ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5) (99 page)

              I’d tried, during the beginning of my tenure behind the chipped wooden bar, to spend the night on the premises instead of leaving, certain that being here would be better than trying to go home, but I was surprised in the morning by the owner, pushing at me with a broom, trying to sweep me out the door, and thinking I was a squatter or a patron who’d somehow escaped attention during the night before.

              “It’s me, Mr. Trenton,” I’d cried, shielding my light-sensitive eyes from the sharp ends of the straw on the broom.

              “Meagan?” He was dumbfounded, still clutching the broom across his chest as if it were a weapon and I was someone he needed protection against. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

              “I…I just fell asleep,” I said, pushing myself up from the little pallet I’d made myself of tablecloths we only brought out during the holidays and a package of napkins for a pillow.

              “Were you drunk on the job?” he demanded.

              “No.” I drank on the job often enough, sure, but I was never drunk. If I weren’t in control at all times, things could get pretty ugly pretty quickly.

              “Are you homeless?”

              It was a yes-or-no question that should’ve been easy to answer, but I found it difficult to define
homeless
. Was I homeless? Yes, in a way. I’d lost a sense of what home was supposed to mean ages ago. The home that was supposed to be mine just wasn’t anymore. The structure itself still stood, and everything inside of it continued to function as long as I paid all of the bills on time, but it wasn’t home.

              “I’m not homeless,” I’d sighed eventually, for the benefit of the man who could fire me if things got too weird—and they were well on their way there. “I really did just fall asleep. It won’t happen again.”

              That appeased Mr. Trenton, but it also cemented the fact that I had to leave the building once everyone had stumbled out and I’d completed the last tasks. There were a few lucky nights in which I made it to someone else’s home. The price I paid to do that was well worth it, in my opinion. If something I gave away to anyone so eagerly could win me a night away from the four walls of that old nightmarish house, I’d jump on it—literally.

              Tonight wasn’t one of those lucky nights.

              I spent an extra-long time polishing the surface of the wooden bar, even though no amount of cleaning solution could ever make it gleam again, and turned off each and every light, fingers lingering over the faceplates, dragging the heels of my sneakers, until I reached the front door.

              I tried to convince myself it was going to be fine. I wouldn’t spend very much time at that house. Just a quick sleep and I could be gone again. If I couldn’t sleep, which was often the case, I could go for a walk. I’d be alone, of course, but at least I wouldn’t be at the house.

              For not the first time in my life, I wished I lived in a big city. Big cities never slept. I could find someone who was awake and probably wouldn’t even have to give my body to ensure their company. I could lean against the counter of an all-night convenience store or bodega and chat with the person behind the register.

              Not even the Walmart in my tiny, rural town stayed open all night.

              Ever reluctant, I locked the door and yanked it shut behind me. After he’d found me asleep behind the bar, the owner hadn’t trusted me with my own set of keys, convinced I’d commit some nefarious act like spending the night again or something. It had been so innocent, but he had been so sure of my guilt.

              The bar was located in the old downtown part of town, but the idea of “downtown” was more like a pathetic joke. A few dilapidated brick storefronts populated the block, each end demarcated with a blinking red light that was really more of a formality than a necessity. The occasional car that approached the twin lights gave a cursory tap on the brakes before continuing on its journey. There wasn’t much of a reason for them except for maybe pride, some sad desire to slow a traveler from their own lives to make them gaze upon this dump.

              Most of the buildings stood vacant, lacking a tenant for years. The bar only existed because some people in the town decided they needed a distraction from all of the depression. They’d made a special ordinance in the city commission to allow the establishment to open. Maybe that was the reason for the red blinking lights demarcating the borders of downtown. Stop here. Stay a while. Have a drink. Remember better times.

              The home I headed toward—the house, rather—was a bit too far to walk to in the cold night, but walking gave me something to do. Counting my steps and concentrating on the vapor clouds that my breath formed in the clear air distracted me from my purpose. I had to go to that house, had to close my eyes for a bit and try to sleep. I hated going to that house. Hated what it represented, what had happened there.

              Hated that I was still there.

