Exploited (The Dark Redemption Series) (19 page)

“Reagan, you ready?” I ask, nodding my head back toward the parking lot.

“Ah, yeah,” she says to me, and then, “Thank you,” to Madam Tess.

“You’re welcome, dears. Protect the bottle, remember the rules, and good luck,” Madam Tess says to our retreating backs.

“Wow. How nuts was she?” I mumble softly to Reagan as we hike through the grassy field, tossing my mostly empty popcorn bag into a passing bin. 

“What if it works?” she asks. At twenty-five, the girl is so gullible. I worry about men taking advantage of her naivety.

“Sorry to break it to you, but I think you just threw two hundred bucks down the shitter.”

Reagan gives a humph of disagreement and stays quiet until we’re seated back in my nineteen seventy-two El Camino. My classic car is my baby, possibly the only one I’ll ever have. For my twenty-first birthday, my parents paid to have this classic restored with a shiny blue finish and a black racing stripe down the center before they gave it to me. I’ve been in love with this make of car since I was old enough to say “El Camino.” They don’t make cars like these anymore. And what can I say? Despite my girly wardrobe, I’m a bit of a tomboy.

“Are you pouting?” I ask my best friend as the car roars to life with a twist of my wrist. A minute later I’m driving us out of the slushy, gravel parking lot.

“If you don’t think it will work, it won’t work,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest like a child having a tantrum. 

“Oh my God. You can’t be serious, Reagan. Love potions don’t exist. If they did, there wouldn’t be any single ladies, would there? Beyoncé’s song about putting a ring on it would’ve been a big flop, not a worldwide sensation.”

“So you’re not even gonna try it?” she huffs.

“I can make you a big batch of
Kool-Aid
when we get back to my apartment for free,” I tease.

“Just promise me you’ll try it! What do you have to lose?” she asks, as I start looking for the signs for the highway. “I know how lonely you’ve been, but you refuse to date anyone because of that dipshit who cheated on you!”

“Don’t think so, Reagan,” I remark. “That dipshit was my soulmate and, yes, he cheated on me and I refused to forgive him. But feel free to try it yourself. I mean, you did pay a fortune for it.”

I exhale a breath of relief when we take the exit for Interstate 421 north, thankfully heading back to normal civilization after that freak show we just left.

“Try it!” Reagan screeches, making me jump in surprise before she thrusts the bottle into my face.

“No!” I exclaim, batting her hand away. “And chill the fuck out. Do you want me to wreck?”

“Try it!”

OMG. She was exposed to the crazy people for far too long. Now she’s caught it, and I don’t have any antidotes to restore her sanity.

“Josie?” she says when I don’t respond to her psychotic request.

“What, Reagan?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the road.

The glass bottle appears in front of my line of sight yet again. “Try. It.”

“Oh, for the love of God!” I yell. Keeping one hand on the wheel, I jerk the bottle out of her hand, pull the glass stopper out with my teeth and chug half of it, just to get her to shut the hell up. “Happy?” I ask when I hand it back. “And yuck.” My entire body gives an involuntary shiver at the foul, bitter taste still lingering on my now numb tongue. Ugh, it’s like a spicy cough medicine. “That shit is…is…”

“Wow! Look! It turned blue, your favorite color,” I vaguely hear her say before I have to slap my palm over my mouth to contain the mouthful of regurgitated acid.

“Oh no.”

Veering off onto the right shoulder of the road, I barely fling my car door open in time before I start retching. Fuck, it’s awful. I projectile vomit across the entire four-lane highway.

“Josie?” Reagan asks softly. “Are…are you okay?”

“Do I look like I’m okay?” I snap at her caustically, sounding like the demonic girl from
The
Exorcist
before another wave of heaves wrack through me.

“Here,” she says when I eventually stop yakking. A wad of fast-food napkins gratefully appear in front of my face.

“Thanks,” I mutter as I grab for the stack, wiping my eyes, face and nose. Ugh. It feels like I’m leaking from every orifice. “That was some seriously nasty shit,” I tell her after I clean myself up, even though it’s unnecessary. Just then, I feel a big gust of wind, followed by a loud
BOOM.

Reagan and I both scream as the car rocks us back and forth from the force of impact.

“What the hell was that?” she asks, but I just hang my head because I already know without looking.

