Page 52 of Cutter's Hope

“Jack and Coke,” he said and he at least sounded steady. I smoothed his hand from my waist down my leg to rest on my knee and gave him a winning smile that I hoped like hell was reassuring without tipping our blonde waitress off.

“What about you, Honey?” she asked me.

“Cosmopolitan please, and thank you.” I winked at her and her smile grew and she flounced off in the direction of the bar.

“Oh God,” Nothing muttered and blushed bright crimson when I moved his hand up my leg to rest it under the very short skirt of my dress almost at the apex of my thighs.

“Relax Nothing,” I said for his ears only, “Just have to look believable. You’re holding me like I’m your sister.”

“Um, Hope, I’m really sorry…” he said and a second later I felt why. I dipped my head and captured his eyes with mine a second before my lips brushed his.

“Don’t be, it’s biological,” I said against his mouth, “I know, just hang on for me okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Just,” he huffed an uncomfortable laugh, “Just don’t tell the Captain, I don’t want to die,” he said and I threw back my head and laughed. Nothing remembered then, what it was to smile, and was better able to ease into his part.

We played it up that I was the freak and it was sometime during my second lap dance that Nothing was watching me get, that I spotted the bartender give a telling chin lift to a dancer with red hair that clashed some with her royal purple lingerie. She and I both followed his gaze to a decidedly eastern European looking man who gave the dancer a hard look and a nod. He was a brutish fucker in an expensive suit, his hair barely there it was buzzed so short. His nose crooked from one too many breaks.

The dancer leaned down giving him a great view of her décolletage, but the fish she had on her hook only gave her a hard look and I think, told her to get dancing. She smiled and straightened and went to the bar, retrieving, yep… a vodka double, neat, before returning to the brute in the suit. Heh. Nothing paid my dancer, which had been instructed to dance for me but to pay attention to Nothing so I could keep playing eagle eye and he followed my line of sight.

“About fucking time,” he breathed as I moved back onto his lap. I kissed him like the dance had turned me on like nobody’s business and his hands were taught on my waist. He was ridged beneath me but he played a convincing game. The floor man wandered past the red head and the brute and when he was past, that’s when I saw it.

Wow. Ballsy motherfuckers… but then again, the lingerie didn’t leave much to the imagination. He slipped his hand up her skirt and when it reappeared it had no trace of the cylinder that’d been in it. The girl finished shaking that ass and he paid her and with a wink she sauntered a little stiffly to the bar, and with a laugh and a wink made her way to the back. I broke my kiss with Nothing and only then realized that his chest was heaving, I frowned.

“Sorry, you’re really fucking good at that,” he said.

“Yeah well, I’m off to follow my mark. Stay put and red really isn’t your color,” I said and got up. Nothing put his fingers to his mouth and wiped, coming away with my red lipstick. He swore and tried wiping it off with a cocktail napkin but I was slipping into the dressing room where Ms. Thing had just disappeared to.

I closed the door and shot the lock behind me. She wasn’t anywhere I could see her just yet, but I could hear her.

“Shit!” she hissed, “Fucking asshole…”

“Too rough shoving it up there?” I asked, coming around the bank of lockers. I leaned my shoulder against the cool metal and cocked my head. The girl looked up sharply and her eyes hardened.

“I’m gonna scream, Jack will be back here before you…” I pointed the Ruger in her face.

“Can pull the trigger?”

She froze, got real quiet and held out the cylinder towards me… ewe no. Not only no buthellno.

“I don’t want that,” I snapped tersely, “I want to know where youtake it.”

Her eyes were wide and tears leaked out, I cocked the hammer on my Ruger to take advantage of the dramatic effect and purse my lips, raising my eyebrow.

“They’ll kill me,” she whispered.

“Bitch, you’re looking down the barrel ofmygun and you’re worried aboutthemkilling you? Tell me what I want to know, I walk out that door and let you go on with your miserable life. You go on as if I was never here. You say nothing. You tip them off? I find you and I kill you a lot slower than a bullet to your head. You get me?” She sank down onto the bench and put up her hands nodding and cringing.

“Where. Are. They?” I demanded.

“Saint Rose!” she cried, “I make the drop at a house over in Saint Rose. 112…” she listed off an address on River Road in Saint Rose, Louisiana. A suburb of New Orleans that I didn’t think was far from here.

“Write it down,” I demanded. She nodded and with shaky hands wrote it down, ripping the page off her waitressing ticket book and handing it over. She was shaking so bad it was like she had a palsy or something. I stuffed the slip of paper into my beaded clutch purse that hung crossways over my chest. It barely held the Ruger but it’d done its job and gotten it in here. I backed up towards the exit to the dressing room and left the woman shaking and bawling on the bench.

“Please don’t hurt me…” she keened, “I never wanted to do this! I just owe them too much, I had a real bad coke habit… I got clean but they’re making me do this to pay off my debt.”

“Yeah well, drugs are bad, mmkay?” I said, shoving the Ruger into my purse and snapping it closed.

“I get that, and I’m sorry! I’m really sorry!” she cried harder.

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