Shooter (Burnout) (7 page)

At that moment two men attempted to pass them to cross the street. Hayley shrank back from them and Chris maneuvered to put himself between her and the pedestrians, shielding her. When they had passed, he said, “You don’t know me, but your boss vouches for me, and anyone else at Maria’s if you’d care to ask them about me. You’re not gonna get a safer offer. Now are you gonna stop being so damn stubborn and move in next door?”

She finally nodded and he held out his hand. Slowly, she slid the duffel off her shoulder and put the strap over his palm.He held the bag with one hand and put his other arm around her, guiding her back to the bar.

***************************

Chris tossed her duffel into the back of his pickup and opened the passenger side door for her. She climbed in. It was beautiful inside. Nicer than any car she’d ever been in, with black leather seats to match the black exterior. He stepped on the clutch, though she couldn’t see how he had room with his enormous boots. He cranked the engine, shifted into first and rolled out of Maria’s lot. They rode in silence for a while when, curious, Hayley asked, "What happened?"

He frowned at her. "What do you mean?"

"You said you had a bad day at work. What do you do? The card said custom builds."

"I own a garage. We do regular maintenance and repair and we also build custom bikes and cars. I got two orders due in August for Sturgis and my parts supplier is telling me they're back-ordered. They're both high dollar orders, but I won't get paid if I don't finish them both by the deadline."

She nodded, looking out the window. "It's tough having to rely on other people. So much is out of your hands."

"Exactly."

"I hope it works out."

"Thanks."

He pulled into his driveway and killed the engine. He hopped out, rounded the front of the truck, and took hold of her elbow as she climbed down from the truck’s precarious height. He pulled her duffel out of the back and headed toward the little blue house, fishing out the extra set of keys.

"Wait," she said. "We didn't talk price. I don't make a lot working days."

He turned to her. "Well, I figured $100 a week. At this point I just want to get it rented and start getting back the money I put into it for renovations. And I'm busy at work, like I said, I don't really have time to shop around for tenants."

"I can do a hundred a week. Do you want me to pay for this month since it's only the second week?"

"Can you do that?" he asked.

She nodded as he slid the key in the lock and opened the door. "Just give me a minute, okay?"

"Sure," he said, stepping in and holding the door open for her.

She decided to head straight to the bedroom with her duffel and tossed it on the bed. She rooted through it and counted out three hundred dollars and set it aside. Then she reached further into the bag and pulled out another two fifty. She zipped the bag, re-locked it with the tiny padlock and slipped the key for it into her pocket.

She headed back out to the living room with the cash and found Chris waiting in the living room. She held out the stack of bills to him.

He knitted his eyebrows looking down at it. "That's more than three hundred," he observed.

"You said a two fifty security deposit," she reminded him.

He counted out the two fifty and handed it back. "I was having a bad day that day, Slick. Don't worry about that."

She hesitated then took the money back. "Do you have bad days a lot?" she teased.

He chuckled. "Not really. No." He handed her the keys. "Still. No seriously crazy parties. Okay?"

She smiled at him. "You and the people at Maria's are the only people I know."

He grinned. "Don't let Maria fool you. You get too much tequila in her and she'll bring the house down."

Hayley smiled and Chris made his way to the door. "Let me know if you need anything. Anything at all," he told her.

After Chris left, she took a long look around her new digs. The first time she'd been here, she'd been more worried about being alone with Chris than actually looking at the place. She'd had male friends in the last five years, but she hadn't spent that much time alone with any of them, and when she did she'd known them for at least a few weeks if not months.

The house was clean and smelled just a bit like fresh paint. It was beige which wouldn't have been her first choice for color. Or even her 75th choice. But it was a nice, clean place and it was much better than the Rainbow. She walked through the house slowly, making a mental note of everything she'd need to pick up at the store later. The kitchen was small but set up in a way that made sense with cabinets flowing into a stove then rounding the wall to a sink and the fridge. No TV but she didn't watch much anyway so it didn't matter. She looked at her beige walls and her beige carpet and her brand new white kitchen and smiled.

Chapter 5

A week went by with Chris occasionally seeing Hayley as she was headed out the door for work. A trek that seemed much easier now that she didn't have to schlep her bag with her everywhere. On Monday night she'd actually knocked on his door and he was needless to say more than a little surprised to see her there.

She'd sheepishly told him that she'd forgotten to get butter at the store and was now in the middle of making dinner and finding herself needing it. If she'd been any other woman, Chris would have grinned his "I see what this is" grin and let her in to shoot the shit (and neither of them would have remembered about butter).

But apparently...Hayley just needed butter. And he'd said he could understand that she'd forgotten to get some considering she was starting from scratch building her pantry and stocking her fridge. She'd come over again midweek for sugar, and a third time for red pepper.

