“Maybe we don’t need anyone poaching on our turf.”
Todd wasn’t a particularly menacing name, but this guy gave it a new edge. I imagined a young mother in a hospital, naming her infant Todd, counting his fingers and toes, raising him with high hopes, and then her disappointment and fear as he turned into one of the scariest motherfuckers I’d ever seen. More likely, she’d been a crack whore and this was all he’d ever been destined for. It didn’t make him any less terrifying. Anyone else would have been quaking in their boots. Luke’s body was as solid as a tree, his arm like a noose around my neck. He was just protecting me, just playing a part, but I got the strangest sense he was holding me back.
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Luke said. “I’m not looking to take anyone’s piece of the pie. I figure, let’s just make a bigger pie.”
My eyes must have bugged out of my head. Insulting a guy one minute in—shit. So much for blending in. What the hell was the exit strategy again?
Todd laughed. “I like the way you think. Sit down, and tell me more about it.”
The man at the end of the booth had full sleeves of colorful tattoos and three visible gold teeth. He glared at us but scooted over to make room. I went first, ending up pushed tight between Gold Teeth and Luke. Luke and Todd conversed in vague, barely understandable language about the types of drugs they sold, about how much volume Luke had supposedly dealt. I wasn’t sure what this was supposed to get us. Was he working on a drug bust? Although we’d first have to get in with them to get any information. Meanwhile, Gold Teeth’s fingers inched up my thigh.
Luke stretched beside me. “What I’m curious about is who the big players are.”
Todd snorted. He seemed to like Luke’s chutzpah. “Are you saying I’m not big enough for you?”
“You run a nice pack,” Luke said with a nod to the heavily armed and heavy-lidded group around us. “But like I said, I like to expand the pie. That means more than chemical merchandise.” In a swift move, he pulled me onto his lap, far enough away that the wandering hand slipped from my leg.
Todd eyed me. “She’s a nice piece, but there’s only so many times a ride can run in a night. Unless you’re hiding a harem in your boots, you don’t have any business thinking big.”
Luke’s hand skated up my arm, sending goose bumps along my skin.
“I don’t have any girls with me, no, but I know how to get them.”
Todd’s arms had been spread out along the back of the bench. With slow intensity, he leaned forward. The chain bracelets clunked against the table. “And just how do you do that? You got a clone machine stashed away? ’Cause I’d sure as hell take one of those to order.”
He nodded toward me on the last, and a shudder ran through me. I could have sworn he saw it, and a ghost of a smile graced his face.
“I used to run a program,” Luke said. “We’d target a certain kind of girl. There are certain criteria you can use to figure out the good ones. Then you train them.”
An uneasy look crossed Todd’s face before he bolstered himself. “If you were so successful, then why’d you move here?”
“Things got too hot,” Luke said easily. “Only so many girls can go missing before people start poking around. That’s bad for everyone. Cops are not discriminating, if you know what I mean. It can be a mess. But this place would be fresh.”
The other woman at the table seemed to snap out of her coked stupor. “There was that girl who went missing. She was on the news.”
Luke snorted. “In a city this size? That probably happens every hour.”
“No, it was right here in this club,” she insisted. “We saw them—”
“Shut up, Lee,” Todd snapped. “Go clean yourself up.”
She sulked off to the corner, toward the same single-stall bathroom Luke and I had used earlier.
Luke pushed me off him and smacked my bottom. “Good idea. You need to use the little girl’s room too.”
Wow, he had this whole degrading-women routine down pat. Inside the bathroom, I found the woman with her face pushed under the faucet. She blew her nose repeatedly, splattering water onto the peeling mirror and cracked tiles. I tried to ignore the fact that my ass had been where her hands now rested. This place seemed a whole lot seedier without Luke.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“Can’t get it out,” she muttered, wiping her face on the sleeve of her shirt. Her brown-black hair was pulled back into cornrows, her lips a deep-stained red. She wore a black sleeveless T-shirt, revealing arms that were thin but well-defined with muscle.