Vipers Run Read online

  “Sit.” Tenn pointed to the enormous helpings of eggs and bacon and pancakes he’d put on two plates, all for me. And then he pushed a big cup of coffee in front of me.

  “I feel like you’re going to give me bad news.”

  “I am. No more sleeping for weeks.”

  “Yeah, I got that message.”

  Tenn leaned against the counter and glanced out at the small crowd in the other room. I took those few moments to really study him.

  He was tall. Rangy. But somehow I knew he could be deceptively agile if needed. The young man got up and wandered away, muttering to himself.

  “That’s Kev. He’s writing a book,” Tenn explained.

  “Do the others work for you too?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what kind of work do you do?” I asked. “Same as Bernie?”

  “Ah, no. Definitely not.” He wrapped a hand around a mug, dwarfing it. “Some of them are escorts.”

  “Escorts,” I echoed, and he nodded. “You run the business from here?”

  “Nope. I keep my places separate.” He pointed across the street and gave me a half smile and I tried to reconcile the image of him running an escort service. Which he obviously knew, because he added, “We also do some porn, but it’s mostly webcam stuff. A couple of my guys are getting a good following, though. It’s filmed here, but the guys stay across the street for the most part.”

  He wasn’t saying it to shock me, or maybe he was, but I still managed, “Escorts and porn, huh?”

  “Not a bad way to live. Money’s good.”

  “So you get a cut and what do they get?” I asked.

  “Something most of them haven’t had their entire lives—protection,” Tenn said, his voice slightly fierce even though he was still smiling.

  “I believe you,” I said quietly. “Just wondering why.”

  “Why not?” he countered. “Money’s good. I keep the porn side for the guys only. Easier that way, and they’re more than happy to get paid for something they’d be doing anyway.”

  “All of them?”

  “Everything I do here is safe, sane and consensual. If they aren’t happy, I can spot them pretty quickly. And they don’t belong either here or in the business. Sex is supposed to be happy. Freeing. Good stuff. And the escorting’s a different business altogether. I’ve got bodyguards for both sexes. Everything happens in my place of business, and if it doesn’t, there’s going to be one of my guards there watching.”

  I blinked. Tried to imagine Bernie with Tenn, but it fit. Because Tenn was fiercely protective. And none of the guys I’d seen looked upset or any the worse for wear. “Are you in any of the films?” I asked, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

  “I’m the brains behind the operation,” he said. “Someone’s got to watch out for them. But private performances? Now, that’s a different story.”

  “Cage . . . was he working for you? With you?”

  “Are you asking if there are any of his performances on tape?” I blushed and he laughed, a rich, throaty sound, and then let me off the hook. “He works with my brother.” His gaze fell somewhere over my shoulder for just a second and then landed back on me. “They’re part of an MC. A motorcycle club.”

  “Like a gang?”

  “Not a gang. A club,” he emphasized.

  “I’m guessing there’s a big difference.”

  “I’m guessing you’re going to want me to explain it to you.”

  Escorts. Porn. Motorcycle gangs. What kind of life had Bernie been hiding behind his ramrod straight posture and easy smile? I guessed we really all did have secrets. “Wait a minute—you totally sidestepped the whole question about Cage and private performances.”

  “I have to respect the privacy of my performers.”

  Oh my God. “Let’s talk about the club versus gang thing.”

  For the next twenty minutes, he explained what had to be a very simplified version of MCs. How they had ties to the military. How some of them were one-percenters—aka serious criminals—and how the others, although not as hard-core, were still equally as dangerous.

  He didn’t tell me exactly what the MC Cage was a part of did, but obviously I was somehow involved in bad MC business.

  “I think that’s enough of a trip into MC Land for the day,” Tenn said. “You’re safe here, Calla. Me and Bernie and Cage—and my brother—we know what we’re doing.”

  He was still talking about Cage in the present tense. Maybe it was false hope, but I took it as a good sign.

  “Thanks, Tenn.”

  “Welcome. We’re going to be doing a little filming. Private room and everything’s soundproofed, okay?”

  I nodded. With a squeeze of my shoulder, he left and I tried to wrap my head around the whole MC thing. Bikes. Leather. Angry men who drank and scared towns and did drugs. It fit with the violence Cage had encountered and it scared me. For him, for me, because what had I been inadvertently caught up in?

  I wanted to believe him, to believe in something, but I was dragging a heavy past behind me, one that was strewn with lies and more broken promises than I could handle.

  Because of Cage and his promise to return—for me—I was balancing, walking the tightrope above my fears, refusing to look down. Because the drop was steep, and I’d been left with nothing this time. I was rebuilding from zero. I had a roof over my head. I could take Bernie’s truck and his money and leave. Start over.

  But I couldn’t get Christian Cage Owens out of my mind. I dreamed about him, kept hearing his voice cover me like a rough, heavy blanket. I’d heard the fierceness in his voice. He would come for me.

  Would I be making the biggest mistake of my life by going with him?

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, Tenn left me in the house with the alarm on so he could go check on the escort portion of his business. He left me a throwaway cell phone with his number programmed in and he pointed out where he’d be—literally across the street.