“My door,” I groan into my palms.

Reagan leans over me and then gasps, “Oh shit!” before the little tramp starts giggling.

“It’s not funny!” I exclaim with a shove to her shoulder. That only makes her laugh harder, her head thrown back, full out snorts now, which makes me join in, even though it feels like my own arm was ripped off from my body.

Fuck. I sober up at the thought of how much this is gonna cost to fix. Living on your own is not cheap, and I don’t have a lot of money in savings, hence the reason I didn’t want to spend two hundred dollars on a bottle of upchuck.

Waiting until traffic clears, I jump out of my car that’s now one door away from being a dune buggy, and weave through the maze of vomit to retrieve my unhinged door. Quickly grabbing it up, I give it a hug to my chest and utter an apology before laying it down gently in the back. That’s why El Caminos are the most awesome cars in the world, the comfort of a car with the bed of a truck. It’s ingenious. 

Sitting back down in the driver seat, I buckle up and prepare to get wet on the hour-and-a-half drive home. One where my best friend laughs at me the entire way. This is all her fault.

FML and fuck bogus ass love potions.

Josie Carter

The next morning I drop my car off at the garage that’s closest to the law office where I’ve been a paralegal for three years.  After putting my keys in an envelope with my contact information on the front, I slip it into their drop box and walk the two blocks to work.

Despite my disbelief in such things as insta-love, I can’t prevent my eyes from flicking from one man to the next on busy morning sidewalks, wondering if one could possibly be “the one.” My type has always been the smart, hardworking business man in a three-piece suit. Lawyer, accountant, CEO, I’m not that picky, as long as there’s an impeccable suit and tie involved. 

Bryan, my ex, looked amazing in a suit. He just graduated from law school and is studying for the bar exam. After that, he’ll wear suits every day and probably sleep with every woman he sees. So what if I still stalk him on Facebook and know that he’s back in town while he studies this summer? It’s not like I drove past his parents’ house all creepy to try and see him. Well, I haven’t done that more than twice.

Bummed, reminiscing about the loss of my future husband and our happily ever after together, I duck into the office through the front door instead of the back like usual when I have a car to leave in the parking lot.

“Good morning!” Clarissa, our peppy, blonde secretary says in a singsong voice, sounding way too chipper for a fucking Monday morning.

“Take it down a notch, Julie Andrews,” I grumble as I walk past her desk and down the hall to the office I share with John Scholtz, my eccentric boss, who is the senior partner of the firm, Scholtz, Bell & Daniels. The man has been practicing criminal law since around the time my parents were born. He has a serious case of ADHD with an array of hobbies that often pull him out of the office for weeks at a time. Every once in a while he’ll get a wild hair up his ass and want to do actual legal work, but he’s a procrastinator, so that usually only happens about a day before a case is due in court. Since it’s only eight-thirty, and he doesn’t ever make an appearance before eleven or twelve, if he even decides to grace us with his presence today, I put my purse away in my little desk that faces the wall before fixing a cup of coffee in the office kitchen and sitting down at my boss’s computer to check emails, etcetera, like usual.

Thirty minutes later, and I’ve done all the work that can be done, well, until my boss decides to come swooping in and sends me off on a wild goose chase. So what do I do? Check my personal emails. Pay some bills online. Spin around in the big, leather computer chair. And then, when nothing else comes to me, I decide to go find a willing coworker to gossip with.

Clarissa is too peppy and busy answering the ringing phone since Mondays are always swamped with people getting arrested over the weekend for doing stupid shit. My boss doesn’t get many calls because he’s very select in the clients he takes. They have to be rich enough to afford his fees because of his bazillion years of experience in the courtroom and his connections, and
he
must be willing to devote time to their cases. At most, he takes maybe a new client a month.

My options for office gossip are, therefore, Rebecca, who works for Clark Bell, a young up-and-coming criminal attorney, who mostly deals with small potatoes misdemeanors; or Mallory, who works for Winston Daniels, a middle-aged personal injury attorney. Since Clark has probably already left for calendar call over in court, I head over to Rebecca’s desk.

“What’s up, chica?” I ask when I flop down in the chair across from her pristine desk.

