Then…nothing.
She suspected Dexter had gone back to wherever he lived when he wasn’t helping his partner buy strip clubs, but Suro came to the club every morning around eleven and stayed until six. Sometimes she spotted him at the bar, silently observing the club’s activities with a glass of Yamazaki, a Japanese whiskey, in one hand.
Occasionally, she could feel his eyes on her, especially when she had to attend to some of the dirtier parts of her job, like having patrons thrown out for not obeying the rules when it came to where they could touch the strippers. But he only intervened once.
She’d been in the middle of explaining to a drunken patron that no, she wasn’t a stripper, and the slacks, sweater vest, and high-necked blouse she was wearing while doing her rounds wouldn’t be coming off for his entertainment, when the patron decided to take matters into his own hands.
“C’mon, don’t be a prude, baby,” he said, yanking at her sweater vest. “Show us your tits!”
“Let go of me!” One moment she was trying to tug her sweater down and at the same time, get to her walkie-talkie in order to call security. And the next, Suro was pulling the guy off of her.
Before she could finish pushing the talk button on her walkie-talkie, Suro slammed the guy’s face into a nearby pole with a graceful efficiency that almost made it seem incongruous when he pulled the man’s head back and revealed his now bloodied nose.
Without exchanging one word with Lacey, he took the guy by the back of his collar and all but dragged him screaming in pain out of the club. A few minutes later he was back in his regular spot, leaning against the bar as if he’d never moved in the first place.
Strangely enough, she still wasn’t getting a crazy stalker vibe off of him, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t fully creeped out. There was the mystery of how he’d tracked her down, why he’d bought the club, and most of all, what he wanted from her.
Half of her wanted to confront him and demand answers, even though she knew it was unsafe to invite any more of his attention than she already had. The other half was screaming, “Run! Run!”
But she couldn’t run. Not yet. It was easy enough to slip out of a hotel room, but if she wanted to run, that would mean money. A lot of it. She’d not only have to get Sparkle and her a brand new set of IDs, complete with back story, but she’d also have to send Sparkle back to public school, and have enough money leftover to keep them in room and board until she could find another accounting job that would let her work under the table. Even the money she’d saved up for Sparkle’s tuition wouldn’t be enough. No, she’d need at least thirty thousand to comfortably relocate, and she’d need at least until Christmas to save up that much money.
The Sunday after Suro unexpectedly beat up the handsy patron, she took a substantial amount of money out of the security box Tony gave her for Christmas a few years ago. “Just in case we ever get raided by the Feds. You and Sparkle can run and know your valuables are safe. I’ve also got a key, so if I need to get you a message, that’s how we can do it without you having to figure out how to call me on a line the Feds could trace.”
It had been one of the most thoughtful gifts she’d ever received and had caused Lacey more than a little guilt. As far as Tony knew, she’d come to this country illegally when she was a child and though she’d lost her accent, she still hadn’t managed to gain citizenship.
If they got raided, it was true she’d have to run and leave everything but Sparkle behind, but not for the reason Tony thought. The truth was, she couldn’t risk getting detained for using a dead woman’s identity. Detainment meant her picture would be put through the system as they tried to figure out who she really was. And though it’d been ten years since she fled the East Coast, she knew Sparkle’s grandfather would never stop looking for her, not until she was dead.
That night she took Tony up on his dinner invitation and asked him to work on getting her the documentation she needed.
He gave her a worried look. “What’s going on, kid? Why you so scared? From what I hear, the new guy’s keeping everything the same.”
“He is,” she assured him. “He lets me and the night manager run things, and so far there haven’t been any problems. I just like to have a back up plan, you know?”
“Awful expensive this back up plan of yours. And you say the new owner ain’t got nothing to do with it?”
The problem with Tony being like a father to her was he could read her like she was his daughter. “Truthfully, I’ve been thinking I should have an extra set of docs on hand for a while now. You leaving and the new guy coming in was a good reminder of that.”
This explanation only made Tony’s forehead scrunch up more. “I’m assuming you still don’t want to tell me why you need to work under the table in the first place.”
She shifted in her chair. “I told you…”
“Yeah, you told me you had immigration issues, but you’re a bad liar. You’ve been working for me for years and you’ve put together a babysitting co-op, figured out basic plumbing, and cooked my books so well, I’ve never even been audited. But from what I can see, you still haven’t even begun to apply for citizenship. You’re more concerned about laying low than setting yourself up legitimately in this country.”
She folded her arms and turned away from him. “Trust me, Tony, it’s better if you don’t know.”
Tony sighed. She knew he worried about her, but at the end of the day, he wasn’t really her father and getting fake IDs was one of the things Tony knew how to do. “Okay, kid, I’ll get you what you need, but like I said, your back up plan’s going to cost a pretty penny.”
So after paying Tony for the new IDs and back stories, she decided to stay on until Christmas, even if having Suro this close was driving her crazy, physically and emotionally. Her mind was telling her to stay away, but her body was having a hard time forgetting the one night they had shared, the way his hands had felt on her skin, the way he’d made her come as if her pleasure were his personal mission in life.
Her pocket vibrator was getting quite the workout. Usually, she only used it once or twice a month to relax after a particularly long day, but lately she found herself pulling it out of her nightstand drawer every night, thinking about Suro as she let the electronic device give her orgasms that seemed but a dull echo of the ones he’d given her that night.