WRECKER (6 page)

She started the engine. The garage door raised automatically behind her. She rolled down the window. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Damn straight.” His eyes held a simmering intensity and he regarded her for a moment before going on. “I have plans for you.”

Sage pulled the truck into the parking spot outside her apartment. Both Olivia and Ashley’s cars were parked in their usual spots. Most of their neighbors were at work and she didn’t see any unfamiliar cars. She still hadn’t decided if she fully believed what Theo said about Olivia and Ashley.

When she’d first met them they were both dedicated nursing students. The job at the Cabaret took that ambition from them. Maybe it did that to all the girls who worked there. The easy money corrupted them and made hitting the books or forty hours a week not worth the effort.

Trey treated the girls who worked at the club like his own private dating pool. For a while he was taken with Ashley. Sage saw his vehicle at the apartment every few days, but lately he was chasing after one of the newest dancers. Ashley tried to pretend she didn’t care, but it was clear his rejection stung.

Walking up the path to the front door, she decided Theo had to be wrong about Ashley accepting money for sex. It was just rumor. People liked to talk. If that was the case, the same rumors might be swirling around her too.

She stopped outside her front door. Trash bags were piled to one side. She counted four of them. They were from the party last night. They were stuffed with liquor bottles and takeout boxes. Neither Olivia nor Ashley liked to recycle much less take the trash the thirty steps to the dumpster. Sage grabbed the bags, took them to the steel bin and heaved them over the side. At least the garbage wasn’t
inside
the apartment.

Olivia sat on the couch reading the newspaper. She wore yoga pants and an oversized t-shirt. When she looked up from her book she whipped off her reading glasses. No one was allowed to see Olivia in her ‘nerd glasses’. That was her number one rule. She smiled and got up, crossing the room to hug Sage. “I’m just taking a break. I’ve been cleaning all morning. The apartment was trashed when I got home this morning.”

“What happened to Ash?”

Olivia shrugged. “Someone smacked her around. She won’t tell me who. She said I’d have to change my name and move away if I reported him.”

“Do you think she needs to go to the ER?”

Olivia shook her head. “I think she just wanted you to check on her like you always do.”

“All right. I’ll talk to her then I’ll make some breakfast.” Sage walked down the hallway to Ashley’s room. She knocked and when she heard a muffled response from Ashley she let herself in.

Ashley huddled under the blankets, the only sign of her a spray of blonde hair across her pillow. Sage knelt beside the bed. She pulled the blankets a few inches and set her hand on Ashley’s forehead. A moan came from the girl.

“Do we need to have someone check you out?” Sage asked softly.

“It’s not serious. I just fell. Had too much to drink. I’ll be fine.”

“You fell? Let me have a look at you. Tell me what hurts.”

Ashley pulled the blankets back. Sage stared at her bruised and bloodied face, doing her best not to recoil. Ashley’s eye was purple and swollen shut. Her upper lip was swollen too, twice the size of what it usually was. There were scratches on her jaw and neck. A sour smell came from her, like she was sleeping off a pretty good night of drinking. The smell was bad, but the injuries on her roommate’s face made her nauseated. Ashley was pretty, but her lovely features were so distorted she was almost unrecognizable.

Sage felt herself fall into the role she often took living with Olivia and Ashley. Caretaker. Both girls liked to call her ‘Mamma Bear’. When they were sick or late with a bill or anything that needed fixing, they came to her. They acted like children a lot of the time and that was a big reason she’d stayed on in the apartment. They made her crazy, but she worried about them too.

“That was some fall, Ash.” Sage schooled her voice to disguise her alarm. “Have you put ice on your eye?”

“I don’t remember. I think Olivia might have given me some.”

“Are you hurt anywhere else, or just your face?”

“That’s all. Can you bring me a glass of water?”

Sage got up and went to the kitchen. She turned on the stove and set a skillet on the burner. She took Ashley some water and then started on breakfast.

Olivia sat at the bar looking over the classified section. She tapped the newsprint with her pen. “My grandparents want me to go back to school.”

