As soon as I lay down, the exhaustion hit me. My mind didn"t race from one horrific image to another but focused on the sweet scent of the woman beside me. I reached out and carefully wrapped my arms around her, making sure I didn"t cause additional pain.
With Bridgett nestled against me, I finally got some sleep.
It was hours after I woke up when Bridgett finally came down from the sedative, but she fell back asleep almost immediately afterwards. I made her drink some water before she dozed off again and then just watched her for a while. When she woke up the second time, she seemed a little better, even with her black eye and bruised cheek.
"Do you know who it was?" I asked.
She didn"t answer.
"Was he a regular john? Someone you"d seen before? Can you describe him? Or...um...them?"
Again, she said nothing.
I watched her carefully as the edge of her eye constricted a little, and her lips pressed together tighter. She knew who it was she definitely knew. Why wouldn"t she tell me?
There was really only one possible answer.
"It was him, wasn"t it?" I asked. "That pimp of yours."
"It doesn"t matter," she said quietly.
I brushed a bit of hair off her forehead and was p.i.s.sed off at her reflexive flinch from my touch.
"It was him, wasn"t it?" I pressed. "Who else?"
"I don"t know," she said quietly. "I never saw them before."
I shoved myself off the bed, found a pair of jeans, and hauled them up over my hips.
"Evan, what are you doing?"
I didn"t answer. I grabbed a T-shirt out of the drawer and pulled it on over my head. My boots went on my feet without socks, and I didn"t even bother with my watch or anything like that. This was going to be a short trip.
"Evan!" Bridgett called out.
I glanced back to see her sitting up in the bed, her bruised face making her nearly unrecognizable from the girl I was used to seeing there. Before she could say anything else, I walked out of the bedroom and out the door.
I could hear her calling my name and telling me to stop, but I ignored her.
The pimp was easy enough to find right there on the street corner with his b.i.t.c.hes all around him. He reached into a car window, pulled out some cash, and then shoved one of the girls in the backseat. There were at least three guys in the car, and they drove off with a screech of tires.
My fingers tightened around the steering wheel, and my teeth ground together. There wasn"t any actual parking on the street, and I wasn"t about to go find a garage, so I pulled right up over the curb and onto the sidewalk. I got out of the car, leaving it running, and headed right for him.
"Mister Arden!"
Ignoring his words, I walked up to him quickly, grabbed him by the collection of gold chains around his neck, and shoved him backwards into the alley. Two of the girls started screaming, and a blonde one grabbed my arm. I flung my fist backwards, and she hit the sidewalk with a grunt and her heels in the air.
Melvin the pimp clawed at my hand, drawing blood. It didn"t even register in my head that I was bleeding I was far too focused on getting him off the street where we could have a little private moment. The most convenient place was the alley right next to his usual hangout, so that was where I dragged him.
I stepped around a foul-smelling puddle next to a dumpster and shoved Melvin up against the brick wall on the other side. He gasped and grabbed at his throat.
"Mister Arden," he croaked.
"Do you think being polite is going to help you right now?" I asked calmly.
Moving forward, I pushed my forearm across his neck, pinning him to the bricks and partially cutting off his air supply. Again he clawed at my skin, but I just leaned forward and stared him in the eye until he stopped struggling.
"You scratched my car," I said quietly as I stared into his widened eyes. "Maybe it was a rental car, but you still scratched it. Now when I drive it, it just won"t quite be the same."
I used my free hand to punch him in the face.
"I-I-I..." he stammered. "I didn"t touch your car!"
I shook my head slowly at the a.s.shole"s ignorance and then punched him in the gut twice. He struggled to breathe as I shoved him up against the wall again. His skull knocked against it, and his eyes rolled for a moment before he could focus again.
"Okay! Okay! You mean that b.i.t.c.h...that girl of mine you like Bridgett."
"Aren"t you clever?" I replied coldly.
"I thought you were done with her!" he exclaimed. "You hadn"t been around...she"s been acting up and not bringing in her worth, ya know?"
"I have no idea," I said, "but I know little boys who don"t take care of their toys end up losing them."
"I"m sorry, man," he said. "I didn"t know...I didn"t know you still wanted her..."
I stopped listening to his blather. My hand reached behind to pull my piece from the back of my jeans, but it wasn"t there.
I"d left so quickly, I hadn"t even taken a gun.
Mario was pretty good at beating people to death when it needed to be done. There were several ways collapsing the trachea could do it, and you could always punch someone in the head enough to cause brain damage. I could have strangled him as well, but that took a lot longer than it looked like in the movies.
If someone were to ask, I"d probably admit to being a lazy killer.
"You have a piece on you?" I asked.
He blathered nonsensically until I punched him in the face again, busting his nose and spraying my shirt with his blood.
"I said, do you have a gun on you?"
"Y-y-yes!" he cried. "It"s on my right ankle!"
"Raise your leg up," I instructed.
He obeyed, and I kept a good grip across his neck and chest with one arm while reaching for his pistol with the other. I pulled it out and put it in his face.
