That’s my cell phone number on the back. You ever get into any trouble you can’t handle, call me. Okay?”
She looked up from the scrawled number quickly. “You’re some kind of hired muscle?”
The corner of his mouth curled up again. “Something like that. Keep it, eh? No strings attached if you call the number. Just a helping hand. You’re a good kid, and you’re clearly in over your head.”
Oh, God. That was so nice of him. Something hot and sharp caught in her throat, choking her a little. She’d nearly forgotten what it was like to have a decent human being give a damn about her. An urge to take him up on his offer and confide everything to someone—anyone—nearly overcame her. Heck, the temptation just to have a simple, honest conversation was almost more than she could resist.
But then her spine stiffened. Her work here was not done. She had to maintain her cover. Her life, and possibly her brother’s, depended on it. She was in too deep to back out now. A list of names, deals, dates and crimes she’d already procured was etched in her mind. There would be no leaving this quest until she succeeded...or died.
Belatedly, she smiled cynically at Asher—Ashe—and spoke with utter sincerity. “Believe me. I’m not a kid. Not anymore.”
“Take care of yourself, Evgeniya Hankova.” He pronounced her name exactly right, palatalized vowels and all, as if he was a native speaker of Russian.
Her gaze snapped to his. Surely he wasn’t one of them! Had this been a test? Ohmigod. Had she said something to give away her real motives for being here? Frantically she reviewed their brief conversation while her face froze into a mask of a smile. She backed away from his table quickly, turned, and fled to the storeroom behind the bar to catch her breath.
Vitaly, the owner and manager of the whole establishment, poked his head into the filthy little room far too soon. “I need you out front. Candy’s done with her set, and everyone wants drinks.”
Great. Candy was one of the sexiest pole dancers in the entire club. She was also all of fifteen years old. The patrons would be horny and grabby after her performance. Steeling herself to ignore the lewd comments and inappropriately groping hands, she nodded at her boss and stepped back out into the bar.
He was gone.
She knew it without even having to glance over at the table in the corner. Ashe’s absence was a cold chill against her skin where there should have been warmth. She smiled down blankly at the mobster who’d just proposed vulgar sex with her in Russian she wasn’t supposed to understand. Take the drink order. Move on to the next table. Keep moving. Just keep moving...
God. For a minute there, she remembered what life had been like before everything went to hell. A nice, normal guy treating her with a modicum of respect and concern. Was it possible to be homesick for America while standing on American soil? Apparently, yes, because she felt tears welling up in the backs of her eyes.
Stop it. No feelings. No fear. She was a stone. She would have her answers, and then nothing else mattered.
* * *
The bar closed at 2:00 a.m., but Hank and the other waitresses were expected to stick around to clean up after that. The Voodoo was particularly trashed tonight because of the fight. The one Ashe had broken up with such ease. She yanked her thoughts away from the enigmatic American who had wandered so far from where he should have been and ended up in this little corner of hell. He was not for her. That whole normalcy thing was not for her, not anymore. She bent down to pick up the remains of a broken chair.
The good news was she was not one of the trafficked, drug-addicted girls upstairs. She was still free to walk out of here and never come back if she chose to. At least for now.
She could turn the crew in charge of this place in to the police. But a) she wasn’t entirely certain the police weren’t being paid to ignore the goings-on at the Who Do Voodoo, and b) then she would never find Max. Besides, she was convinced this place was a small fish in the overall crime ring running it.
Her goal was to work her way up to the big sharks before she called the authorities. She had names and pictures of a few of the girls that she’d snuck on her cell phone over the past few months. Those would go to the police as soon as she concluded her own investigation.
She even had pictures of a few men who came into the bar and disappeared quickly into the back any time they showed up. Vitaly was always surly when they left, and his complaints about how much money his bosses took out of the till always happened right after those silent strangers paid a visit.
The bar was finally restored to a semblance of its usual squalor, and Vitaly growled at the waitresses to go on home. She took off her apron, hung it in the storeroom and slung her purse over her shoulder. Wearily she headed outside with the other girls. They traded good-nights and went their various ways. As for her, she trudged deeper into the bowels of the Warehouse District’s worst section.
The darkness at this time of night was thick and impenetrable, shrouding her in heavy menace. Ever since the car accident, she’d been terrified of being alone in the dark. She walked fast and tried to project a badassery she was far from feeling as she hurried home. If she could call it a home. Her apartment was, at best, a dive. But it had a bed, a sofa, a tiny kitchen and a tinier bathroom. And she could afford it on her meager pay.
She’d graduated from college the previous June with a degree in art history and restoration, just before Max went AWOL. She could probably land a decent job given her family connections in the art business, and there was the cash she’d inherited when her father had died. It had covered the cost of her college with enough left over to start her own art restoration business if she wanted. Instead, she was living in a slum as part of her cover and waiting tables in a cesspool while she searched for her brother.
Her humble abode was on the second floor of a hundred-year-old building situated over an Oriental rug showroom. The rug merchant downstairs had stashed a girlfriend in the apartment until his wife caught him and forced him to ditch the mistress and rent the place out. Hank suspected the only reason she was allowed to be here was because the wife didn’t realize that Hank the Renter was a girl. A young, single, reasonably good-looking one at that. The rug merchant had made a few overtures to her to take up with him where the former tenant had left off, but she’d turned him down firmly and nailed the door shut that led from her living room downstairs to the old lecher’s office.
She turned into a puddle-strewn alley running alongside the rug store and started up the rickety wood stairs that led to her place. A sound behind her made her whip around, hand plunging into her purse to grip her can of pepper spray.
A man-sized shadow rushed toward her from the alley entrance, and she froze. What to do? How to react? Hank’s heart lurched in her throat. She had to do something, but what? The back of the alley was a dead end. Nobody would hear her scream, and even if someone did hear her, no one in this neighborhood would call the police. Oh, God. She was in huge trouble.
But as quickly as that thought rushed through her brain and panic crashed through her body, a second, taller shadow raced out of the darkness from behind the first one. The fight—if she could call it that—was quick and brutal. Shadow Number Two chopped her would-be assailant in the back of the head with a vicious backhand blow that dropped Shadow Number One like a brick.
The violent second shadow took off running straight at her. Crap. The set of the big man’s shoulders was grim. Determined. She didn’t need to see his face to know she was his next target.
She turned and raced up the stairs, half-sobbing in terror. She stumbled, grabbed the rail and hauled herself upright. Splinters from the aged and cracked wood railing stabbed her palm, but she ignored them. She was going to die if she didn’t get inside and behind a locked door now.
Footsteps closed in too damned fast from behind. Oh, God. A half dozen steps to go. The stairs shook as the shadow’s weight crashed onto them. She fled across the tiny landing. Keys. Dammit. Where were her keys?
She fumbled desperately in her purse as