Sage began chopping onions. “That sounds good. Do you want to?”

“Maybe. They’re offering a pretty big chunk of money if I go back to school. Or if I work for my grandfather. I’m going to take them up on their offer. I’m going to make Ashley quit too. I can’t leave her there to fend for herself.”

“Seriously?” Sage stared at her, knife poised in mid-air. “That’s wonderful.”

Olivia smiled. “I love dancing. I just don’t want to work for those jerks.”

“Good. Don’t work there if you don’t have to.” Sage went back to chopping the onions. “Ashley needs to get out of there too. Definitely.”

Theo’s phone rang. The caller ID read
Sage’s Wrecker
.

“How’d you do that?” she asked.

“I told you, I’m a fan of technology.”

“I’m just making the girls something to eat and I’ll be on my way,” she said.

“Everything all right there?”

His voice was a sexy rumble. She was instantly taken back to the night before. He’d held her all night long and every so often would stir and murmur something to her, about how good she felt, or how crazy she made him.

“Everything is fine,” she said.

“I’m going to start stalking you if I think you’re in any danger. I don’t just mean tonight. I mean in a permanent sort of way.”

“I think you’ve been stalking me for a very long time. Way before tonight. I think we can agree on that.”

Both Ashley and Olivia jerked their heads to look at her. Sage waved their concerns away.

“You’re the person who stole a picture from my father’s house. A picture of me. Seems sort of stalkerish to me.”

She could hear the smile in his voice. “I am
not
a stalker.”

Olivia snorted.

Sage turned away from the girls. She tucked the phone between her shoulder and ear while she stirred the eggs. “I am not a stalker. I happen to like that picture. You look handsome in your fatigues.”

“I can wear them for you tonight, and you can wear that little toy you were going to give Emma.”

She gasped and the phone slipped, falling to the floor with a clatter. She grabbed it and lifted it to her ear. “Sorry. Are you there?”

“You vandalizing my phone, Sage?”

“I’m sorry. It slipped from my grasp. I’m sort of hard on phones. That’s probably why mine won’t charge. I need to get a new one.”

“I just ordered you one.”

The eggs were done and she turned off the heat. She kept her back to the girls. It had been less than thirty or forty minutes since she said goodbye to him, but she was aware of a pang of yearning. She missed him. He was sweet and thoughtful and impossible and she couldn’t wait to get back to him.

“That’s so sweet of you to get me a phone, Theo. I don’t know what to say.”

“You think I’m sweet?”

A noise in the back ground of his voice caught her attention. It was a gentle humming noise that clicked on and off. What was he doing? Suddenly the image of Emma’s toy lying on his desk came to her. She felt the blood drain from her face.

“Theo,” she whispered, “did you put batteries in that thing?”

She looked over her shoulder to find Olivia and Ashley watching her intently.

“What thing?” he asked. “Remind me what it’s called.”

“Breakfast is ready. I have to go.”

“I took a picture of the thing you don’t want to talk about. With your phone. I thought I might send it to a few of the people in your contacts.”

His phone pinged and she glanced at the screen and yelped to see a picture of the vibrator, laid out obscenely on his desk.

“You going to demonstrate this thing for me tonight?” he asked.

“Absolutely not,” she hissed.

The sound of a cat’s meow came from behind her. She turned and saw Ashley looking at her phone. “This says it’s a text from you, Sage. It says, ‘I know you want to try.’”

Sage stared at Ashley with a mixture of horror and disbelief. “Someone stole my phone.”

Ashley’s phone meowed again. “This text says, ‘Sage is lying’.” Another meow and Ashley frowned at her phone. “Now the person is asking if I want to see an interesting picture.”

“Theo, stop. I’ll do whatever you want.”

The phone meowed. “Do you promise?” Ashley asked.

“I promise. Theo, you blackmailer. I’ll do whatever.”

“All right, baby,” he said. “That sounds pretty good because what I want is to play with you just a little, make you come once, really hard.”