“I hate Mondays,” she says, her shoulders sagging underneath the weight of her baggy, cream blouse before she uses her index finger to push her glasses up her nose. Becca totally has the whole sexy librarian thing going for her. Sure, she has prescription glasses because she’s blind as a bat, but with her long, thick, wavy red waves that I’m totally jealous of and curves that would give a man whiplash, if she ever showed them off, she could be a knockout. The woman needs to wake up and work what her mama gave her. Instead, she’s shy and quiet to the point of awkwardness until she gets to know someone, and she dresses like my frumpy, but loveable, Aunt June.

“Amen, sister. Mondays suck ass,” I agree.

“Do you know how many idiots I’ve talked to today who have court this morning and want to know if Clark will represent them?” she asks, picking up a pen to click and unclick the top incessantly.

“Two?” I guess.

“Four,” she exclaims, tossing the abused pen right over her shoulder. “Four fuckers who had
weeks
to find an attorney, but waited until
the day
they have court!”

Did I mention she’s also feisty like most redheads? Again, she hides it well until she gets comfortable around you. Since she’s been here two years, and I was the one who initially helped show her the ropes, we’re tight.

“Those bastards,” I commiserate with her, shaking my head in mock disgust.

“They’re lucky Clark is going for sainthood, willing to continue all their cases today before they pay him a penny. Assholes better get ready to cough up some dough.”

“Damn right,” I agree with an exaggerated zig-zag snap of my fingers. 

Clark is still wet behind the ears in the world of attorneys. A baby, just a few years out of law school, he hasn’t learned the true evils of the world and our clientele. It’s sweet that he’s so gung-ho, but that won’t last but a few more years before reality shows him differently. And even though he’s cute in a chess club, debate team champion kind of way, short and stocky with messy brown hair and matching eyes, he’s also so dorky that he can put a woman to sleep in less than two minutes flat, and not in the good way. In fact, I’ve wondered for a long time if he and Becca aren’t perfect for each other, but both of them are just too damn introverted and awkward to do anything about it. Whenever I bring it up, she simply hushes me and then immediately turns the shade of a ripe tomato all over.

“So, did you do anything fun this weekend?” Becca asks after she finishes her tirade.

“Reagan dragged me to the freak festival,” I tell her.

“Freak festival?”

“Yeah, the one with knights, fairies and other mystical creatures.”

Becca snickers. “Any fun?”

“Well, we saw a psychic, who Reagan paid a fortune for a hocus love potion. She made me drink it while driving, which instantly caused me to have to pull the car over and upchuck. Oh, and then some bastard knocked my car door off, so I’m ride-less while my car’s in the shop.”

Becca’s mouth is gaping open, right before she covers it and starts to laugh. Why does everyone think my baby getting dismembered is so funny?

“Love potion? Seriously?” she asks with a skeptical tilt of her head.

“Yeah, it tasted like ass,” I tell her, blanching at the memory of the foul liquid on my tongue.

“What tasted like ass?” Mallory asks, when she sneaks up on us, taking the empty seat next to mine.

“Looooveee potion,” Becca tells her with a giggle.

“You drank a love potion?” Mallory asks, when she turns to me with her pierced eyebrow raised in harsh judgment. Sure, she sticks out like a sore thumb around our office of suits and business casual with her jet black hair that has streaks of pink, her facial piercings and the colorful Japanese sleeve tattoos running down her arms that she never covers, even in winter. But she’s smart as shit and works harder than anyone else I know to keep up with Winston’s heavy workload. He’s such an easygoing boss, like all the bosses in our office. Therefore, he’s never once asked her to wear long sleeves, or take out her tongue, nose or brow piercing. Tall and enviously thin, she wears whatever she wants proudly, usually tight jeans and a cut off rock t-shirt to display her belly piercing that men practically fall to their knees to worship. Not picky and liking variety, she’ll usually try anything or anyone once, but only once since she’s the queen of one-night stands.

“I may have drank a sip,” I finally admit.

“Well, did it work?” Mallory asks. “Are guys fawning all over you as soon as you speak like in
Love Potion No. 9
?”

“It doesn’t work that way, or at least it hasn’t. I’m thinking it’s a dud,” I tell them.

“Shame,” Mallory replies with a smirk. “You so need to get laid.”

“Do not!” I exclaim indignantly.

