He lifted his brows, inviting her to explain. He had club brothers; he didn’t have friends.
“Mercy and Ratchet.”
He nodded, cursing inwardly. The dealer Ghost had sent them to meet.
For a moment, he allowed himself to entertain the “what if” idea of having accepted Holly’s offer last night. He might have eased himself inside her, and then she might have made her request about the hit. He might, even, have killed those two before they could have their sitdown with his brothers.
But now, they’d become involved with the club. What the hell did he do now?
Feeling sure that he would refuse her now, he said, “I don’t normally take on contracts from outside the club.”
She made a face that seemed desperate. “It wouldn’t be a regular thing. I promise. Just the once – well, three times, I guess; the three of them – but then you’d never have to see me again. I could leave town after, if you wanted me to.”
It was all making so much more sense now. She’d never been flirting with him, he hadn’t thought, and now he was proven right. She’d been feeling him out, trying to decide if she could trust him with something like murder. Well, she’d made a good choice, hadn’t she? Of all the Dogs she could have sought, she’d honed in on him as the one most likely to serve her killer purposes.
“You’d go to jail, if we got caught,” he said. “It wouldn’t just be me; you’d go too, for hiring me.”
That tidbit didn’t seem to faze her. She shook her head. “That’s a risk I can take. Not,” she said in a rush, “that I want you to go to jail. That’s not what I meant. But you’d be…professional, I know you would. You wouldn’t get caught.”
That was true.
He said, “How do you know they’re after you? Maybe you’re just being paranoid.”
She flinched; that stung. “Maybe,” she said, voice growing faint. “But…but no. No. They would never let me get away. No matter where I went. They couldn’t afford for me to be loose in the world.”
She withdrew into herself, her mind, some awful memory that left her pale and shaken.
“Holly.”
Her eyes came to him like backlit jewels, huge and wet.
“Who are they?”
She swallowed, her slender throat working. “My father, my uncle, and my husband.”
Father. He knew all too well the horrors of fathers.
“Explain it to me.”
She lifted her chin in a quaking semblance of bravery. “No. You don’t care.”
“You’re asking me to kill three people,” he countered, “and you won’t tell me why you want them dead?”
“I may be behind a little, but I’ve been trying to catch up with movies.” Her chin kicked even higher, daring him to challenge her. “I know enough to know that hit men don’t have to know the reasons why. Just the who and when and how much.”
He was silent.
“I want a straight bargain, no details.” Her voice was shaking. “I give you the names, you kill them, and I’ll pay you for it.”
“Pay me how?” He gestured to the secondhand loft around them. “You gonna rob a bank?”
“No.” She was quaking all over, little rivulets of coffee streaking down the sides of the mug where her tremors had spilled it. Her voice was resigned, though. Flat and emotionless. “I have a little cash to give you, and then after that, I’ll have to pay you with my body.”
He tilted his head in silent question.
She said, “I’m twenty-six. My breasts are real. Thirty-four double Ds. I’m very small and tight.” She laid one shaking hand in her lap, as if he needed the demonstration. She met his gaze squarely. “I’ll do whatever you want, for however long, however many times. You can tie me up if you want. I don’t care. I can act like I like it. I can do…anything,” she repeated, voice the barest scrape of sound. “Anything, if you’ll do this for me.”
“You want to pay me with sex.”
