Dirty

  Dirty

  Skye Warren

  Thank you for reading the Broken series! You can join my Facebook group for fans to discuss the series here: Skye Warren’s Dark Room. And you can sign up for my newsletter to find out about new releases at skyewarren.com/newsletter.

  Enjoy the story…

  Chapter One

  Luke flashed a small enigmatic smile. “I ought to drag you out of here myself.”

  I tensed.

  “But since you don’t trust me, you’d probably make a scene. Then we’d both be screwed.” His lips flattened. “Which is why you felt safe enough to show up here. You pretend you don’t trust me, but you come here, wriggle under my thumb, knowing I could trap you so easily.”

  Apparently done waiting, Chase opened the door, blinding us both. I leaned against the wall, unembarrassed by my breathless state, and felt Luke’s hands straighten my shirt. He buttoned my jeans. I had been undressed by many men, but it was a novel experience to be dressed by one. Everything with him felt that way. I looked up. A wash of orange light fell over Luke’s face, revealing his small, knowing smile.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Now,” Chase murmured. “She needs to go now.”

  “What is that, some kind of psychobabble? I trust you, but I don’t want to trust you?”

  “You said it, not me.” A glint entered his eyes. “I’d tell you to make up your mind, but I’m starting to think it doesn’t matter. One of these days, I’m going to take you. And then I’m going to keep you.”

  In a blur of black-suited coat and sandy-brown hair, he disappeared from the room as quickly as he’d come. I stared after him, a little shell-shocked. I had expected him to push me for sex. Do the right thing, Shelly. Trust me, Shelly. Be a good girl so I can fuck you without feeling like an abuser, Shelly.

  But what did he mean by keeping me? Like some sort of concubine. Crazy.

  I straightened my jeans and smoothed my hair. Hadn’t I worn a cap? I glanced around but didn’t find it. Dim light pooled through the open door, revealing a dusty concrete floor and rows of brown boxes. Well, this worked too. I would take a different exit from the one in front, in case anyone tried to track me through security footage later. They wouldn’t, but paranoia was the constant churn that kept me above water.

  In the main inventory room, Chase glared at me. I wondered if there had been any real urgency or if he’d just wanted me to stop sucking face with his favorite detective. It didn’t matter. I’d accomplished what I came here to do.

  “I know what you did in there,” he said.

  “Oh really, was it the pornographic sounds we made or the fact that I’m half-dressed that gave it away?”

  “I told you,” he accused. “I told you not to touch him.”

  “No, you told me not to hurt him. And he doesn’t swing that way, so it really wasn’t likely.”

  “Don’t act naive, like you don’t know what effect you have on men.”

  “Of course I know what effect I have,” I said lightly. “It’s big and hard and hurts every time.”

  He shut up then, pursing his lips lest I forget he was pissed. Once I had straightened my clothes, I gave him a kiss on the cheek. Never leave a man angry; it only gave them more time to stew.

  His expression eased. “Shelly, I don’t like you two together.”

  “Get in line. After me. Then him.”

  “You say that. Excuse me if I don’t believe you while you’re all flushed from making out with him like teenagers.”

  “Teenagers?” I glanced at the back room. “Is that who you bring back there?”

  He snorted. “Such charm. I don’t know why I like you.”

  “Ah, but you do like me. That’s part of what makes me mysterious. Men like mysteries,” I said sagely.

  He waved me toward the exit. “Yeah, I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that you’re beautiful and way too smart to be doing the job you do.”

  “Stop. I’ll blush.”

  “Get lost, squirt. And don’t get into any trouble on your way out.”

  “Actually I was thinking I might start a fire. Maybe you should pull the alarm, just in case.”

  He groaned. “You’re killing me.”

  “We’ll call it even, then. No more visits, cross my heart.”

  He shook his head. “Fine. I’ll do it. But you better be serious about that. If I see you back here, I’ll turn you in myself.”

  In the hallway, I followed the flow until I found an empty broom closet. One benefit to these old historical buildings was that security was never quite up to modern standards. They could install all the fancy systems and safeguards, but the floor plan was designed with comfortable nooks instead of open spaces.

  I pulled out the little plastic badge that allowed Luke to come and go into secure areas of the building—and to log into the network. It was a dirty trick, using sex against him like that, so of course I’d had to. I hoped he wouldn’t be too mad.

  Right on cue, a loud clanging fell from the ceiling, shaking the walls. The footsteps sounded like thunder down the hallway as everyone slipped outside. When it quieted, I returned to the storeroom. It was empty, since of course Chase had evacuated with everyone. Such a good boy.

  I got on his computer and found the files I needed.

  Stephan Laurent had been wanted in connection with multiple homicides. All young girls, all prostitutes. Full immunity. Murder probably wasn’t beyond him, but what was the point? Young girls weren’t any good to him dead. Besides, if he was guilty, that didn’t explain the immunity. He needed to turn on someone. And ah, here. Known associations: Henri Denikin. The answer had been sitting in the corner, just waiting for me to turn and see it. My descent into prostitution hadn’t been random at all. I put my hand to my mouth to keep the bile in. My eyes fell shut, and I took a few deep breaths of musty air to clear my head. I needed to focus. I needed to get the hell out of here.