She'd apologized profusely each time, promising to pay him back, but he'd laughed and told her he really didn't care about sugar, pepper, and butter and since he was a shit cook anyway. He told her that as far as he was concerned, she could have whatever was in his kitchen. She'd looked at him funny, thanked him again, and left. And as she closed his front door, Chris got pissed. So pissed that he nearly put his hand through a wall. So pissed that he did slam a plate down into the sink and it shattered, causing him to spend several minutes digging the shards and splinters out of the drain.

Now it was Thursday night and it was his turn to host the weekly Poker Game. Chris had stayed late at the garage and barely had enough time to order the pizzas and shower before the guys started showing up. Hawk had driven his truck this time and brought the beer, immediately putting it into the fridge when he entered the house.

Chris paid the delivery boy and laid the pizza boxes out on the island, tossing some paper plates down next to them. Tex and Doc arrived at nearly the same time, diving straight for the pepperoni. Everyone leaned up against the counter, devouring their slices and waiting for the beer to get cold.

Chris looked at Doc. “You know the hag running the Rainbow?”

Doc grimaced. “Heard of her. Never met her myself. Looks the other way over anything as long as it doesn’t damage her property.”

Chris shook his head. “Does more than look the other way. She takes a cut off the working girls.”

“Slick tell you that?” asked Doc.

“Didn’t have to. The old bitch tried to charge her twenty bucks for taking me to her room. Told Slick if she had a mind to start selling pussy, they could both make some quick cash, even though the hag thinks Slick is too old.”

“Too old?” Hawk bit out. “Jesus Christ, she’s barely, what, 25? How young are we talking about here?”

Chris’s face darkened. “I don’t know. I didn’t see anyone around and I sure as shit didn’t ask. But it doesn’t sit right with me, the hag charging the girls money on top of what they’re already paying for the room. Especially girls as young as Slick or even younger.”

Doc considered this. “I’ll have vice swing by on the weekend, check I.D.’s.”

Chris nodded. As an idea, he didn’t mind prostitution. He figured it was none of his business for starters, and since he himself made his living with his hands, he didn’t see any harm in a woman selling off her skills if she had a mind to. He had never paid for sex and never would, but guys in the service did it all the time, and as long as no one was being hurt by it, he never let it bother him. But the reality of hooking in a place like Rapid City, South Dakota, turned his stomach a little.

The women out here weren’t the self-possessed, high-class, business-minded ladies of Vegas, New York, Paris, or Berlin. The women here were often abused, vulnerable, and desperate to scratch out a living, strung out by the habits they fed, needing money to buy their drugs but needing the drugs to numb themselves from the brutality of their profession. These weren’t mutually beneficial business transactions. These were people, both the hookers and their Johns, taking advantage of the weaknesses of others for a temporary fix.

“Something else I gotta say,” Chris announced and his men looked up from their plates. “Slick’s off limits.”

Tex grinned. “You staking a claim on that already? She hasn’t even been next door a whole week.”

Hawk laughed. “She finally forgave you? Did you show her your gun?”

Chris shook his head, took a pull off his beer and set it down. “She’s been raped.”

The three men went still. “Shit,” Tex muttered. “That’s rough. Such a little thing, too. Wouldn’t take too much to hurt her.”

“Explains the clothes,” Hawk grumbled.

“Her old man?” Doc asked, his casual air belied the barely checked aggression that Chris knew was now simmering close to boiling.

Chris shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“I hope he shows up here. But if he doesn’t and you get his name, we’ll all go with you to pay him a visit,” Doc declared.

Chris nodded, having had thoughts along those lines for quite a while. “She’s not so good in close quarters,” he told them. “In public, she seems alright. It’s more obvious when you get her alone, not that any of you would have much occasion to be alone with her. But if she comes to the garage looking for me for some reason, something with the house, and I’m not there, go easy on her. Be friendly, but not too friendly. Don’t crowd her even though she won’t get within arm’s reach of you, no matter what. Keep a door open. Don’t get between her and the exit. It makes her feel better. You know what to do.”

They nodded. They did know. They’d served their first tour in Afghanistan together, seeing women who’d been raped by the Taliban in revenge for cooperating with the soldiers. It was never a thing you accepted, seeing a woman whose humanity had been taken away, turned by violence into a frightened, hunted creature. You could never accept it, the best you could do was learn to deal with it as best you could. It was the one area where their size and strength and general air of don’t-fuck-with-me worked against them. You had to learn to soften your tone, watch how close you were getting, appear non-threatening.

Chris had no doubt, though, that the men at the table, despite their gruff demeanor, would do their level best to treat Hayley with care and consideration for what she’d been through. Even Hawk, who went through women more than any single man should in Chris’ very private and never-voiced opinion, always treated women with respect. The women knew that any time they spent with Hawk was strictly No Strings Attached.

Tex, despite all his…
proclivities
…practically worshiped them. And Doc? Well, Chris
assumed
he was a stand up guy. Doc had a steady thing in Sioux Falls, a woman with no name other than “Sioux Falls”…as in “I’m headed to Sioux Falls tonight.” Chris dismissed this as not demeaning toward the woman in question so much as part of Doc’s apparent personal motto of ‘Don’t talk about yourself.’