Sage smiled broadly at Ashley and Olivia. “That sounds great!”

“After that I want to have sex with you. Bareback. Nothing between us. We’ll make a baby tonight. See you soon. Be sure and call me if you need me. Hurry home. Clock’s ticking. I gave you an hour and a half to go do your own thing. I expect you back by five thirty.”

“See you in a bit,” Sage said, keeping the smile firmly affixed. She disconnected the call.

Ashley and Olivia stared at her.

She put the phone in her pocket and heaped the eggs on two plates and set each one in front of the girls. She continued to ignore their stares and poured them a glass of juice, then buttered a couple of pieces of toast.

Olivia leaned forward on her elbows. She narrowed her eyes. “So… Theo’s stalking you?”

“Not really. We were just kidding around.”

“Are you banging him?” Ashley asked.

“Nope. How’s the breakfast. Nothing like breakfast for dinner.”

They both sat motionless, gaping.

She tried not to think about what he was planning. Her heart raced. She wiped her damp palms on her jeans. What she needed to do was focus on the reason she’d come to her apartment in the first place, Ashley’s supposed fall.

Sage eyed Olivia. “Did you happen to see who was around when Ashley fell?”

“I wasn’t here. I was having dinner with my grandparents.”

There was a knock at the door and Trey walked into the apartment. “Sure smells good.” He spoke with forced cheerfulness.

Sage didn’t miss the groan coming from Olivia who stared sullenly at her plate. Trey carried a bouquet of carnations and a pizza box. He set them down and went to Ashley, wrapping her in his arms. She moaned and leaned into his embrace.

“Hey Sage, how’s it going?” he asked.

She stared in disbelief. How was it possible that Ashley had taken him back? Slow simmering rage crawled through her gut. When had this happened??

Trey kept his gaze fixed on her while he hugged Ashley. She expected him to say something about her losing her job at the Cabaret. Nothing about his expression showed he knew she no longer worked there. His gaze wandered down her body and back up again. Usually she averted her eyes when he did that, but not this time.

“You got your step-brother to pay back your loan. I was a little disappointed. I had plans on how to get you to pay it back to me.”

Sage was startled by his words but she realized she shouldn’t have been too surprised. Theo didn’t want her owing anybody, especially not Trey. She pointed at Ashley. “You did that to her?”

Trey smirked. “It was just a little misunderstanding that’s all.” He rubbed Ashley’s back and kissed the top of her head. “Isn’t that right, baby?”

Ashley muttered something about not making a big deal about things.

“Let me think for a minute,” Sage said, tapping her chin. “What do you think the owners of the Cabaret would think if they knew you did that to their top dancer?”

A smile spread over his face and he dropped his arms from Ashley. “Listen to you. Talking about owners of the Cabaret. For your information one owner is in Atlanta, and the other is in Phoenix. So neither of them are going to have an opinion about it.”

Sage took out Theo’s phone and snapped a picture of Ashley.

“Don’t take a picture of me,” Ashley cried. “I don’t want people seeing that.”

“Yeah, I bet you don’t.” Sage scrolled through Theo’s contacts then sent the picture.

“Sage, you don’t want to piss me off.”

She leaned her hip against the counter and clenched her jaw. His gaze drifted to Ashley. The man had no remorse. Ashley’s face was purple and blue and he was gloating.

“Get out of this apartment Trey,” she said quietly. “Before I call security.”

Trey’s smiled widened. “Hey, I was just leaving anyway. I have somewhere to be tonight.”

Ashley let out a small sound of disappointment. “Where are you going?”

He tousled her hair. “How ‘bout you just not worry about it?” With that, he took his pizza and walked out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

Both Olivia and Ashley stared at her. Even with her face distorted from her injuries, it was clear Ashley was shocked that Sage had stood up to Trey. Olivia’s mouth hung slightly open, her fork poised in mid-air. In the past, Trey acted like he owned the apartment, taking what he wanted out of the fridge, sitting on the couch on Sundays, watching television. No one told Trey to leave or do anything. Not ever.