“Sure it’s not poisoned? You already tried to off me once.”
I can’t answer. I simply watch as he tosses back the triple shot in one gulp. Damn, that’s some tolerance. He licks his lips and draws my gaze to their fullness, their inviting softness startling in an otherwise intimidating face. A wicked, impish grin twists one corner of his mouth and he lets out a whoop.
“Burns a little, don’t it Red?”
Heat ignites my cheeks and belly again as Bane’s bores his gaze through me like a drill. He’s clearly not just talking about the whiskey.
He shakes his head, grinning, and then his eyes flicker over to Coco and then back to the X on my face. Coco is watching us with crossed arms from the other end of the bar, but pretends she is busy with something else when he looks her way. Bane chuckles, his grin flattening, and shakes his head, staring into his glass. He swirls the ice contemplatively.
“Women,” he mutters.
With that, he slams the glass on the bar and strides away without a backward glance at me. His long steps are easy and powerful, carrying him right out the exit into the stairwell. The door swings closed behind him, obscuring my view of that perfect ass.
I shake my jumbled, ridiculous thoughts out of my head. Why am I thinking about Bane’s ass? Clearly I have bigger problems.
Like figuring out how to walk my own ass the hell out of here.
A sigh flutters through my lips and I turn back to the bar to try to blend in, keep my head down. As long as I don’t make eye contact and serve drinks fast, the rest of the men pretty much just read my chest and leave me alone. It’s an uneventful bar shift the rest of the day, even if it is my first one as a slave. Only it seems to stretch forever. After what seems like an entire week, the band packs up and Coco reappears.
“Cleanup,” she shouts at us. “Almost fight time downstairs, the guys’ll be clearing out.”
She sashays off again, leaving the blue-eyed, bare-breasted bartender and I alone behind a swiftly abandoned bar. There are messes of spilled liquor, broken glass, and chicken bones. We silently work from opposite ends of the bar, sweeping the trash into big black bags.
We meet in the middle. The blue-eyed bartender has dragged her ankle shackle down the pole and is only a foot away from me now. Leaning over as much as her chains allow, she busies herself with a bucket in the ice bin.
Her hands are trembling and she accidentally drops the bucket, scattering ice over the floor.
The girl glances nervously toward the kitchen door where Coco has vanished, and then jerks her head at me, motioning me to follow her. Surprised, I sweep a glance around to make sure no one saw. Relieved, I follow her to a sort of squat, picking up dirty ice cubes one by one and dropping them back in the bucket.
“Amy.” She grunts.
My brain is slow. No one has asked me my name so far, and I feel oddly comforted by the normalcy. “Ava.”
“You got it pretty bad Ava,” she husks, her eyes flitting over my bruises.
“I hadn’t noticed, Amy.” I grunt.
The sounds of our names seem to cheer us both. She grins. “When did you get here?”
“Last night. You?”
“A month.”
I shiver, less from the touch of the ice as from the thought of extended time in this shithole. I tap the bar our ankles are chained to. “I take it this wasn’t your dream job either.”
She snorts and rolls her eyes. “I wanted to be a dentist, not join a biker gang.”
“What happened?”
“Same as you, probably.” Amy’s lopsided grin is sad. There’s a clang and she glances nervously back at the kitchen, but so far the coast is clear. “Look, my advice is lay low,” she whispers. “The sweetbutts ease up if you’re cooperative, as long as you don’t fuck their favorite guys. They actually want in, you know? It’s all about sexual favors until they find a steady boyfriend. You’re fucked from ground zero with Bane, because he doesn’t want you and Coco and Trinity both want him. So does Tink. You haven’t seen her here today. They’ve all been working on him longer than I’ve been here. You’re fucked if you fuck him, fucked if you don’t.”
“I don’t want to fuck anybody,” I whisper urgently. “I want the fuck out.”
She nods. “No shit. Look.” Her tongue flits nervously over her lips. “I’ve been here long enough to know I don’t have much longer. There’s a window in the stairwell of the fifth floor with a broken lock. There’s a drainpipe outside it that looks like it goes all the way down to the street. We’re on the seventh floor right now; bunks are on nine. Early hours of the morning, guards do rounds every quarter hour.”
The ice is all cleaned up but we both pause, searching each other’s eyes.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask.
Amy’s eyes are clear, daring me to trust her. “Because I’m climbing out tonight,” she confides. “Once the sweetbutts pass out. I’ll either get out, or get caught. But no matter what, once they figure out that window’s lock is jacked, we’ll lose the only loophole I’ve found in this building. I can tell you don’t belong here, either. So I’m inviting you to join me. Might be your only chance.”
My lips are suddenly dry and I lick them urgently. But before I can respond there’s another clang from the kitchen, and I hear Coco’s heels approaching. Amy and I scatter back to our ends of the bar and I force myself not to look at her.
“Tonight you’re cleaning toilets,” Coco announces.
It’s all I can do not to burst into hysterical laughter.
That’s not all I’m doing tonight.
Chapter Nine
I am sweating on Coco’s bedroom floor despite lying directly on the cool rough concrete. Barely breathing, I venture a little stretch of my legs and find that my battered muscles have stiffened. My scratches and scabs are throbbing and there’s a persistent nagging pain in my left temple. My poor body is a wreck, but I need it to come through for me tonight.
It’s time to escape.
The biggest obstacle is that before Coco collapsed drunkenly on the rickety metal-framed bunk bed, she shackled my ankle to the foot of the bed. My mind has been obsessively focused on possible Mensa-genius ways to get around this setback. Problem is I am not a Mensa-genius. I’m not even a regular genius.