K. Tucker - Four Seconds to Lose

“If he’s back in the picture . . .” I run my tongue over my teeth. “Don’t do anything yet. Call me. Immediately.”

With a lazy salute, Nate exits my office, leaving me with my elbows on my desk and my folded hands against my clenched mouth, wondering what I’m going to do if Cherry has taken a turn for the worse. I can’t fire her. Not when she needs our help. But . . . fuck. If we have to go through this with her again . . .

And I had to convince Delyla to go back to counseling just last week because she started cutting again. And two weeks before that, we were rushing Marisa to the hospital with complications after the back-street abortion that her asshole boyfriend convinced her to undergo. She hasn’t even made it back to work yet. And the week before that—

A knock on my door only seconds later makes my temper flare unexpectedly. “What!”

Ginger’s face pokes in.

Taking a deep breath, I gesture her in with a “sorry,” silently chastising myself for barking at her.

“Hey, Cain, my friend is coming in to meet you tonight,” she reminds me in that low, husky voice suitable for phone sex companies. The customers here love it. They love everything else about her, too, including those naturally large breasts and that sharp-witted tongue. “Remember? The one I mentioned earlier this week.”

I groan. I completely forgot. Ginger sprung it on me last Friday as I was refereeing an argument between Kinsley and China in the hallway. I never did agree to meet with this person but I didn’t say no. Ginger is clearly taking advantage of that. “Right. And she wants a job as what again? A dancer?”

Ginger’s head bobs up and down, her wild short hair—colored in chunks of platinum blond, honey, and pink—in styled disarray. “I think you’ll like her, Cain. She’s different.”

“Different, how?”

Ginger’s hot pink lips twist. “Hard to explain. You’ll see when you meet her. You’ll like her.”

My hand finds its way to the back of my neck, trying to rub the permanent tension out. It won’t work. Weekly trips to a massage therapist do nothing for the kind of knots this place creates. “It’s not about liking her, Ginger. It’s about being overstaffed. I don’t need any more dancers or bartenders right now.” Given Penny’s reputation, this place has basically become the crème de la crème of adult entertainment clubs. I don’t take walk-ins or random applications. Employment is by referral only and turnover is low. Aside from Kinsley, I haven’t hired anyone new in almost a year. Too many dancers means catfights over money.

“I know, Cain, but . . . I think you’re really going to like her.” Ginger has been bartending for me for years, longer than anyone else. I trust her opinion of people. The three others she recommended turned out to be outstanding employees who are now on healthy life paths, leading far away from the sex trade business. Hell, she’s the one who introduced me to Storm—my shining success story!

After a long pause, I ask, “And her preferences? Is she . . .? Not that it matters, of course.”

Teal-green cat eyes sparkle as she smiles at me. “I’m pretty sure she’s into dudes. Haven’t seen the proof yet, but that’s what my vibe tells me. Unfortunate for me.” I’ve come to truly appreciate Ginger’s sexual orientation. There’s never been that awkward moment with her, where she’s decided that I would welcome her hand on my cock. She’s one of the very few female employees I can say that about. It’s one of the reasons why I get along with her so well.

“Her name?”

“Charlie.”

“Real or stage?”

She shrugs. “Real, I think. ‘Charlie’ is the only name she’s ever given me.”

I pause to take another sip of my drink. “You vetted her?” Ginger knows the requirements. No track marks. No pimps. No prostitution. I have zero tolerance for drugs and prostitution. I’d get shut down in a heartbeat if the cops caught on, and too many people rely on Penny’s to let that happen. Plus, there’s no need for it here. I make sure the girls can rake in the money safely, without selling the last shreds of their dignity.

Her curt nod answers me.

“Experience?”

“Vegas. She had a couple of interviews here, including one at Sin City.” Ginger’s brow arches meaningfully. “You know what Rick makes them do.”

I lean back in my chair. Yeah, I’ve heard what Rick’s requirements are for getting and keeping a job in his club. The fact that the guy’s a fat, sweaty tub of hair doesn’t help. “She didn’t comply?”

Ginger giggles. “She barely made it out of there without puking, from what she told me.”

I nod slowly. That definitely earns her a few points with me. I want to help out every woman who feels she needs to take her clothes off to survive but I’m only one man, and not every woman is strong enough to avoid the pitfalls of this industry.

I’ve seen too many of them fall fast.

And trying to catch them over and over again is so very exhausting.

Taking in Ginger’s exotically beautiful face, I finally ask the big question. “What’s her deal, Ginger? Why strip?” With a finger, I slowly trace the rim of my glass. There’s usually a good reason. Or a bad reason, depending on how you look at it. As far as ratios of completely normal to fucked-up employees go, the numbers generally weigh in heavy for the latter. “High school dropout with no future? History of abuse? Douchebag boyfriend wanting extra cash? Daddy issues? Or is she just looking for attention?”

Ginger’s head tilts as she murmurs in a dry tone, “Jaded much?”

I throw my hands up in the air. “You’re the exception, Ginger. You know that.” Since the day Ginger walked into my office—on her eighteenth birthday—I’ve never had to worry about her. She comes from a stable, abuse-free home and she has never even batted an eye at the stage. Her purpose is straightforward and honest: save enough money to open an inn in Napa Valley. With the kind of money she rakes in here, I’d say she’s getting close to that dream.

After a pause, she shrugs. “All I know is she wants to make good money. But she seems to have her head on straight, since she didn’t take the other jobs.”