              I couldn’t blame my brother. He was trying to save the money to get me to New York City, but I knew it was hard for him. I hadn’t heard from him in a long time. He was probably busy at his job.

              A nastiness inside of me insisted that perhaps he was tired of his needy kid sister, but I ignored it. That voice was easy to ignore. I wasn’t needy. He had no idea what I really needed, what I did in the out-of-the-way corners of my job, this town.

              If he did, he’d probably try a lot harder to get me out of here.

              I turned a corner and my discomfort became a lot more acute. It would’ve been better, I’d often thought, if the house had been at the end of a long, winding dirt road. People expected terrible things to happen to people who lived in those remote places, away from the protection offered by houses clustered together in neighborhoods. There was safety in numbers, or so people claimed.

              The house I was dragging myself toward, my steps growing slower and slower, was in one of those neighborhoods, one of those white-picket-fence places where it was hard to imagine that things could go wrong. The bright lights illuminating each porch of the homes I passed belied the fact that things could go wrong wherever someone existed who wanted to do bad things. It didn’t have to be at the end of a road, behind darkened glass, out of reach of any possible help. It could happen right beyond those chintz curtains, right past the moths doing lazy loops around the fixture lighting the wintry wreath that someone had put out, even if it wasn’t yet Thanksgiving.

              I reached my destination and stood in the street, looking at it, steeling myself for going inside. I’d stay out all night, if I could, and I had before, but I’d likely freeze to death if I tried it tonight. It was too cold, and I needed to go inside, needed to charge my batteries in someplace safe.

              This house had never been safe. In spite of its present state of vacancy, I still didn’t feel at ease.

              It looked just the same as any of the houses on the same street, but it wasn’t the same. Things…bad things…had happened here. I’d seen them happen. I’d experienced them. Some of them had happened to me.

              The only reason I was still here was because I didn’t have the money to move away. I’d needed my brother for help on that front, but he was struggling enough on his own. He didn’t need another mouth to feed when he could barely manage to feed himself. At least, that’s what I told myself. The fact that it had been a year since he told me he’d save up and move me to the city with him hadn’t escaped me. It had been nearly as cold as this when he’d sat next to me and told me his plan. That I wouldn’t have to stay here much longer.

              He probably hadn’t saved enough money or moved into his own place. That was why he hadn’t come back or contacted me in months.

              Thinking that was better than the alternative—possibilities that the nasty little voice inside of me liked to whisper.

              My brother didn’t want me in the city. He didn’t want something as broken as me around him all the time, reminding him of what had been lost.

              I couldn’t blame him. If I didn’t have to be around myself, I’d gladly go somewhere else—New York City, London, the moon. But here I was, and I couldn’t escape myself no matter how hard I tried.

              The rattle of the keys in my pocket as I crunched down the gravel sidewalk to the front door of the house sounded like chains. I’d long given up on turning the lights on in the front entryway. A well-meaning neighbor had encouraged me to do so some time ago, saying that the lights would ward off those with nefarious intentions.

              That was a lie, a false hope. What if that person lived inside, well within the protective reach of the light?

              I would’ve welcomed someone into the house to ransack it, remove anything thought to be valuable, to torch it until it was embers scattered across the wild lawn. Then, perhaps, my brother would take pity on me, let me move to the city with him, savings and plans be damned.

              But night after night, after I unlocked the door and pushed it inward, letting the creak of the hinges echo into the empty space within, everything was always in its place. No one had come in here to erase what I wanted them to erase. This tomb remained a testament to things I wished desperately to forget.

              I closed the door behind me, not bothering to lock it, wondering why I even locked it in the first place every morning when I left. My new game to distract myself from losing my mind inside this silent monument to pain was trying to remember the names and faces of all the men I had been with. I scoured my brain, letting the keys and my coat fall to the tile of the entryway, remembering the old man I wanted to like me, and the poor lay in the alleyway, the smell of metal on my hands.

              I drifted past the banister leading upstairs, taking special care not to look up those stairs. There had been someone the day before, someone who had been kind. I couldn’t remember his name—Christopher? Kyle? It was hard to tell. There were so many of them, but he’d been kind.

