My stomach is turning over almost continuously as I try to fucking think. Can I just pay it for him? I have the cash from the guys now. The most it has ever been was a few hundred. That would barely make a dent in my savings. “How much is it? How much do you owe them? A grand?”
The sharpness in his eyes dims and he glances away.
Oh shit, more than one thousand dollars?
“More? Two, three?”
When he doesn’t answer, anger burns through my veins, and I shove him off the mattress. He stumbles, but he manages to catch himself. “How much is my ass worth, Tray?”
There is a long, drawn-out silence. “Twenty.”
I stare at him as my stomach drops out through my ass, and an incredulous laugh bubbles up in my throat. “Twenty thousand dollars?”
He nods a single time, looking away from me, and suddenly, everything clicks into place. This piece-of-shit house, the lantern, the fact that he reeks like he is one step away from death. He’s hiding out, and he finally wants back out in the real world. But instead of paying his debts himself, he wants to use my ass—literally—to save himself.
There is no way I’m getting out of this unscathed. Either I have to cough up all the money, or I have to bend over and take it from the Two-Sixers. All the fight leaves my body, and I sag against the wall, fingers and hands tingling as the edges of my vision go even hazier.
I want to cry. This is so unfair. Why the hell does this shit keep happening to me?
I. Was. Out.
I made the choice to save myself. To save my damn future. Why can’t someone save me just this once?
Chapter 4
Hudson
A frightening sense of calm settles over me as I follow Derek up the concrete steps that lead to the back door as quietly as possible. I’m careful not to let the wooden plank I picked up from the ground bump into anything.
I feel like I have shifted into a sort of mental high gear, all my senses operating in a high-definition capacity; I hear the breezerustling the overgrown grass at the back of the house, the clang of a garbage can a few houses down, the skittering of tiny, clawed feet against the cracked concrete.
The door at this end of the house is clearly the actual entry point for whoever brought Emery here. Boards hang haphazardly from one side of the doorframe, with broken bits of wood and empty nails decorating the other side.
The air has gotten a lot cooler in the last hour, and I fight a shiver that wants to roll down my spine. Although, that might not be from the cold.
Emery is on the other side of this broken door with whoever took her.
As much as I really think we should have called the police, I must admit, if only to myself, that I am looking forward to taking my pound of flesh from this asshole. Then we can call the police.
As we wait for Xavier’s signal, I shift on my feet one step behind Derek, who turns to me, finger pressed to his lips and eyes a little wide, before indicating that I should step up closer.
I do so. “Wh—” I start to whisper, but he points to his ear a millisecond before I hear it—Emery’s voice.
She’s okay.
The way my soul explodes out of me at that knowledge is something that should be written into a movie. The entire car trip here, my thoughts were a constant battle of wondering if she was dead or alive, and wondering what would be better for her.
But she’s alive and talking—that must mean that she is relatively okay, right?
“Twenty thousand dollars?” she says on a strained laugh. “What the fuck, Tray? What did you do? Rip off the Two-Sixers?”
There is silence, then—
“Holy fuck, you did rip them off. Are you a fucking idiot?”
“I didn’t know it was theirs!” a male voice protests, a whiny edge to it. “What the fuck would you’ve done if you walked pasta car with the trunk open an’ a whole-ass brick was just sittin’ there? I took my fuckin’ shot. How the hell was I supposed to know there was a fuckin’ camera in the alley?”
“Do you mean the alley behind their fucking stash house?” Pause. “Fuck, Tray, you are such a shit for brains. You’re lucky you aren’t dead yet. Do you really think that when they get here, they are going to let you live? You’ve signed both our death sentences. Fuck!” Emery is practically screaming at Tray.