"You don"t take care of your things," I told him bluntly. "I don"t think you deserve to have them."
"It was just business!" he cried out. "They paid good money!"
"Oh yeah?" I asked. "How much?"
"A grand for an hour!" he told me. "You pay that for the whole night! You can have her right now all night! No cost!"
I hummed and tilted my head to one side, lowering the gun a bit.
"Yeah, all right," I agreed. "I think I will take her tonight, no cost to me. Tomorrow, too."
"Anything you want!" he promised with a quick nod of his head. Sweat poured from his temples and down his neck.
"I think she"s gonna keep the money from that last trick, too."
His brow creased, and for a moment he looked like he was going to argue. He thought better of it, though, and agreed with me.
"Whatever you want, Mister Arden," he said. "She can have it."
I nodded.
"Whatever I want, huh?"
"Anything!" he confirmed.
I nodded again.
"Okay." I raised the gun, kicked back the safety, and blew his brains into the bricks.
Several feminine screams came from behind me, but they were lost in my own personal disgust at the blood and tissue that sprayed back at me. I hated close range shots like this as if that actor dude hadn"t been bad enough. At least I had the manhole cover as a shield then. I hadn"t thought enough about this one to avoid the mess, and I hated the mess. I needed to kill someone from a distance again. All this up close and personal s.h.i.t didn"t settle well with me.
I tore off the bottom of his shirt as I let him fall to the ground and used a bit of it to wipe off my face. It was better than nothing, but only barely. I threw the torn cloth to the side, skipped back around the puddle, and headed out of the alley past the hysterical wh.o.r.es.
One of them grabbed at me like she was going to be able to do something to stop what had already happened. I looked her in the eye, and she stepped back away quickly. Running around to the other side of the car, I jumped into the driver"s seat and sped off without another word.
Bridgett was still lying on her side in my bed when I returned. Our eyes met, and I knew she had been crying. I didn"t understand that, though. I didn"t understand why she would cry for that s.h.i.thead of a pimp.
I glanced down at my blood-covered hands and shirt.
"I"m going to take a shower," I said quietly.
Her eyes watched me, but she said nothing. I took off my b.l.o.o.d.y clothing and dropped it on the bathroom floor before stepping into the shower. I hoped it would clear my head a little, but it didn"t work. I was just as tense as I had been before, and my head was full of...of...what was this?
Confusion?
My stomach was uneasy, and not from the blood that washed down the drain. There was a bizarre feeling of near-guilt, but that wasn"t quite right either. I didn"t regret killing that a.s.shole. I never regretted anything, so I didn"t know what this feeling was.
I guess that made it confusion.
Since Bridgett still had my robe, I walked over to the dresser naked, pulled on a clean pair of boxers, and then climbed into bed beside her. She didn"t move to look at me when I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her against my chest, but she didn"t resist, either. I lay my head just above hers on the pillow, inhaled the scent of her hair, and pressed my lips to her temple.
"You killed him," Bridgett whispered, "didn"t you?"
My fingers trailed up her arm, over her shoulder, and to her lips. I didn"t press down because of the cut there, but still made the point.
"Shh," I replied.
She turned then, and her red-rimmed, black-and-blue eyes turned to mine.
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why did you kill him?"
I raised an eyebrow at her. I wasn"t going to answer a question when I had already refused to admit there was anything she could ask about anyway.
"What am I going to do?" Bridgett"s voice cracked as her hand moved to cover her mouth. "I can"t be on the street with no protection!"
"Carry a gun," I suggested.
"I"ve never even fired one!" she exclaimed.
"Then find another pimp," I said. It occurred to me that I could teach her to shoot, but making this about more than the s.e.x had already caused an issue once. I didn"t want to do that again. "That isn"t the only street corner in the city, you know. You probably don"t even have to go anywhere some other dude will come up and take over the girls there."
"What about the other girls?"
"I don"t really give a s.h.i.t about the other girls," I said.
She glared at me.
"What if the new guy is one of the ones from across town?" she asked quietly. "The ones over by the warehouses."
I narrowed my eyes.
"You don"t work for the f.u.c.king compet.i.tion," I snarled.
"What compet.i.tion?" she asked with feigned innocence. "You don"t seem to actually have a job."
A couple hundred potential reb.u.t.tals went through my brain, but I knew when I was being baited. I also knew when a situation was likely to escalate quickly, and silence was the best way to combat it. We watched each other for a full two minutes before she sighed and put her head down on my shoulder.
"What am I going to do?" she asked again. "Even that apartment is in Melvin"s name."
"I got some money for you," I said. I hadn"t actually taken any cash from Melvin, but she didn"t have to know that. I had twenty or thirty grand lying around in the back of my closet. "You already earned it."
"I"m not taking your money," she said.
I took her chin in my hand.
"First off, you will take the f.u.c.king money because it"s yours, not mine. It"s the money from those f.u.c.king b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who hurt you. Secondly, if I decide to give you f.u.c.king money, you"re going to f.u.c.king take it."