              “You seemed like you needed this,” he’d told me, buttoning his shirt in the restroom at the bar.

              “You have no idea,” I’d answered, wishing he’d shut up, wishing I could preserve that nothingness of release, the relief of the abyss. Already, the world was seeping back. Reality.

              The names and faces faded almost immediately after the act, itches scratched, succumbing to the ravages of time and memory. It wasn’t important to look back on. It was only important in the moment.

              I reached the living room and observed the nest I’d made on the worn rug. I couldn’t force myself to sleep with any of the three beds in this house, or the couch. I’d ripped the pillows from it, and the pillows from the beds I couldn’t bear to look at, and made a pallet of sorts on the floor. All I had to do was lie down on it. Just lie down, close my eyes, and wait for sleep to take me.

              I didn’t like giving up that kind of control.

              I settled down all the same, drawing an afghan over me, staring at the dark ceiling above my head until I wasn’t sure that my eyes were opened or closed.

I was up with the sun, pushing myself up off the pallet the moment my eyes partially opened.

              The house was just as forbidding in the daytime as the night, and I wanted to move as fast as I could before the memories consumed me.

              I threw myself into the shower, wetting my body before soaping up my hair, face, and skin all at once, rinsing in a practiced rush. If only I could stay somewhere else—anywhere else—but my brother had promised me that he’d send for me in a year’s time. I could handle it. The anniversary of that promise was going to roll around soon, and I needed to maintain the house, do what I could until then.

              I wriggled into my customary uniform for the bar—black pants, dark shirt—and pulled my hair back, my eyes traversing the collection of pill bottles covering nearly every surface of the countertop. I could recite those long, ugly names by heart, I’d bet. I should’ve just thrown them all away, swept them in one movement into the garbage can, but something stopped me. It wasn’t as if she were coming back. She wouldn’t need them, but I just couldn’t. They’d been her lifeline. Her hope. They’d let her down, sure, but I couldn’t just get rid of them. They’d meant so much.

              “Shut up,” I said, pushing the heel of my hand against my forehead. There it was. That was it. The memories would swallow a person whole if they spent too much time in this hellish house. I knew that, and yet I lingered over those pointless bottles. It was well past time to go.

              If possible, it was even colder this morning than it had been last night. My breath hung in clouds before me, and I jammed my hands into the pockets of a coat thrown hastily on, wondering if it would be worth it to go back into the house to fetch a scarf and a hat and risk getting sucked into its badness again. No. I would’ve rather froze.

              The bar opened for a lunch shift, but it was still far too early. I stopped at a gas station for some coffee and a breakfast sandwich, trying to ignore the pitying stares I still got from the people of this tiny town, hungry to glom on to tragedy and not let go. I didn’t stay long, and neither did they, hurrying to commute to jobs in other, better towns.

              It was a wonder this place existed at all.

              I read snatches of the newspapers on the stands until I drew the ire of the woman manning the cash register.

              “If you want the news, you’re going to have to buy it,” she fussed.

              “I’m going,” I said. The news was free at the library, but it was a long walk in the cold. I could’ve taken the car, but it was as dangerous as the house, memory-wise. The songs she used to sing, for example. How we sang along. The crayons jammed in every available pocket, ready to scribble thoughts and ideas and pictures on notebooks and coloring books and fast-food-restaurant napkins. All surfaces available.

              Today was just going to be one of the bad days. I could already tell.

              There were days when I could distract myself completely. They were usually the times when I didn’t have to spend the night in the house. I woke up fresh and revived and ready to find the next thing to keep me from thinking about whatever had happened. It helped that I was focused on earning money and saving it, obsessed with getting enough to prove to my brother that I could be more of a help than a hindrance.

              And then there were days when it consumed me, days I didn’t make it out of the house—or out of my own head—at all. Days when I crouched, my heart pounding, in the pallet of pillows I made on the living room floor, paralyzed with fear, certain that I was living my worst nightmares again.

