and my brain supplied only innocent reasons, still half lost in a mix of dreams and memories.

Then I noticed the wad of cash in their hand, rumpled green bills practically being crushed within their grip, and dazed confusion immediately snapped into anger.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Asking was pointless. I knew what they were doing, but the words still tumbled out of my mouth even as I shoved the man away from my stuff.

Unfortunately, my roommate had at least fifty pounds and several inches on me. My shove didn’t move him more than a few inches. I tried to snatch my money out of his hand, but he just shoved me away, so I landed back on my mattress.

“I had a bad night at the poker tables,” my roommate said as he shoved my money in his pocket. “It’ll just be a loan. I’ll pay you back.”

“The fuck you will.”

My blood boiled in my veins, tightening my throat while spurring my muscles into movement at the same time. I acted on instinct and swung at him, miraculously managing to land a hit square on his jaw. This time he staggered back and fell against the plywood that divided the room. Something cracked, and while it was probably just the old wood breaking under his weight, a sadistic part of me hoped it was his jaw.

“You fucking creep,” I shouted as I gathered up the bills that hadn’t made it into his pocket yet. “I’m not paying for your gambling addiction.”

I’d managed to hit him pretty hard, and a bruise was already forming on his jaw, but that didn’t keep him down for long. Based on his blown pupils, he was probably on something, because he didn’t seem to feel any pain. He sent the plywood divider crashing to the floor in pieces as he suddenly surged forward.

His fist hit me square in the face so fast I didn’t even see it move. The whole left side of my face exploded in pain, and I doubled over. Another punch hit me in the stomach, which sent me to my knees, then a kick to the ribs put me on the ground.

I curled into a ball on my mattress in a desperate attempt to protect myself from any further blows, but thankfully my roommate seemed satisfied now that I wasn’t fighting back.

“Stupid fucking whore,” the man muttered as he moved around the room. “Just go fuck someone else if you need money so bad.”

He kicked the remains of the plywood divider on his way out, then slammed the door behind him.

I lay on my mattress, barely moving for several minutes as I clutched my throbbing face. At first, I was too afraid to really probe the wound, scared that he had broken something. As my shock faded, I was able to determine that the area around my eye was swollen, but my nose didn’t hurt too much and there didn’t seem to be any blood.

My ribs and stomach also ached, but I could breathe without pain, so I didn’t think anything was broken there either.

I would have a nasty black eye and several other bruises, but at least I wouldn’t have to go to the hospital.

In the silence of the room, the sudden ringing of my phone was like an ice pick to my ears. I uncurled from my defensive ball just enough to fish the device out from under my pillow.

“What?”

An auto-generated voice answered me with only five words.

“Blue Steele, you have a client.”

Then the phone clicked off, immediately followed by the ping of an incoming text message that would provide the client’s info.

This was how I usually got my clients, and on a different day I would have been glad for a job I didn’t have to go hunt down myself.

But, fuck, I really wasn’t up to another job right now. I felt like I would fall apart if I moved too quickly, and the thought of handing myself over for someone else’s use turned my stomach even more than normal.

My gaze wandered to my hand, and the single twenty-dollar bill clutched in my grip. It was all that I’d managed to save from my roommates pilfering. If I didn’t make more soon, then never mind affording rent. I wouldn’t even be able to eat.

Dragging myself to my feet, I checked the info for the client. I had two hours before I needed to arrive at the specified hotel.

The address was one of the nicer hotels in the area. Not too fancy, but expensive enough that I’d only met clients there a few times, and each time I’d managed to make a pretty penny for my efforts.

That thought brought me a little energy. With any luck, the client wouldn’t be too demanding, and I could end the day with more money than I’d started with.

Leaving my half-destroyed room behind, I headed for the apartment’s singular bathroom so I could clean up and get ready. A cold washcloth would hopefully reduce some of the swelling around my eye, but there would be no hiding the bruise. Couldn’t afford the makeup needed for such a coverup.

Hopefully the client wouldn’t demand a discount for damaged goods.