  I tossed the little badge on the floor in the storeroom where Luke could find it and maybe even think it was an accident, that he’d dropped it. It had slipped from its clip while we’d kissed, and the fire alarm had been a coincidence. Sure, he’d believe that, just like I believed my father’s criminal connections meant nothing.

  Jade had known. I remembered the look in her eyes.

  In elementary school, my class had gone on a field trip to the zoo. Not the Brookfield Zoo, but a wild animal sanctuary out by Lake Michigan. We’d huddled outside the chain-link fence while the tour guide gave us a speech about rehabilitation. Inside, the tiger prowled the far corner, watching us warily. The woman told us he was more afraid of us than we were of him, and I believed her, but I didn’t see why that should make me feel better. The air vibrated with thinly leashed violence. The tiger’s eyes were filled with malevolence, and through them, I hated myself for being a part of his captivity.

  We left uneventfully, but the next week there was an “accident” with one of the trainers, and the tiger was put down. Murder, my ten-year-old mind had thought. They had caged the animal and then killed it when it didn’t obey. No one else seemed fazed by the news. Our venerable teacher trilled a laugh and thanked God we hadn’t been there that day.

  Bitch.

  The next day, Allie left the tiger refrigerator magnet she’d bought from the gift shop on my desk. It was a white tiger, not orange, and the plastic represented the commercial value of his life, like a cheapened version of a rhinoceros horn, but I still fell in love with Allie that day. I twined between her legs like a stray cat, and she let me stay because she knew I had nowhere else to go. I would still be there, bringing her dead rodents, the only gifts I knew how to make, except for Colin. He was like me, operating on an animal frequency, and he had claimed her.

  For that, I should hate him.
I didn’t.

  Loving her meant wanting her to be happy; that was what made it love.

  Luke was a different story. I wanted him near me, over me, inside me—his happiness secondary. And so I would continue to seek him out, endangering his career, his life, manipulating him into helping me for my own benefit. The little plastic badge that I’d stolen and used and discarded was no better than the plastic tiger replica on my fridge, a symbol to covet, a trophy of misuse.

  Underneath her usual brusqueness, Jade had looked like the tiger that day, hunted, haunted. Ready to lash out, and God, I knew—I knew exactly how she felt. Reading my father’s files had brought it all back to the fore, all the quiet rage and seething shame, every gentle touch and cruel, wrathful word. Each paid-for fuck had pressed it all down, pushed back old hurts in favor of new ones. But seeing Luke seemed to soften me, weaken me, and now I felt each memory like a sharp new cut.

  Somehow I ended up in front of the shelter. The squat brick building looked the same, but I felt a world apart from the last time I had visited Marguerite. I didn’t have an envelope for her today, but I did have a girl who needed help, one who was fearful and helpless.

  This time, it was me.

  Chapter Two

  I felt hollow inside, from the base of my neck to the pit of my stomach. Empty and cold, the dubious relief of frostbite. Instead of pain, syrupy languor spread through my veins.

  My reflection waited in the black-mirrored door of the shelter, and I watched it with a casual detachment. How pretty. A marble statue to be desecrated and then washed clean in the next rainfall. But there was no water this time, only parched lips and broken eyes.

  The door opened. Relief flooded Marguerite’s face before she dammed it behind studied professionalism. Her minimal makeup was flawless as usual, her curves safely hidden beneath a severe black suit and skirt. She smoothed that skirt now, her hands twitching as if she wanted to reach out to me—or slap me. It could always go either way with her, and right now, I would have been grateful for both. Anything to make me feel again.

  “I saw you on the news,” she said. “I assume you’re here to stay.”

  Would she let me, if I asked? But I wouldn’t, for the very same reason I hadn’t brought Ella here in the first place. Henri was on the hunt, and this place was a too-easy target.

  I shook my head. “I just stopped by… I came here because…” Because I thought she could give me advice. Something without pity, because I knew she didn’t have any.

  Her lips tightened. Her hesitation drummed in my ears. She had helped a thousand girls. Why not me? Was I beyond repair, a lost cause? Then put me out of my misery.

  Finally she gestured me inside. “Come with me.”

  Our shoes clopped on the rubber floor, the sound bouncing off the egg-speckled walls. The fluorescent lights burned into my eyes, but despite that, some of my shock thawed. My tension eased. Strange, considering I’d just entered the human equivalent of the pound. The unwanted, the abused all crammed into cages, waiting for the world to want them again. But the air was bright and clean, and that was more than most of us would have asked for. The two girls who passed us in the hallway glanced at me curiously from beneath lowered lashes. No fear.

  The sound of laughter and clinking metal on ceramic floated out from the cafeteria as we passed, comforting, familiar. It was like high school without the confusing and soul-deadening home life. Still, I didn’t doubt this place had its demons. They must have been banished to the shadows—neat trick, that.

  I realized I’d lagged behind, and I hurried to catch up. “What do you do when someone doesn’t follow the rules?”

  She didn’t look back. “It depends on the rule.”

  “A big rule. Let’s say one of them punches the other in the face.”

