2. Cass
CASS
I hate when strangers make ambiguous jokes. Like when you’re running late on your way through airport security and the TSA agent says something like, “Enjoy your flight… if you make it.”
Like, sir, what does that mean ? Is that a threat? A joke? Should I laugh? Should I call the police? Aren’t you the police?!
That’s how I feel right now.
Or rather, that’s how I would feel.
Except for it is very, very clear that this man is not joking.
Up close, he’s worse than he was when I first saw him across the bar. And by worse, I mean better. And by better, I mean worse for me and my ability to form sentences.
For starters, he’s unbelievably tall. I’m in Prada heels and he’s still towering an easy eight inches over me.
His skin is pale, almost white against the black of his stubble.
His eyes are this dramatic, washed-out blue, almost as ghostly as his complexion.
The overall effect is eerie. Dark hair, dark clothes, dark everything, and then boom , those eyes, bright and piercing.
He smells good, too. Cool, clean pine and aquamarine. Not like this bar at all. As taken aback as I am that he just manhandled me on my way out of the joint, it’s nice to be able to take a full inhale without feeling like I’m going to need to reupholster the inside of my nostrils.
I look down at his hand on mine. Unlike every other guy in this place, there’s no sign of gruesome scars, oozing wounds, or badly etched prison tattoos across his knuckles. They’re by no means a prissy boy’s hands, though. They’re strong and lithe, warm and callused. Highly capable.
They’re also somewhere they don’t belong.
“Y’know,” I snap, “it’s really rude to touch a woman without permission.”
“You’re in the wrong place if you’re looking for social decorum,” he replies carelessly. But he does let go. I almost kinda miss his touch when it’s gone.
I plant my fists on my hips and crank my defiance up to maximum. “Why do I get the feeling that this place has nothing to do with your willingness to put your hands on someone you’ve never met before?”
The blue-eyed man looks completely unfazed. “I do what needs doing,” he says simply.
“Oh, so I’m what needs doing?”
He nods solemnly. “I’d say so. By the looks of it, you haven’t been properly done in a very long time.”
Cue instant blush. Red cheeks, stomach squirms, the whole nine yards. I immediately want to dig a very deep hole and throw myself in the bottom of it. “I— You— You can’t just— Oh, fuck this, I’m leaving.” I whip around with every intention of resuming my righteous storming out of here.
But I don’t get very far.
Because once again, that hand tightens around my wrist.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”
I reverse my whip-around to re-whip in the other direction, back to facing this arrogant S.O.B. “You can’t let me?” I echo acidly. “Let me ask you a question: Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Right now?” he asks, still utterly unbothered by my tone. “I’m the man who’s trying to save your life.”
That takes some of the wind out of my sails, if only because it’s the last thing I was expecting him to say. I once again start stuttering. “I— You… Wait, what?”
A group of men start to stomp past us right then.
We’re standing in front of the door, so the Blue-Eyed Bastard—let’s call him B.E.B.
for short—pushes me up against the nearby wall.
His hips bracket mine, and his height means that his chest is roughly level with my face, so I get a double-barreled inhale of his scent.
It’s like dipping my head in a forest river. Bracingly cold, dark and mysterious. I feel a little dizzy.
Through the gap underneath B.E.B.’s armpit, I see the booted feet of the passing men slow, as if they’re eyeing us and wondering what’s happening, whether to intervene, or maybe whether to join in, I can’t be sure. The fear starts to ratchet up in my chest before I hear?—
“Move along, gentlemen. This little filly is all mine.”
B.E.B.’s tone is half-joking and half-extremely-fucking-serious. He somehow manages to keep his smooth, polished, educated enunciation, while also taking on this rough edge, the kind of unspoken violence that the men in here begrudgingly respect.
He gets a few harsh chuckles in response. Then the booted feet resume walking, and we’re once again alone in the short hallway that leads to the door.
I wriggle until I can get my hands on B.E.B.
’s torso. Then I push him away. He moves reluctantly, and even though I know he’s choosing to move—because, despite my thrice-weekly Pilates, upper body pressing strength is not exactly my calling card—part of me feels a savage satisfaction, like I’m reasserting my authority here in this situation.
“You really need to educate yourself on the meaning of ‘boundaries,’” I inform him.
“Is that so?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, it is,” I fire back lamely, aware of how stupid of a comeback that is. I might as well have gone with I’m rubber, you’re glue. “ Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go home, please.”
This was all such a mistake. What was I thinking? What kind of person did I think I’d suddenly become?
No, better question: Am I a coward? I was going to just outsource my vengeance? Giana deserves better than that.
I suppose, in a strange sort of way, I have Mr. Refrigerator and B.E.B. here to thank for putting me back on the right path. I’m going to go home and pick up where I left off: handling this shit all by my damn self.
Or so I thought.
But when I crane my neck up, I see B.E.B. shaking his head. “Home? No. I told you already: You’re not going home just yet. In fact… you’re coming with me.”
“Excuse me? I’m not going anywhere with?—”
Completely ignoring my request, he grabs my hand and starts pulling me toward the back of the bar. His grip isn’t painful, but it’s absolute. I try to yank free and get precisely nowhere.
“Hey! Hey, stop. I said no. What part of that is unclear to you?”
He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t even slow down.
“I swear to God, if you don’t let go of me right now, I will scream so loud that?—”
And then I’m upside down.
A blur of motion, and then gravity does a flippity-doo-da.
It’s almost funny how fast it happens, how quickly and abruptly I go from on my feet like usual, to thrown across B.E.B.