              That he was in that house with me, waiting just upstairs. Around the corner. Waiting for me to open my eyes so he could smile at me and make me…

              No. This wasn’t going to be one of those days.

              I walked to the library, which was several miles away, knowing that I could, at least, distract myself with how badly I’d have to hurry back downtown in order to make my shift at the bar. There were books, computers, newspapers, and magazines at the library. I could submerge myself in someone else’s reality for a while. See if I could shake my own reality off for at least a few hours.

              I didn’t bother with the newspapers arranged haphazardly in the racks, picked over already by frugal souls like me. I’d gleaned what I wanted from the rack in the gas station, over breakfast. Something about property taxes, a shooting in New York City, a sick girl collecting toys for other children for the holidays.

              I grabbed a fashion magazine—there was nothing so vapid and escapist than a fashion magazine and its self-important tips for self-improvement. Life going to shit? Here are ten ways to make your boyfriend come. Terrified to be inside your own mind? Nail polish colors you need to be trying right now.

              When I wasn’t at the bar, the library was the next best distraction. I could spend a whole day in here if I had to, and I wouldn’t once think about the house or what had happened.

              I was only there an hour, browsing the shelves, eyes roving over the familiar titles and book jackets before it was time to head out, back to our laughable downtown to start selling drinks.

              The town was small enough to make it possible to get around by walking, but it either didn’t care enough or didn’t have enough funds in its coffers to build sidewalks throughout city limits. I had to cross the street several times to remain on serviceable concrete, and eventually ran out of it anyway, treading in cold, wet grass that dampened the hems of my pants.

              If I cared enough, I guess I could’ve gone to a town meeting and asked for officials to devote some of their attention to something that actually mattered to me, but I supposed I didn’t care that much.

              The lunchtime crowd at the bar was hit or miss, but when I sauntered up to cracked and gum-splotched sidewalk, there was a man lingering by the doorway, shoulders hunched against the cold, hands plunged into his pockets.

              “Waiting for me?” I called, making him turn.

              I was a little taken aback—I’d never seen his face before in my life. He definitely wasn’t from around here. That much was sure. He was tall, and handsome in a way that you might see on a men’s magazine cover. His ears had turned pink from the chill in the air, and he seemed to be attempting to jam the majority of his face down into the fine woolen scarf wrapped several times around his neck. But what I could see, I liked. He was a good-looking man. Maybe even someone I could pass the time with. Someone I could distract myself with.

              “Are you Meagan Green?”

              Dammit. Someone who knew me.

              “Who wants to know?” I asked, stopping just short of him, cocking my head, racking my brain to try and remember if he was someone I’d been with before. No. With a face like that, I’d remember it. His blond hair was neatly parted on the side, lightly gelled to lie close to his finely shaped skull. And those blue eyes…I would remember those blue eyes. We definitely hadn’t been together, but if I had it my way, we would soon. The library had been a good distraction, but I was starting to feel jumpy, and anxious—an addict in need of a fix that came in the form of thrusts, of groans, of fingernails scrabbling down backs.

              I needed to be swallowed whole.

              “My name’s Levi Morgan.” He paused, those blue eyes pinning me to the spot as if the name should ring a bell. I shrugged at him.

              “Should I know you?”

              “You…don’t know who I am?” He looked genuinely puzzled, as if the mere mention of his name would suddenly make me kowtow to him.

              “Sorry,” I said, moving around him, shoving the door open that Mr. Trenton had stopped by to unlock for me. I could’ve saved the bar owner a trip if he’d just trusted me with the keys, but he was so sure I’d squat in here if I got the chance. I couldn’t blame him. I probably would’ve.

              I glanced over my shoulder and my lips curled upward. The illustrious Levi Morgan had followed me inside of the bar. They always followed me.

              “Can I get you something?” I asked, raising my eyebrows in the way I’d developed that let the man I was asking know that the “something” I was suggesting was really “anything.”

              He didn’t say anything for a while, and I wondered if he’d heard me. I didn’t look at him, didn’t want to let him know that he was unnerving me. If they wanted it, they usually gave me some kind of indication by now. I hoped he was going to play hard to get. I needed my fix, like the first cigarette of the morning.