“Come on, Josie. When was the last time a man pried your prickly legs apart?” Mallory asks, making Becca snort.

“That…that is not the point!” I remark, as I stand from my chair, ready to escape the evasive interrogation.

“On the contrary, I think you’re missing…
the point
,” Mallory jokes, waggling her eyebrows suggestively.

“Don’t you have work to do, slacker?” I ask, as I start to head back toward the hallway.

“Okay, pot, have you met kettle?” she shouts in response as I make my retreat.

Back in my office, or my boss’s office, I flop back into his big chair. And after a minute of deliberation on what I should do now, I pick up the phone to call the garage where I left my car and keys because they were still closed when I came to work.

“
Andrews’
,” a man’s deep voice answers, heavy with a sigh of annoyance. Alrighty then. 

“Hi, I dropped off my El Camino this morning, and I was wondering when you might be able to –”

The jerk starts howling like a maniac into my ear, interrupting me. “
Ryan…Blake…It’s the chick who lost the door
,” I hear his muffled voice say on the other line, before it’s answered with, “
A chick drives this old motherfucker? No way
!”

“I didn’t
lose
my door. Some asswipe ripped it off when I pulled over for…for an emergency on the side of the road,” I clarify. “So when will it be ready?”

“Sorry, toots, but doors don’t magically reattach themselves. And with all the dings and scrapes, it’s gonna have to be repainted. But seeing as it’s old as fuck, I don’t think we can match it. You’ll probably need to take it to a body shop and have them redo the whole fucking thing.”

“Watch your mouth,” I tell him sternly, even if it is hypocritical since I’m the first one to hurl the f-bomb when I get pissed, which is pretty much daily. Thankfully, my boss is also a fan of the word. But this guy on the phone has some seriously shitty customer service skills.

“Or what?” the man asks. “You gonna bend me over your knee and spank me?” Hoots and hollers erupt in the background while I gasp at the clear sexual undertones of his statement, affronted and, yes, mildly turned on. I blame it entirely on my long drought since I don’t even know what this man looks like. He’s probably hideous.

“Look you…you, prick,” I stammer, trying to find my words after he leaves me flustered. “Are you gonna fix my door or not?”

“Calm your tits, woman,” he says, making me scoff. Who does this asshole think he is?

“Calm. My. Tits?” I repeat slowly so he can hear and understand that I’m clearly offended. There’s a hot flush spreading rapidly across my face, and I feel feverish with rage.

“Yeah, calm your tits. You left your cell, house and work numbers, along with your email address on the drop box envelope. We’ll call when it’s ready. Probably gonna be another day, maybe two.”

“What am I supposed to do until then?” I mutter, mostly to myself, but the prick answers.

“Not my problem,” he replies before he hangs up on me.

I stare at the receiver still in my hand, unable to comprehend what the hell just took place. For a few minutes, I debate whether or not I should go get my car and take it somewhere else, but quickly decide against it. It’s Monday, and every shop in town is probably jam-packed with weekend breakdowns. If it’s not ready in two days, I’ll go get it from the jerk, report his rude, sexist comments to his manager and take my baby somewhere else. Until then, I guess I’ll have to hitch rides.

Sighing in defeat, I decide to waste more time surfing the web. When my boss still hasn’t rolled in at noon, I walk downtown with my co-workers to the
State Street Grill
. It’s one of about two restaurants us girls can afford. The rest of downtown caters to the rich businessmen and their clients, offering entrees at a minimum of forty dollars a pop. Burgers and fries it is!

“So, tell us about this looovvvee potion,” Mallory prompts after the four of us order our food and sit down at one of the empty round tables to wait for it to cook.

“Besides the fact it tasted like rotten eggs?” I offer.

“Seriously, I’m curious, too,” Becca says while adjusting her glasses.

“This is a for real love potion?” Clarissa asks, practically bouncing in her seat. I swear the girl is either on crack or ingests gallons of caffeine a day.

“It’s not real,” I reply, and all three of the women visibly deflate, even Mallory, which is surprising since she’s always up to her neck in dick. Or more accurately, down her neck… “Some psychic sham of a woman reeled in Reagan to pay two hundred bucks for the stuff. She told us you have to drink it, screw your soulmate, and then pass on the foul shit to another desperate soul.”

“So it only attracts
one
man?” Mallory asks.