Because she probably figured out she’d be sucking cock in the private room . . . With a deep exhale and my hand pressed against my forehead, rubbing the frown smooth, I mutter, “All right. We’ll see.” Am I really going to do this right now? What if she’s another Cherry? Or Marisa? Or China? Or Shaylen? Or—

“Great. Thanks, Cain.” She pauses, her curvy frame—dressed in cut-off shorts and a tank top for setting up the bar—leaning against the door frame. “You okay? You seem worn out lately.”

Worn out. That’s a good way to describe it. Worn out by week after week, month after month of brazen customers, everyday ownership issues, and employees who can’t seem to straighten out their lives without someone running interference. Throw in police attention—because they assume, based on my past and my current business, that I’m following in the footsteps of my parents—and you’ve summarized my life for the past decade.

It’s enough to make any rational person quit.

And I have considered quitting. I’ve considered selling Penny’s and walking away. And then I look at my employees’ faces—the ones who I know will end up at a place like Sin City without me—and the metal teeth of the trap around my chest dig in tighter.

I can’t abandon them. Not yet. If I could just get this lot out and safe, without adding any more problems to my plate, I could live out my life somewhere quietly. A remote beach in Fiji is sounding pretty damn good.

None of those thoughts ever gets spoken out loud, though. “Just haven’t been sleeping well,” I say to Ginger, pulling on the fake smile that I’ve mastered. It’s beginning to feel like a suffocating iron mask.

By the way Ginger’s brow pulls together, I know she doesn’t believe me. “Okay, well, you know you always have my ears if you want ’em,” she offers, grinning playfully as she rolls her hips and winks. “And nothing else.”

Her soft laughter follows her out the door, temporarily lifting my dour mood as I set to preparing payroll for the small army of dancers, security, kitchen, and wait staff I have under my employ. Serge—a forty-eight-year-old retired Italian opera singer—manages my kitchen as if it were his own, but I handle everything else.

Unfortunately, the dour mood returns with a vengeance twenty minutes later when Nate’s call comes through. “His blue Dodge is here.”

My fist slams down against the desk, rattling everything. “You’re kidding me, right?” I take a moment to gain control of the rage bubbling inside me. Nate doesn’t bother to answer. The two of us have always had an easy back-and-forth banter, but he knows what not to joke with me about. Fuckheads taking advantage of women is one of those things.

“You want me to go in?” Nate offers.

“No, wait outside. If he’s back, he’s probably carrying.” As stupid as this guy is, he must have learned after the last time. “I’m on my way. Don’t go inside, Nate.” I throw that last warning in with a stern voice. I couldn’t bear to lose Nate over this. I shouldn’t even have let him get involved. I should have made him go to college and lead a normal life. But I didn’t, because he’s all I have and I like having him around.

I’m out of my seat and crouched in the corner in seconds, dialing the safe combination. My fingers wrap tightly around the biting steel of my Glock. I despise myself for touching it. It represents violence, illegality . . . the life and the choices that I’ve left behind, that I would never let consume me again. But if it means keeping Nate and Cherry and her eight-year-old son—the one who dialed my number on Cherry’s cell phone for help when he found his mother unconscious on the couch the last time—safe, then I will jam the barrel right into the scumbag’s temple.

I’m about to slip on the holster when the door creaks open. “Cain?”

I need to start locking my damn office door again, I tell myself. Stifling a curse, I slide the gun back into the safe and stand, struggling to keep the venom from my voice as I growl, “Ginger, you really need to learn—” How to knock is how that sentence is supposed to end.

But instead it ends in a sharp hiss, as I find myself staring at my past.

At Penny.

Plan A—Turn myself in and beg for immunity in exchange for information.

I don’t have enough concrete information to nail him. I’ll probably end up in jail for the next twenty-five years. If I even make it there, alive.

Plan A – Turn myself in and beg for immunity in exchange for information.

Plan B—Lose all my identification and fake amnesia so the government will be forced to create new documentation for me . . . eventually.

What if they put my picture up on the news? He’ll find me. Plus, I could end up locked in a psych ward for an indefinite length of time. And I don’t know that my acting abilities are quite that convincing.

Plan B—Lose all my identification and fake amnesia so the government will be forced to create new documentation for me . . . eventually.

Plan C—Buy a new identity and make Charlie Rourke disappear.

He’s just standing there, boring holes into my face.

Given that I’ve never laid eyes on him before, I don’t know what his normal complexion looks like, but I’ll bet it’s not the sickly white pallor that I see now.

As if he’s seen a ghost.

I try to catch Ginger’s eye, to see if she thinks his reaction is strange, but I can’t.

“Sorry. I knocked but you didn’t answer,” she offers in apology. It’s true, she did knock, and we waited for close to a minute before entering. I don’t know what he was doing in his office—behind the closed door with a sign that reads “boss man” and pair of lacy underwear pinned to it—but, by the stunned expression on his face, we’ve interrupted something. A glance down confirms that his belt is at least buckled.

“This is my friend, Charlie, who I told you about.” Ginger’s long, slender fingers point to me and I force a bright smile. “Friend” sounds a bit misleading, seeing as everything I’ve ever told Ginger about me is a deliberate lie.

I met her only three weeks ago. Her beginner pole-dancing class was just finishing up and she stayed on to watch the advanced class. I guess I impressed her, because she sat through the entire hour and then talked my ear off in the change room afterward about how good I am. I took her proffered number with no intentions to call. The next week, Ginger cornered me after class and wouldn’t leave until I went out to lunch with her. Last week, she coerced me into shopping. There’s nothing wrong with her. She’s twenty-six, but she doesn’t act like it most of the time. She has an easy, genuine laugh and a sarcastic sense of humor. She’s persistent, too. I just didn’t plan on getting to know people, seeing as I won’t be in Miami long. But I guess you could say that we’ve become friends—lies and all.