Page 4 of For the Boys
Brent watched as Cole took his shoes off, holding his feet in the air to remove his socks and place them on the brunette’s feet.
Parker pushed open the door and surveyed the scene. “What do you need me to do?” he asked.
“Grab the blonde,” Brent said, standing aside to let Cole lift the brunette into his arms and move out of the stall.
“Was her purse in there with her? Anything to tell us where one of them lives?”
Cole shook his head. “Nothing. The other one has her shoes on at least. What about her?” Cole nodded his head toward the stall containing the third girl.
“I’ll go check.”
Brent gingerly pushed open the door and found the girl curled in the fetal position around the toilet. He knelt next to her and scooped her up into his arms. She stirred briefly, laying her head against his chest and gripping her middle with her free hand. Carefully, Brent backed out of the stall.
“None of them have any ID or anything on them that I can see,” he said. “So I say the best we can do for them is put them up in a hotel room.”
“Why can’t we just bring them back to your place?” Parker asked.
“Because I think waking up in a hotel room, just the three of them, would be a lot less scary than waking up in a strange apartment with a man they don’t know playing host.”
Cole nodded in agreement, and Parker said, “Fair.”
Brent breathed a sigh of relief, thankful he wouldn’t have to fight Parker on this.
While Parker Graff was a great guy to have at his side on the ice, he had an incredible gift for picking the wrong position in every off-ice argument. In general, he simply excelled at pissing Brent off.
Parker’s phone dinged in his pocket, and he adjusted the passed-out woman in his arms to read the message on his watch. “The cab is here. I told them to pull around back so we don’t have to parade these three through the main space.”
“Good thinking, Park. Let’s go.”
They shuffled out of the bathroom, careful to protect the three unconscious women they were carrying. Slowly, they walked down the long hallway and pushed out through the back door, where a large white SUV was waiting for them.
The driver, recognizing something was amiss, exited the front seat to help load the girls into the car.
“Hey, Brent,” the driver, Jake, said. “What happened?”
“Some asshole drugged them. I sort of took it upon myself to make sure they got somewhere safe.”
Jake chuckled. “Of course you did.”
The four of them carefully loaded the girls in the back seat before Cole and Parker got in the middle row, and Brent hopped in up front.
“So what’s new, Jake?” Brent said, giving him a fist bump. Jake had been driving the Warriors around for years, and he knew how to be discreet.
“Same old, same old,” Jake said. “Living the dream. Been a while since I saw you last. What’s been up with you?”
“Oh you know…same old, same old.”
Jake laughed. “Looks like it.”
“What’s the closest hotel?” Brent asked him.
“There’s a crappy little motel a block over.” Brent vehemently shook his head. These girls would not be sleeping somewhere anyone would describe ascrappy. “Or the Marriott at the Ren Cen is a few miles away.”
“That’s perfect,” Brent said.
Jake looked dubious. “Are you sure? It’s kinda expensive.”
“Jake, I’m a professional athlete.”
