10. Gauge
GAUGE
“Yep, everything you can find,” I said as I dug through employee files in the former owner’s office.
Jesus, she had a tiny fucking office. What did it used to be? A goddamn closet?
“That’s no sweat off my back,” Plug said with a snicker as he started plucking away on his keyboard. “Besides, everyone in this town is pretty squeaky?—”
“She ratted on her father and put him in prison.”
He paused. “Oh.”
I found Char’s employee file and yanked it out of the desk. “Gotcha.”
“Gotcha what?”
I slapped it onto the top of the desk and flipped it open. “Charlotte Lancaster. That’s her name.”
“Date of birth?”
“May 9th, 1993.”
He ticked his tongue before his end of the line fell silent. “She got blonde hair and ice blue eyes?”
“Yep.”
“About 5 foot 7-ish?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“Lived in?—.”
I closed my eyes. “Plug?”
“Yep.”
“Put it in a file and send it to me.”
“Right, right. Okay, give me the evening and I’ll have it all ready for you.”
I nodded my head as I pulled my cell away from my ear. “Thanks. I’ll send you pictures from her employee file just in case it helps.”
“Anything you can get me. You know that.”
“Talk soon.”
I quickly hung up the phone and turned my attention back to the measly little file the bar had on their brightest employee.
Or, at the very least, the most well-endowed.
Plug would certainly want to digitize all of the files so that they were easier to pick through, but it wasn’t as if there was much to digitize in the first place.
Bottle Grounds had a forty-year history in Layborn.
One of the oldest businesses to keep their doors open.
And their employee files spanning over four decades fit into one drawer of her metal filing cabinet?
No wonder the bar wasn’t doing well.
The woman didn’t even have a proper background check in Char’s file.
What the hell was the owner and operator of this damned place doing all those years?
Hiring strays off the street? To be fair, it tracked with her.
Too good of a heart and not enough business sense.
We’d be the best thing to happen to the bar, even though none of the staff believed it.
I decided to snap a few ancillary pictures and send them to Plug, just in case he needed the information to guide his efforts.
I should’ve expected the text he shot back, too.
Plug: You know we can just fire her if she’s a risk, right?
I muttered the words to myself as I typed them out. A fucking terrible habit I had picked up from one of the many foster parents I’d had over the course of my childhood.
Me: Just want to make sure the woman we’ve got and the woman you find line up.
Plug: Tell me you’re joking.
Me: Everyone makes mistakes.
Plug: You guys wanna fuck her, don’t you?
Me: Dallas might.
I could hear Plug’s laughter as I pressed send.
I waited for his response, standing there like a fucking numbskull while I waited for his message to come through.
I heard Dallas calling out to Deac through the bar.
His voice reverberated down the hallway, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he came looking for me if Deac wasn’t available.
But, to my surprise, Plug shored up his end of the conversation.
Plug: All right, got your pictures. I’ll do my worst. Tell Deac I’ll have his info for him ASAP.
“Dallas might what?”
His voice reverberated from behind me, and I snapped Char’s employee file closed.
“Awww,” Dallas said as he walked up to my side, “come on. You found something juicy in there, didn’t you?”
“Get off it,” I said as I picked up her file and shoved it back into the filing cabinet.
Dallas clapped his hand against my back. “You really gotta loosen up, Gauge. You’re too stiff.”
I pushed the filing cabinet closed. “Where’s Deac?”
“Gauge, you call Plug?” he asked as he stuck his head around the corner.
I turned to face him. “He’s on it.”
He tapped the door frame with his hand. “Good. Dallas, did you head upstairs?”
“I did, actually,” Dallas said as he kept his attention on me.
I stared him down. “You wanna fuck or something? Put your eyeballs somewhere else.”
He held up his hands in mock surrender before he turned to Deac. “Look, all I’m saying is that your plan for the upstairs would go over well. It’s a great space. A genuine studio that could be turned into whatever you wanted.”
My ears twitched. “What?”
Deac stepped into the small office, making me feel more cramped than I already felt. “So, it would be a good area for a V.I.P. spot?”
“No,” I said flatly.
Both of their heads pivoted slowly toward me before Deac cracked his neck. “No… what?”
I shook my head. “You shouldn’t kick her out.”
Dallas grinned. “Getting protective of the busty bartender, now, are we?”
“Her name is Char!” someone shouted from the hallway. “And you should know that your voices carry!”
Deac outstretched his arm around the corner and snatched a young man in an apron into the office.
“Name,” Deac said as he held the boy close to his face.
“Chef, right?” Dallas asked. “I think that’s our head cook.”
The African American man held his head high with pride, even in the face of Deac. Which was pretty impressive, given our President’s reputation around town.
“DeShawn Johnson,” he said.
Deac released his arm with a shove. “Go do your job and leave the conversation to us.”
The man’s face contorted into one of anger and suspicion.
But, he didn’t question what was told to him.
He shot each of us a look, like he’d be able to take us in a fight or some shit, and I had to admit, the thought was entertaining.
His spindly little arms, punching useless punches into my gut that would probably tickle more than anything else.
He had spirit, I’d give him that.
And when he left without another word spoken, I knew Deac’s point had landed.
“He’s a good one,” he said as he turned back toward us, “we can keep him.”
“Good food, too,” I said as I crossed my arms over my chest.
