Page 12 of Brave
“Yeah,” Spencer said dryly. “I know.”
“Did she cause trouble?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Did she come with anyone?”
“Nope. She arrived alone, but she didn’t stay that way.”
“Ethen always did have an eye for pretty women. That doesn’t surprise me.”
“We’ve got a new guy. Well… relatively new. I don’t know if you’ve met him yet, the military guy. He’s here a few days a week as a dungeon monitor, and he sometimes hangs out on his days off. She paired up with him rather quick.”
“Paired up?”
“Well… it wasn’t what I’d call a scene. They sat on the floor together, while he practiced his knots. I didn’t get a chance to talk to her. I tried to keep an eye on it. I thought I’d have a chance to catch her for a quiet word, like you asked, while she was waiting for a cab, but Danny said she didn’t call for one. Carlson took her home instead.”
“So long as she’s not causing any trouble, I don’t care if she comes back. When you get a chance, just let her know we’ve comped her membership, but only for a limited time. After that, she’s welcome to stay if she wants and if she can afford it.”
“You’re the boss,” Spencer said. “What about Carlson?”
“What about him?”
“If it were me, I’d want to know what I’m walking in to. Especially when the mess is as big as that one. What should I tell him?”
A long sigh breathed through the phone line a few seconds before he heard the long-distance club owner reply, “Nothing. Unless something happens, it’s not our story to tell. How much longer do we have until we have to worry about Ethen showing up?”
Swiveling his chair around, Spencer checked the calendar on the corkboard behind him. He really didn’t need to. He’d gone through the calendar four times now since Puppy had walked in. “As near as I can tell, we’ve got six or so weeks until he’s eligible for parole.”
“Am I an ass for hoping he doesn’t get it?” Jaxson snorted.
Growling, Spencer echoed his disgust. “I’m still hoping he gets shanked, so I say no.”
Snorting again, Jaxson said, “Keep an eye on it, but so long as she isn’t coming back to rally support for Ethen or pave the way for him to reintegrate himself back into the community, then leave her be. Perhaps she’s trying, as Hadlee and Kitty did, to find her way back to normal. It might be my own wishful thinking, but if Black Light can help her do that, then let it. What does Garreth say?”
“He doesn’t know yet. He and Hadlee are still on vacation, visiting Noah, Kitty, and the baby in Australia.”
“Give them a heads up,” Jaxon said. “This isn’t the kind of surprise you want to spring on anyone. Just in case there’s hard feelings.”
Spencer remained at his desk for a long time after he hung up the phone, thinking that over. It might be his own wishful thinking too, but Black Light wasn’t just a place of business for him. It was his home away from home, and the people he worked with were his family. There wasn’t anything or anyone here he wouldn’t protect to the utmost of his ability, and that included both Hadlee and Kitty, and she didn’t even live here anymore.
Funny, how that same protectiveness did not extend to Puppy. But when he looked at her, all he saw was an impending round two of the same shitstorm that had hit Black Light within days of Ethen O’Dowell’s highly publicized arrest.
Nothing rattled a private club like having police detectives show up on a party night. More than a few people had canceled their memberships after that. The number of new members coming into the community had tanked, and for a brief while what had replaced it were curiosity-seekers and undercover reporters, either working for legitimate papers or for blogs and podcasts wanting nothing more than to expose this place and the people who liked to come here.
They’d come perilously close to letting the wrong person in, more than once. The only thing that had saved them was Black Light’s very thorough vetting process.
Fortunately, the media’s attention was only as long as the public continued to spend money reading up on it. Media interest in private BDSM clubs had diminished. Within a week of Ethen’s arrest, the focus had shifted from sadistic abuse to human trafficking in D.C., and then to domestic abuse in the United States, and now it was on the upcoming election.
Was it wrong of him to worry that Puppy’s re-emergence back into the shadows of this place boded ill for Black Light? He hoped not. Sighing, Spencer leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his desk while he rubbed his face with both hands. He really, really hoped not. Because abused or not, if it came down to a decision between protecting her or protecting Black Light, Spencer didn’t even need to think about it.
Hands down, Black Light would win.
Chapter 5
“Get up, lazy bones,” her mother called as she came breezing into Puppy’s bedroom. She threw open the blinds and paused at her bedside long enough to jostle her, startling Puppy wide awake.
She jerked her head up off the pillow, but for a change her first thought wasn’t that it was Ethen, summoning her to come and join another of his midnight parties. Burning eyes half closed and head foggy from too little sleep, she didn’t recognize the touch as her mother’s either. Instead, for just a moment, she was back in Black Light and it was Carlson’s hand, warm and gentle on her arm as he put himself between her and all those staring eyes, before guiding her into the very back nook so they could practice his ropes in peace.