  “We don’t allow violence here.”

  “She’s a rebel,” I said about my fictional rule breaker.

  “We have a sliding scale of punishments, depending on the severity of the offense. There are a series of warnings. Then certain privileges will be removed. And finally, there are punishments.”

  I grinned slightly, feeling back on solid ground. “Don’t tell me you paddle their behinds. That’s very naughty, Ms. Faust.”

  Marguerite flashed me a repressive look. “If a girl is truly a danger to the others, we separate them. They eat their meals in their rooms and are given study work until they’ve shown they can interact with the other girls.”

  We grew quiet, passing girls filing out of a classroom, giggling and bumping into each other.

  “So basically, solitary confinement,” I said when they were out of earshot.

  She sighed. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you. I knew you’d frame it that way.”

  “The truthful way?”

  “The worst possible way. We do what we have to do to make this work. There are only so many ways to keep teenagers in line short of beating them, which no, we don’t do. Do you think some legalized group home does it better?”

  “Hardly.”

  “These kids don’t have the luxury of a two-parent support system and the family dog. We are their family.”

  “What if someone wants to leave Casa Faust?”

  “When they turn eighteen, we help each girl with placement and relocation.”

  “And if they want to leave before then?”

  She paused with her hand on a metal doorway. “Then we keep them safe. And that means here. Don’t flip out. You had to know we couldn’t let them run back to guys who would hurt them and force them to say where they’d been staying.”

  “It’s always about you, Marguerite.”

  She sobered. “No man is going to hurt me or any one of the girls here. And one day, that will include you. You know that, right?”

  Well, that was both comforting and creepy. “But not today.”

  “Not today,” she agreed, opening the door and waving me inside. I followed her up a dimly lit metal staircase. We exited into a hallway exactly like the one downstairs, except this one was quiet. Empty. Eerie.

  “You aren’t going to lock me up, right?” I asked. “Because I asked about leaving?”

  I was joking, but this floor unnerved me. While downstairs had felt happy, up here the air vibrated with expectation and something else I didn’t recognize. Over the years, I had learned to trust my gut feeling more than what I could see. Right now, it didn’t feel like danger, just anticipation of it. Like fear.

  She unlocked a door. “I’m giving you what you came for.”

  “And what’s that?” My breath held while she considered me.

  “What do you most want?”

  To be safe. “To be free.”

  “You want to feel like you’re in control again. I understand. This isn’t a group therapy session where I tell you everything will be okay. That wouldn’t work for you anyway. This is better.”

  Curious now, I stepped inside. She shut the door behind me, and my eyes adjusted. I blinked. Equipment and wires nestled among—yes, those were guns. Two men worked laptops at the foldout tables. The guy in the far corner looked up blearily, then turned back to his screen.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the sleek metal. “I thought you said there wasn’t any violence here.”

  “There isn’t, because we have these. All our security works to keep us safe.”

  “There’s irony here, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

  She hefted a gun with a chilling nonchalance. “Are you telling me you’ve never held a gun?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you. I have gotten shot before, and I’m not really looking to repeat the experience.”

  “Good, because I’m not planning on shooting you. You need to know how to defend yourself.”

  “I use my feminine wiles for that.”

  “And yet you’re in hiding.” She raised her eyebrow. “How’s that working out?”

  Ouch.

  “As long as you’re running, you’re prey.
Take a stand; see how it feels. You may still get hurt, but isn’t that happening anyway? This way you’re in control. This way you have a chance.”

  I let my expression convey my doubt.

  She shrugged. “So don’t. You came here for my advice, and this is it. You want to win a fight without getting your hands dirty. Go ahead and try.”

  When she put it that way, it sounded silly. Cowardly too. “Okay,” I said. “What exactly would this entail? Do I need to buy chaps? My ass looks great in leather, but it’s a little restrictive, don’t you think?”

  “It’s not a costume, Shelly. It’s a gun.”

  And yeah, she was holding one out. As if I was supposed to take it.

  I stared at it like it might magically float in the air, turn, and shoot me. I could see it in my mind’s eye. Absently, my hand went to my shoulder, where the old wound seemed to pulse.

  “It won’t hurt you,” she said. “They will, though, if you don’t defend yourself.”

  My breath stuttered out of me. I gingerly took it from her. It was lighter than I expected. So sleek and shiny.

  “Point it down,” she said sharply. “Finger off the trigger.”

  I almost dropped it. “Is it loaded?”

  “No.” She softened a fraction. “That’s not the point. You need to be careful. As careful as they are, or they’ll win. They’ll beat you.”

  Her words rang in my ear like a premonition. “I don’t know what I’m doing with this.”

  “Practice. Prepare yourself. You’ll only have time for one shot. Make it count.”

  I frowned. “You make it sound like I’m going to assassinate someone.”

  “Aren’t you?” she asked. “About damn time, really. You’re going to find the son of a bitch who’s hunting you, and you’re going to kill him. That’s the only chance you have of being free. It’s the only chance you have of being with that cop you’re mooning over.”

  Kill Henri? No. “You’re insane.”

  “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you can take him down another way.”