Dallas still had his stare focused on the profile of my face, however. “You don’t ever have an opinion of someone like this.”
I shook my head. “Don’t do that shit. I hate it when you do that shit.”
He shrugged. “Well, you’re making it pretty obvious. You never defend people like this. In fact, I expected you to be the one excited for a V.I.P. lounge since that’s sort of your thing.”
I turned to face him. “There a question in there somewhere?”
He tilted his head. “Actually, there is. Why her?”
I shrugged, but Deac slipped into the picture, which effectively blocked me into the back half of the office.
“Don’t trap me,” I warned.
“We aren’t trapping you,” Deac said.
“But, there’s something you’re not telling us,” Dallas said. “So, what is it? Why are you defending her?”
Deac pointed his finger at me. “And don’t try to wiggle your way out of this. We’re getting an answer out of you. Why don’t you want to turn that space above us into prime real estate so that we can make more money upfront?”
I stared over their heads and shook my own, but I knew it was only a matter of time before Dallas put things together.
He had always been the people person in the crew.
“You know something about her,” he muttered.
Deac nodded slowly. “What else did you overhear during that conversation of yours?”
I pinned him with a look. “Nothing that pertains to our safety, or the safety of the bar, if that’s what you’re asking.”
That’s when his eyes grew dark, and I knew I was standing on thin ice. “That’s not enough. Spit it out.”
Dallas joined in on the fun with his own version of an angry voice. “Now.”
So, I drew in a deep breath. “She doesn’t have a high school diploma.”
Dallas furrowed his brow. “No GED?”
“Nope.”
Deac sighed. “She’s not even working toward one?”
“Nope.”
Dallas pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well, fuck.”
Deac groaned as he turned toward the hallway. “Fine. Fine. We won’t kick her out unless it’s imperative to generate revenue and bring this place back to life. All right?”
I didn’t like that. I didn’t like the fact that we were even still discussing the idea of kicking her out one of these days.
The crew had been my only saving grace from the life that I had chosen for myself.
A gutter of a life on the streets that I joined as an angry, hostile teenager.
A kid no one wanted. A kid no one saw as their son.
Not even my own fucking parents wanted me, so why the hell was a high school diploma important?
I knew for a very long time that I wasn’t going anywhere or doing anything special.
I wasn’t gonna be winning awards for science projects or winning fucking spelling bees on the weekends.
It was by sheer luck that Axel found me cowering in that dumpster just before one of the most voracious dust storms this area of the state had ever seen.
I owed my life to that man. I owed everything I had to him tossing that dumpster top open and demanding that I come with him.
And when he introduced me to the crew, he made me promise him something.
Before I became a prospect, he made me promise that if I ever got the chance to cut someone some much-needed slack, I’d do it.
I didn’t like how the guys were trying to usurp that, either.
But, what the hell was I gonna do about it?
I bought her time for now, and that would simply have to be enough.
We needed to expand our base of operations, and quickly, which meant covering our tracks however necessary.
It wasn’t a good look when the oldest and most reputable bar in town wasn’t producing revenue or bringing in customers.
That was important to our front. And if we needed that upstairs space in order to make it happen, then it was what it was.
At the very least, however, hopefully I had bought Char enough time to figure out her next steps. Because if anyone understood how hard it was to survive in the world without an education… it was me.
And I wouldn’t wish that plight on my worst fucking enemy.
The office door swung shut behind Deac and Dallas, and I stood there alone in that cramped little space for longer than I needed to.
I should have followed them out. There was work to be done.
Shelving to reorganize, a utility closet to clear, a sound system to help Plug haul in before the evening got away from us.
I had a list running in my head that went on for three days and a crew that moved faster when I was in the middle of it.
Instead, I found myself standing at the bottom of the wrought iron staircase that led up to her apartment.
Maintenance check. That was what I told myself as I climbed the steps. The railing had a wobble to it that I had clocked the day we took ownership. A loose bolt. Something simple. Something that needed to be looked at before it became a liability.
It had nothing to do with the woman on the other side of the door.
I raised my fist and knocked twice. Not the way Dallas knocked. Not that loose, easy rhythm that announced itself like good news. Two firm knocks that said I had somewhere to be after this.
A beat of silence passed before the lock turned.
She pulled the door open and found me standing there, and whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t me. I watched it move through her face in a split second. The small adjustment. The chin lifting just slightly. The way her grip on the door tightened before she let it go.
She recovered fast. I’d give her that.
“Railing’s loose on the staircase,” I said. “Wanted you to know before you leaned on it.”
She blinked. “Oh.”
“I’ll have someone fix it this week.”
“Okay.”
I nodded once and turned to go. That was it. That was the whole of what I had come up here to say, and I had said it, and now there was no reason to be standing on her front porch any longer.
“Hey.”
I stopped.
“You’re the one who told them not to take my apartment.”
It wasn’t a question. I turned back around slowly. She was leaning in her doorframe now, arms crossed over her chest, reading me the way people who had spent a long time studying dangerous things learned to read them. Careful. Thorough. Not afraid, exactly. Just precise.
“Word travels fast,” I said.
“DeShawn has ears everywhere.” She held my stare. “Why?”
I looked at her for a moment. The honest answer was longer than anything I planned on giving her. So, I gave her the only part of it that was simple.
“Railing,” I said. “This week.”
And I headed back down the stairs before she could ask me anything else.