Page 24 of Rebel
It’s winter but I’m still sweating by the time I summit the top of the ridge. The sun’s setting to my right, casting angry, long red shadows across the plane in front of me. It’s gonna be cold, tonight.
Behind me, the four buildings that make up the compound—the clubhouse, the workshop, the storehouse and the barn—are all lit up. I can hear Carnie somewhere down there, shouting something loud and obnoxious. Laughter follows. Cheering and shouting. I smile to myself as I make my way down the other side of the slope toward the cabin. It doesn’t register as odd that the lights are on inside my place. It doesn’t seem strange that the door is locked and I have to use my key to get in. The first thing I do when I see the girl sitting on my couch, watching my television, is pull my gun. Force of habit. She scrambles away from me, backing into the corner of the couch. Her eyes are so big I can practically see myself reflected in her irises. She looks terrified.
I catch myself, then—a gun shoved in her face is the last thing this girl needs. But she shouldn’t be here. I tell her as much. “You shouldn’t be in here. Who put you in here?” Carnie joked about this on the way to Vegas—her needing to bunk in with me. I never gave it serious thought, though. This issonot happening. I lower my gun, tucking it back into my waistband. The girl visibly sags, though it’s obvious she’s still afraid.
“Cade. Cade put me in here when I was passed out,” she says. “After hedruggedme, that is.” It doesn’t sound like she’s too impressed about that. I know people who’d pay good money for the high she received, but it looks like she’s not one of them.
“Yeah, sorry about that. We’ve found in the past that being a little sleepy often keeps the people we’re transporting calm. And calm is something we value around these parts.”
“How old are you?” she asks. The question catches me off guard.
“Why do you ask?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“When you’ve figured out why you wanna know, tell me and I’ll decide whether your reasoning’s valid enough for me to share that information with you. In the meantime, I need to talk to my V.P.” I kick the door closed behind me, scowling as I bring up Cade’s number on my cell. He answers quickly, on the second ring.
“Hey, man, what’s up. Are you almost back?”
“I’m already back. And I’m standing in my cabin. Is there something you want to tell me?”
“Ahhh shit. I thought for sure I’d be back before you. Don’t blow a gasket, all right? There was nowhere else to put her.”
“What about the barn? That’s where we usually keep people, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, when we plan on keeping them cuffed to the water tank and beating the shit out of them twenty-four-seven. You really think this situation warrants that?” When he puts it like that, I suppose he’s right. That does seem a little excessive.
“What about the room at the far end of the clubhouse? The one I used to use?”
Cade huffs—I think I’m pissing him off. Well, tough shit. He knows this place is strictly off limits. “You said you didn’t want anyone to know she was here, dude. If I’d dragged her through the clubhouse and up the stairs, someone would have spotted her. And they sure as hell would have wanted to know who she was and why we won’t let her out of the room.”
He kind of has a point there. “And so this was it? This was the only solution you could think of?” I pinch the bridge of my nose between my index finger and my thumb, feeling a headache coming on.
“She could hardly bunk above the shop with me, man. People are in an out of my place all day long. She’d have been seen in five seconds flat. If you can think of another option, I’ll head back to the compound right now and move her myself.”
I scowl at the floorboards, the floorboards I laid myself, hammering each and every nail by hand, hating that he’s fucking right. “All right. All right. I guess you did the right thing.” I exhale, my head working overtime. “Wait, if you’re not at the compound, where are you?”
“At the shop. I needed to pick up the gear for tonight. We had late appointments, too, and Chloe couldn’t work. I’m finishing off a back piece. Won’t take me more than an hour, though.” The shop, the Dead Man’s Ink Bar, the Bar for short, isn’t located within the compound. A twenty-minute ride down a dirt track brings you to Freemantle, the closest town to our location, though to call it a town is a stretch. There are five or six streets with actual stores on them, and then perhaps three or four as many residential streets, and that’s it. There was public outcry when the Widowers bought up High Street real estate and unveiled a full-blown, state-of-the-art tattoo parlor. The townsfolk probably wanted another florist or something. Instead they got burly bikers with a penchant for ink and very loud motorcycles. They complained at first, but that soon stopped when they realized the Bar was actually bringing a lot of out-of-towners into Freemantle. People from the surrounding small towns, who otherwise would have no reason to even pass through. More people means more money for the other local stores and diners; the folk who come to get inked at the Bar have to eat, after all. They buy groceries. They replace their old work wear at the army disposal store. Ironically, the business front we use to launder our ill-gotten gains has been really good for the local community.
“Okay, well just get your ass back here as soon as you can. I need to tell you about what happened at the MGM Grand.” I don’t mention names. The girl sitting on my couch is staring quietly at a seam in the leather armrest, pretending not to be listening, but of course she is. She’d be fucking mad not to.
“Got it.” Cade hangs up and I walk around my couch, staring at the girl. This is weird. If I fuck a girl, I do it at the clubhouse. I’ve never had anyone in here before. I’m not sure I like how normal it feels. It should feel like the place is on fucking fire and I have to get the hell out of dodge.
I sit down on top of my coffee table, still staring at her.
She blinks at me, digging her fingernails into the skin on her right leg. “What?”
“It’s time for you to tell me your name.” She arches an eyebrow at me. I can just imagine her getting them waxed in some fancy fucking boutique beauty parlor in Seattle, run by Asian hipsters with shaved undercuts and thick glasses. She seems like the type. “Why do you want to know?” she asks, cockiness filling her voice—she’s asked me something personal and that’s what I said to her. Now she’s throwing it back at me. It’s fucking adorable.
“I’m asking because I need something to call you. And if you don’t tell me your name, I’m going to be forced to call you One Eighty-One. And I’m guessing you won’t like being called one eighty-one.”
“Why would you call me that?”
“Because that’s the reference Hector Ramirez gave you when he uploaded your picture onto his skin site. Hector tags his girls chronologically. The first girl he sold was number one. The fifty-third girl he sold was tagged fifty-three. Using that logic, guess how many girls he sold before he tagged you one eighty-one?”
“So one hundred and eighty other women came before me?” She looks like she’s going to throw up.
“Exactly. And he hasn’t been caught. The police haven’t raided his place out there in the desert. No one has reported his website. No one came to rescue the one hundred and eighty other girls who came before you, and no one is coming for you, either. So if you want reminding of that every single time I call you one eight—”