’s broad shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
My hair flaps in my face, my purse whacks me in the back of the head, and all the blood rushes into my eyeballs.
I feel like they’re gonna pop out of my sockets.
“Put me down! ”
He doesn’t put me down. He walks. I bounce against his back with every step, my fists pounding uselessly between his shoulder blades.
“This is assault! This is kidnapping! This is?—”
“This is me keeping you alive,” he corrects, calm as anything, and pushes through a swinging door into what looks like a kitchen. Only then does he set me down.
Not on my feet, though.
He plants me ass-first on a suspiciously slippery steel countertop. “There. That’s better.”
“Better for who? ” I sputter, shoving hair out of my face.
“You,” he says.
“I don’t really see how that’s the case.”
“Well, ‘worse’ would be something along the lines of letting you walk out that door. Because the man you just tried to hire is waiting half a block down to jump you, steal everything you own, and probably do a few worse things to you along the way.”
I blink. There are a million things swirling through my head, including several pints more blood than usual, thanks to the impromptu piggyback ride.
It’s a confusing blur of cyanide and revenge plots, of Giana’s polished coffin, of disgusting martinis and men with thick necks and bars that only appear on shady Internet sub-forums and never, ever on a map that a normal civilian would come across.
All of that whirs and rolls like a slot machine until finally, my mouth is ready to output the next piece of the conversation.
Which, as befits someone with the gift of gab like myself, comes out as:
“Huh?”
B.E.B. is unamused. “Which part was unclear?”
“All of it? I don’t— Can you just— Say it again. Slower. Like I’m dumb.”
He puts both hands flat on the counter on either side of me. He’s not touching me, but he’s definitely close enough that I can’t exactly hop down and bolt. “The man you spoke to at the bar. Big. Ugly. Looks like someone drew a frowny face on a washing machine. Remember him?”
“Yeah. Mr. Refrigerator.”
B.E.B. doesn’t ask about the nickname. Then again, it’s kind of self-explanatory. “He left through the side exit about ten seconds after you got up to leave. He’s in the alley on the east side of the building. I’d bet good money he called some friends, too. They’re waiting for you.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I watched him do it,” he answers. “And I can hardly blame him. You’d be the easiest cash he’s made in his whole fucking life. You might as well have put his name on a check and signed over your life’s savings.”
I want to argue. If we’re betting, then part of me would like to bet that B.E.B.
here is just some creep running a slightly more complicated scheme than our mutual friend Mr. Refrigerator.
He’s trying to scare me into staying here with him so he can do God knows what, so he can con me out of my money in a different way.
But there’s no smirk on his face. Not a single, solitary speck of amusement. He watches me, blue eyes burning, and waits for me to realize that he means every word he says.
“You’re serious,” I say at last.
“Very.”
“You’re not just— This isn’t some kind of pickup thing?”
“If I wanted to pick you up, I’d use a better line than ‘someone’s waiting to rob you in an alley.’”
Well… fair point. Though something tells me he doesn’t need cheesy lines to get any girl he wants.
I chew the inside of my cheek. “Okay. So let’s say I believe you. What now?”
“Now,” he says, straightening up tall, “you wait. Give it twenty minutes. He’ll get bored and leave.”
“And I’m just supposed to sit here on this gross counter until then?”
“You’re welcome to stand, if you prefer.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You think this is funny?”
“‘Stupid’ is the word I’d use. You strutted into a bar full of criminals and announced your intentions to the first stranger who’d listen. Yet somehow, you’re surprised that it went badly. So, yeah. ‘Stupid’ just about sums it up.”
“Wow. Uh, thanks, I think.” I hop off the counter and wipe my hands on my coat.
Whatever was on that steel surface, I don’t want to know.
But I would like to immerse myself in an industrial-sized vat of hand sanitizer, please and thank you.
“Look, I appreciate the… whatever this is. Chivalry, I suppose. Though I question your methods. But I can handle myself.”
“I beg to differ.”
“How do I know you’re not trying to pull something?” I counter. “Maybe you and Mr. Refrigerator are working together. Good cop, bad cop. He scares me, you swoop in, and then?—”
“And then what? I carry you into a kitchen and lecture you about personal safety?”
“Maybe it’s a long con.”
“It’s not.”
“That’s exactly what someone running a long con would say.”
B.E.B. steps back and gestures toward the swinging door. “Go, then.”
That throws me for a loop. “What?”
“If you don’t believe me, go. Walk out the front, turn right, head east toward your car. See what happens.”
We look at each other. He’s got this total calm about him that makes me want to throw something at his head.
The knife resting on the counter next to me would do the trick nicely.
It’s not even that I think he’s wrong, per se—it’s just that, after four years married to Raymond Snyder, I’ve had as much snide, condescending arrogance as a girl can handle.
“Fine,” I decide. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
I push through the swinging door and walk through the bar without looking back. I can feel him, though. His eyes on me, tracking me all the way across the room. The sensation of blue on me prickles along my spine and stays there even after I shove open the front door and step out onto the sidewalk.
The night is cold for October. The garbage bins lined up along the sidewalk are radiating putrid fumes into the air. I hike my purse strap higher on my shoulder and start walking.
I make it one block. I’m passing the mouth of an alley between a laundromat and a payday loans place when a thick arm shoots out of the dark and grabs the strap of my purse.
It’s Mr. Refrigerator.
And just like the B.E.B. predicted…
… he’s not alone.