“A vodka on the rocks,” he said. “Grey Goose, if you have it. Smirnoff, if not.” He eyed the bar dubiously, not doubt wondering if I even stocked Smirnoff.

              “Don’t worry,” I teased him. “I won’t leave you hanging. I’m surprised, though. It’s not the weather for vodka.”

              “It’s always the weather for vodka.”

              “No.” I clucked and shook my finger at him, grandly dusting off a bottle of Grey Goose. It was only missing a few fingers of liquor from it. No one who frequented this bar could usually afford top-shelf liquor. I couldn’t even recall the last person I’d poured Grey Goose for. “It’s cold outside. You shouldn’t be drinking anything on the rocks, first of all. Second of all, you should be drinking something like brandy or whiskey. A nice amber liquor to warm you up.”

              Those blue eyes just didn’t crack. I couldn’t get them to warm up to me. I was already resigning myself to the fact that he wouldn’t want to be my special friend this early afternoon, and that I’d have to wait until the rest of the crowd drifted in to get what I was waiting for, when he finally graced me with a smile.

              “Fine. Whiskey it is.”

              “I knew you didn’t want stinky old Grey Goose,” I said, returning the bottle to its spot on the shelf behind me and slipping out a half-full bottle of Jack Daniels. “Now. Let’s banish the cold and warm ourselves up.”

              I slid a pair of glasses down the bar and filled them generously.

              “Someone else order a whiskey?” he asked, taking his beverage and swilling it around, watching the way the whiskey left its mark on the inside of the glass.

              “I couldn’t let you drink alone, now, could I?” I hoisted my glass to him, smiling crookedly. “To Levi Morgan, who is so certain I should know who he is that he knows my name.”

              “To Meagan Green, who has no idea who I am,” he said, clinking my glass with his. The warmth I’d coaxed forward with my banter about liquor had vanished again, which left me befuddled. He was the one who had shown up here, knowing my name. I’d had no control over that.

              I took a small sip of the whiskey, enjoying the way it burned all the way down into my stomach. Levi took the whole lot of it, apparently not caring that it was more than a double I’d poured in his glass. He exhaled heavily and wiped his lips with the back of his hand, but his face didn’t fold in on itself. This was a man who knew how to drink liquor.

              “Are you going to tell me why it’s so important that I know your name, or am I just going to have to figure it out myself?” I asked. “I’m a modern woman. I can Google things.”

              “You really don’t know who I am?” He peered at me, as if he were trying to figure out if I were making fun of him.

              “I hate to disappoint you, but I really don’t,” I said. “If you’re a famous actor, sorry. I haven’t been in the mood for watching movies in a while. And I don’t have cable, so…”

              “I’m not an actor,” he said quickly. “It’s just…is there somewhere we can go?”

              I raised my eyebrows. “Somewhere we can go? What’s wrong with here?” The pit of my stomach stirred. Was this going to happen, or what? I’d tear that scarf off, first. Warm those ears with my mouth.

              “I really need to talk to you,” Levi said.

              “About who you are.”

              “About who I am, I guess,” he confirmed.

              I held my arms out. “You have the floor, Levi Morgan. Just say what you need to say. You have my undivided attention.”

              He frowned, but opened his mouth. However, the door opened, cutting him off abruptly as a trio of men burst in, huffing with the cold, a flurry of coats shrugged off, hats pushed up. I noticed that Levi hadn’t gotten rid of his outerwear, my mind still willing him out of that scarf, trying to unwind it with powers I didn’t possess.

              “What can I get you, gentlemen?” I asked, smiling at Levi’s discomfort. He wanted privacy, though I couldn’t quite grasp what was so private about a person’s name and why I didn’t know it, and it somehow delighted me to deny him.

              “Beer, and keep it coming,” one of the interrupting patrons grunted at me, and I made a show of frosted cold mugs, artfully poured suds from gleaming taps I’d polished a few days ago, relishing the power I had in this moment.

              I liked feeling of all those eyes on me. I always liked it. There was something affirming about it. That I was important. Worthy.