  The area was so quiet. He had to have picked this place on purpose so there would be no neighbors complaining about what he did for a living.

  “You’ve come a long way from boarding school and private colleges,” I muttered to myself. Mom and Grams would have a fit. My father probably would too, although he knew I was working for Bernie and he hadn’t said anything.

  Speaking of my father, I’d left him hanging. I didn’t know if he’d heard anything about Bernie, and Tenn hadn’t offered any information on him. I was treading lightly here, knowing that I was being kept in the dark about certain things. But I wasn’t being sold into white slavery—and Tenn wasn’t asking me to work for him in any capacity.

  I turned the prepaid cell over in my hand. I didn’t want Tenn to know who I was calling. It was public record that Jameson Bradley had a daughter named Calla, but it wasn’t like I ended up being talked about in the news. Not the way he was. But then I spotted a fax machine with a phone and picked up the line to hear the telltale dial tone. He wouldn’t be tracking this the way he would a cell.

  And thank you, Bernie, for teaching me things like that.

  I found the piece of paper I’d written my father’s number on the night I’d run—I’d pulled it out of my jeans and hidden it, since it was the one thing of mine Tenn hadn’t discovered and thrown away.

  It must’ve been a number leading directly to him, because he picked up on the first ring and said, “Calla?”

  “How did you know it was me?” I said, and quickly realized that the number he’d given me was only for me. I put a hand over my chest and tried to breathe.

  “I’ve had that number in place for a long time, Calla. Your mom told me you had it and didn’t want to use it.”

  God, the mixture of truth and lies stung so badly. “I didn’t know.”

  I didn’t know he was my father un
til I was fifteen. It was only when my mom called him for help—and told me who he was—that I realized he had no idea I’d even existed.

  Before that, she’d told me he hadn’t wanted to be a father. I used to dream that one day, he’d reconsider.

  From that point on, I wasn’t sure who to believe about what . . . so I kept my distance from my father and shrank away from Mom as well. I was cautious, despite the gifts, the attempted phone calls, the pleas to visit. He tried—I’ll give him that.

  I wanted to forget everything that happened that horrible night I couldn’t share with anyone—not fully, anyway. And my father’s entrance into my life coincided with that hell. Every time he’d call, my mother got upset and tense. I continued to associate it all together. He tried, but I wasn’t having it.

  At the time, I was scared. Depressed. Angry. My dad got caught up in that. Fair or not, that was simply the way it was.

  And to his credit, my father never made me feel bad about it. For a while, I convinced myself that was because he didn’t care. But I’d been wrong about a lot of things.

  “Calla, are you okay?”

  “Sorry. Yes. I didn’t know. Didn’t think . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” he said firmly, sounding pissed at himself. “I’ve been worried—I couldn’t get in touch with Bernie or you. Where are you? Your voice mail is full.”

  I wanted to ask him what he knew, but I didn’t want him to worry. “I just needed to get away for a little while, to clear my head.”

  It wasn’t that far from the truth.

  “Bernie hasn’t returned my calls.”

  “He’s on a big case,” I lied.

  “He was supposed to be finding out some information on your brother.”

  “And the police?”

  “If I go to them, Ned says he’s got a friend who’ll pull the trigger. I paid, but he’ll be back.”

  My stomach clenched. I stared across the room at the open window. “Don’t pay him again.”

  “What do you mean, Calla?”

  “I’m a nobody—who’ll care about seeing me that way? I know it’ll be an embarrassment for you, so that’s why you’re doing it but—”

  “Calla, you listen to me right now. I will never let those pictures come out. It has nothing to do with embarrassment. You’re my daughter and I won’t stand to see you hurt.”

  A lump formed in my throat. “Thank you,” I managed. “I’ll call you soon.”

  I hung up before he could hear my sob. It was only one, and I forced it back quickly, putting my fist against my mouth. I shook my head, telling myself I had to cut it out and be strong. The way I’d always been.

  I hadn’t told my father that I got those same pictures a couple of times a year at random times. Each time, it went long enough that I got comfortable, thinking that was the end. It was a taunt, a tease—a disgusting one, but I had no actual contact with Jeffrey Harris, whose family I’d gotten the settlement from. For all I knew, it was one of his friends who was there that night.

  But it had been almost nine months since the last picture was sent to me. And suddenly my brother shows up with it? I wanted to think it was a coincidence, but there wasn’t a possibility I could accept that. I figured that somehow, someway Jeffrey and my brother were doing this together to get more money. To humiliate me. Because Ned never liked me much anyway. Especially after I had the police put out a warrant for his arrest because he’d withdrawn the money and signed the lease on the bar over to himself while my Grams was dying.

  I assumed that my father hadn’t told Bernie everything that had happened to me. Even if Bernie was checking out my past in order to get a lead on Ned, there were some things money would’ve buried deep. I tried to recall if Bernie had treated me differently over the last month and could only see his kind smile in my mind’s eye.

  Grams believed in patterns, believed that things followed us until we could resolve them. But this hadn’t been anything I’d wanted resolved. I wanted it to go away, disappear, bury itself in quicksand and cement, to dissolve as though it had never happened in the first place.

