Chapter 5
DOLL
Igive the bed an honest try, since resting is what I was told to do.
Shoes off, knees up, eyes on the ceiling while the water bottle sweats on the dresser.
My body is wrung out enough to sleep for a week.
My head won’t stop. It keeps standing me in the conference room at the exact second Victor looked at his printouts instead of at me, and it plays his two words on a loop. A week.
For years, I ran his life. He traded mine without looking up.
I sit up. If I stay in this room, I’ll wear a path in the floor, so I put my shoes on and open the door.
The hallway is plank floors and old rock posters, gray afternoon light through a window at the far end.
A young man in a leather vest sits on a folding chair at the end of the hallway, a paperback western in one hand, a knife on his belt.
Nineteen, maybe. He stands when he sees me, polite as a hotel porter.
“Ma’am. Kitchen’s this way if you’re hungry. Phoenix will fix you up.”
“Is there a rule about me walking around?”
He considers it. “Rule’s for them, not you. Nobody bothers you. Inside the fence, you go where you like.”
Downstairs, the clubhouse opens into one long room.
A bar runs the far wall under a row of license plates from states I’ve never been to.
Pool table. Couches with no two cushions matching.
A jukebox with a cracked face and a hand-lettered sign taped to it.
DO NOT FIX. A dozen men scattered around, boots on tables, low talk. Everyone clocks me on the first step.
Here’s what I know about rooms full of dangerous men. Somebody always wants what you’ve got, and he shows himself fast.
Nobody moves. A big blond one lifts two fingers off his beer. A card game keeps going, the low talk doesn’t stop, and I come into a room that has decided, all together, to leave me alone. I have no idea what to do with it.
“It’s past four and I’d bet you haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
Red hair, full tattooed sleeves, a rag over one shoulder, watching me from behind the bar. She has a burner lit before I answer.
“Phoenix,” she says.
“I remember.” I met her an hour ago.
“Good, then sit.”
I take a place at the very long table and a couple of minutes later, I get a plate in front of me.
It could feed the card game. Eggs, toast, bacon stacked in a dare.
She leans on the bar with her arms crossed while I eat, and she doesn’t ask who I am or how I got here.
She tells me about the jukebox instead. A prospect at the mother chapter electrocuted himself half to death trying to fix one exactly like it, and now no Thunder Bastard on this earth is allowed near a jukebox with tools.
I laugh with my mouth full. It surprises us both.
“There it is,” she says, and takes the empty plate.
“You’re not going to ask me anything.”
“Angel set a rule. You tell it once, when you tell it.” She wipes a slow circle into the bar. “Anybody asks you so much as your middle name before then, I introduce him to the bat, and Angel handles whatever the bat leaves.”
At Halcyon, kindness came with a hook in it.
Every favor grew interest. Every warm word had a hand out behind it, and I learned to spot the hand before the word finished landing.
I keep waiting for the hook here. It doesn’t come.
I’ve had years of practice with bought, none at all with free, and the waiting sits in me like a swallowed stone.
Somewhere across the city, my uncle knows I’m gone. The driver woke up with a headache, Durey must have had his fit, and Victor is pacing the glass office. Not worried about me. Worried about what happens to him now that his collateral walked.
And a scared Victor is a Victor I’ve never met. He could spin my running into a kidnapping if it buys him a week of Durey’s patience. Somebody needs to get ahead of him, and for years that somebody has been me.
“Where’s Angel?”
Phoenix tips her chin at the side door. “Yard. Glaring at his bike. It’s how he relaxes.”
The rain has quit and left the yard shining.
Puddles between the motorcycles, gray light of the chrome, and Angel crouched beside his bike running a rag along the pipes, a bag of ice sweating untouched on the seat above him.
The split lip has dried dark. He hears my boots on the gravel and stands before I’m halfway to him.
“You’re supposed to be resting, Doll.”
“And I assume you should be icing that lip.”
He glances at the bag on the seat. “It’s close enough.”
“I need a favor,” I say, “and I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
He goes still. “Ask.”
“I want to call my uncle. Now, today. Do you have a phone nobody can trace?” My voice holds, which is a small miracle. “To tell him I’m okay.”
“Why?” No heat in it. “I watched a suit walk you out of that building and a pro run you down like a job. Whatever you bolted from this morning, it started under your uncle’s roof. The man couldn’t keep you safe in his own lobby. Explain to me why he gets a phone call.”
“Because Victor scared is Victor stupid.” That answer costs me nothing, and it has the advantage of being true.
“I ran his life for years. Calendar, calls, cleanup. I have no idea what he does when he panics, and I’d rather not find out.
If he hears my voice, he stays predictable. Predictable buys time.”
“Time for what?”
“It’s complicated …” I hold his eyes and add, “And it could be good for you, so he doesn’t go and claim you kidnapped me or something.”
He hesitates, so I add, “He’ll talk to me. He always talks to me, I’m the one person left he doesn’t perform for. Your club might want to hear what that sounds like.”
The rag twists in his fist. He has questions, plenty, and I watch him swallow them one by one.
“Fine,” he says, half to himself. The rag goes into his pocket.
“Then here’s how the call goes. Cash provides the phone.
It happens at the table, on speaker, officers in the room.
Every word your uncle says, my club hears.
You landed in our yard on a bad day, Doll. Let the men who doubt you listen live.”
So they do doubt me. I suspected as much, but hearing it said plain settles it.
“Agreed.”
“Second condition is mine.” He steps in, close enough now I have to tip my head to look at him and, somehow, my eyes land on his lips … again. “The second you want out of that call, you’re off. Mid-sentence, mid-word, I don’t care. You put the phone down.”
He keeps doing this. A hand held out over a dumpster. A helmet. Ten seconds in an alley to pick my own direction. Now a phone I’m allowed to put down. Nobody has handed me this many of my own choices since my parents died.
“Deal,” I say, and my voice catches on the one small stupid word.
If he notices, he lets it live. He picks the ice off the seat, presses it to his mouth at last, and nods toward the clubhouse.
“Gimme one hour. I’ll come find you.”
He heads inside. I stay among the puddles and build the call in my head. A smooth open. The steady voice. Every trick I’ve ever used to settle him.
I’m okay. I’m safe. I’m sorry.
Two of those are true.