Ryan yawned. “’Bout nap time, ain’t it?”
“So…she’s not likely to be a shithead like the last guy. Or like Falcon. Bet we can get some food off her.”
“Hey, man, I’m all for free food.” Tomas shook his head. “But food from this place is hard to swallow. My ma cooked better drunk.” He scratched his head. “’Course, I don’t think I ever knew Ma when she was sober.”
“Long as we keep out of Falcon’s way, we could be in fat city.”
“Sounds good to me.” Ry rubbed a hand over his chest. “I get tired of puttin’ holes in my belt. What’s next? You gonna get us a house, too? We each get our own john, right?”
“You want a john?” Tomas staggered back in fake surprise. “You freaking ‘selling’ it now, dude?”
“Shut up.” Harlow started up the sidewalk. That was one thing they’d managed to stay away from so far. They stole, sure, when they had to. They worked a little, when they could find a job. But they hadn’t gotten into the sex business and they didn’t deal drugs. He didn’t have much pride left. But he did have some.
“If you can’t say something nice,” Ryan drawled beside him, “don’t say nothing at all.” He yawned again. “Man, I gotta crash. Think T-Bone is home? His squat’s pretty empty most afternoons.”
“We’ll check it out.” Harlow could feel the need waking up in his belly, in his brain. He’d gotten Ry taken care of. If he could stash him somewhere safe, he’d be able to take care of himself.
A couple more blocks…a hundred more yards…just two flights of stairs. Funny, how the sickness got so much stronger, so much faster, these days.
He pounded on T-Bone’s door as Ry all but fell asleep against the wall. The door swung back. “What the…? Oh, it’s you.” The man with shoulders as straight as the bone of the steak he was named for ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Whaddaya want?”
“Can Ry crash for a while? I’m going out.”
“Me, too.” Tomas wiped his nose on his sleeve.
T-bone glanced over his shoulder into the bare room. “Yeah, sure. Whatever.” He turned, stumbled through an inner doorway and closed the panel behind him.
Harlow shoved Ryan and Tomas inside. “Get some sleep. And maybe tomorrow night we’ll get a decent dinner.” Before they could think of a word together between them, he shut himself out in the hall.
Claws raked at the inside of his head, and his stomach twisted as he stumbled down the steps. The closest supply wasn’t the safest. But he didn’t think he could make it farther. Sometimes, second best had to do.
I know a hell of a lot about second best, he thought as he tracked down the dealer, made the buy and ran for cover.
Big brother Mark had always been a tough act to follow. Captain of the Little League team, the Pop Warner team, the Y soccer team. Straight A’s in every grade. Special awards in math and science. And that was all before high school.
Then the real stuff started happening. Scholarships and special sports camps and more math awards. Honor Society prez, top of the senior class. Headed for the Air Force Academy.
Until shithead little brother screws up. Big time. One minute, Mark’s standing there yelling at him. The next, a car speeds by and big brother’s flat on his back with blood everywhere.
Crouched behind a Dumpster at the back of a liquor store, Harlow tightened the band around his bicep, pumped his fist, took the syringe from between his teeth. Funny thing was, Mark had even more influence over his brother’s life after he was dead. We’re number two, whether we try harder or not.
But just a minute later, when he loosened the band on his arm and felt the power surge through his blood, being number two didn’t matter anymore.
LUNCH in the club’s kitchen, with Tiffany at the table and Emma cooking, was not Jimmy’s number-one choice for their first date in twenty years.
But he couldn’t deny that she knew her way around a kitchen. He watched as she sliced tomatoes, lettuce and onions, leaving them in neat stacks, instead of strewn across the table, which was the style he was used to. She skimmed the top off melted butter and then basted the rolls before piling on thin slices of ham and cheese, vegetables and a special sauce she threw together in about ten seconds flat.
The result was magic. “What’d you do to make ham and cheese taste like this?”
“Even the chips are different. Better,” Tiffany added.
Emma smiled. “The right mustard, a few spices…oh, and bat’s eyes. The bat’s eyes are crucial.”
Tiffany’s face went white. She lifted a corner of the roll and stared suspiciously at the inside of her sandwich. “What are those little round brown things?”
Jimmy laughed—for what seemed like the first time in years. Emma put a hand on the bartender’s shoulder. “Capers, Tiffany. The seeds of a pepper plant. I promise, no animal eyes of any kind.”
“Oh.” Tiffany sighed with relief, then gave Jimmy a dirty look because he was still chuckling. “How do I know what strange stuff foreigners put in their food? Far as I’m concerned, meat loaf with peppers in it is a gourmet dish.” She got to her feet and walked stiffly to the door into the club. “Thanks for the lunch, Emma. I’d better get back to work.”
Jimmy held up a hand. “Hey, Tiff, your limp beats mine today. What you’d do this time?”
She grinned. “In-line skating. There was this bump in the asphalt…”
He nodded. “I get the picture. Take it easy.”
“Sure, boss.”
Emma stacked the paper plates and took them to the trash. “She’s very easy to like.”
“Tiffany’s almost as big a draw as the music. Half the customers come in just to flirt with the bartender.”
As for himself, Jimmy enjoyed watching Emma move around the kitchen. The apron she’d tied on over her yellow dress did nothing to conceal her full breasts and shapely hips and legs. A breeze coming through the screen on the back door stirred the small curls at her temples and on the nape of her neck, made him think of how smooth her skin was in those places. And in others…
In just a minute or so, the kitchen looked spotless, which was as novel a concept for this room as decent food. Jimmy tamed his thoughts into innocuous words. “You really are good at this cooking stuff. I wouldn’t have guessed that twenty years ago.”
“I’ve learned a lot in twenty years.” She folded the dish towel and sat in the chair across from him, her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. Her fingers, he noticed, were bare.
“Who do you cook for?” Might as well make sure of his assumptions, not that he planned to take advantage of Emma any more than he already had by giving her a job.
“Friends, myself. Dad, when I could.”
“No husband?”