  But that was far too much to ask the universe, apparently.

  Apart from my family, I’d never gone as far as to hint at what happened to me. Telling Cage that small bit was a first. I’d never even given a statement to the police. My family had taken care of it, buried it. The problem was, burying it for myself wasn’t enough—it wasn’t working. I couldn’t push it down enough, couldn’t bury it deep enough down to where it stopped affecting me.

  For six years after, I’d hung out with a group of privileged kids, very much like Jeffrey Harris, and I pretended I fit into their world, all the while wondering which one of them would see through me and do it again.

  Therapy had helped. The rich all seemed to be in therapy. Like a badge of honor. Sex became meaningless, a way to make myself feel good and wanted and not dirty, a way to prove to myself that I could still have pleasure, that they didn’t steal that from me.

  The truth was, it was important for me to prove all that to myself. But afterward, the emptiness, the spiral downward was almost too much trouble. For a while, I closed myself off from all men.

  But I left all of that behind. The only man I could think about was Cage. And I couldn’t even talk to Tenn about him. All he knew was that I was scared and mourning someone . . . something.

  I went to the room I’d been staying in, flopped on the bed and stared at the Army picture for the umpteenth time.

  The way his head was turned made it impossible to see his face. Had he done that purposely? I traced the profile. Tenn was laughing—so whatever Cage was saying to him was funny. Cage had been funny, even in his distress.

  But Cage hadn’t been in touch with Tenn, and I was trying so hard to believe Cage’s promise, but for me, cold, hard truths were easier to deal with. Typically, truths and promises were so far apart they weren’t even in the same universe.

  Jeffrey Harris promised me things. At fifteen, I’d been naive enough to believe them. I believed it when my mom told me that I could fit in with the rich people at the boarding school—that I deserved that. I believed both Mom and Grams when they told me I was different. There was no more believing in promises that ripped my heart out . . . until Christian Cage Owens came along and did so.

  Damn him. Because as several more weeks went by, the seeds of doubt snuck in, no matter how hard I shoved them aside. It brought up the biggest issue I had.

  What was I going to do? Were the police looking for me? I didn’t think so. Bernie had left no information on me anywhere, had paid me in cash. Simply because of the nature of his business, he would make enemies. He hadn’t wanted me to get mixed up in anything.

  “Bernie,” I whispered. He’d been so good to me and I hadn’t been able to help him, or anyone, including myself.

  But all that had to change, starting now. Because although Tenn was entertaining—and honestly, so was the porn—I was getting antsy.

  I stayed in his loft, which was separate from the house/studio on the same property. We were far enough away from the general population of the small town and I didn’t exactly walk in on porn shoots. But I was aware that it was happening around me—and that all these men around me were feeling damned happy most of the time. I wanted that for me.

  Most days, I’d join whoever was at the big breakfast table instead of coming down when no one was there. Tenn treated it like it wasn’t a big deal at all, and whatever guys were there at the time all followed suit. Tenn poured me juice, Eddie shared a plate of pancakes with me, I ate and listened to everyone talk and laugh about their night and the day’s shoots ahead.

  It was good to be among the living.

  One morning, Tenn hung around after the men split. We had more coffee, made small talk, and finally Tenn told me, “Sometimes, no news is good news.”

  I w
asn’t sure he believed that—not fully, because he seemed to be mourning Cage too. He was quiet a lot of the time, and Kev, the young guy I’d seen writing in the notebook, told me that Tenn was too quiet. That this wasn’t like him. Which made my heart even heavier.

  Instead of retreading old ground, I said, “I need a job,” and when he paled, I quickly added, “Not one of yours.”

  “Good, because that’s not happening.” He gave a smile. “I can show you how to work a camera.”

  I opened my mouth but “no” didn’t come out. But really, filming gay porn—and really, many of the guys weren’t gay at all—wasn’t anyone’s life’s goal, was it? Even Tenn had a side business. “I’ve got to find myself.”

  Tenn rolled his eyes. “I didn’t realize you were lost.”

  “You specialize in that.”

  He sobered and nodded in concession. “You hide it better than most. Or maybe you’re not as lost as you think you are.”

  I swallowed the last of my coffee. “It’s just . . . you’ve been really good to me.”

  “I sense a ‘but.’”

  “I can’t stay here forever.”

  I waited for the lecture about the dangers, about how I had no money, no job or car, but it never came.

  Instead, he checked his watch. “I don’t think we’ve hit forever yet, Calla. Not even close.”

  Chapter 4

  My eyes opened sometime after four that morning. I woke restless as anything and I wasn’t sure why. I tried to read a little, but I couldn’t concentrate. I gave up, went to the bathroom, splashed some water on my face, brushed my teeth and figured I was up for good. Maybe I’d go watch some mindless infomercials or Bravo reruns of Real Housewives.

  But as soon as I walked into the living room, my nerve endings tingled, like they were foretelling something of great importance. I looked around the now quiet first floor, a sense of impending change heightening my awareness, and I simply waited.