Her expression faltered. She glanced between them and nodded. “For a price, I’ll give you just about anything,” she said.
A price.
Evan reached for his wallet and took out the bills he had inside. It looked like a couple hundred dollars. Well, there went their slot machine fund. “Is that enough?” he asked.
She picked it up, taking her time counting it out, and then stuffed it in the front of her shiny pink jumpsuit. From where Noelle was standing, she could see that the shorts or skirt or whatever it was ended at the very tops of her thighs, and tall white boots hit just below it.
“Have a seat,” Tallulah invited.
Noelle scooted in first and steeled her spine not to give in to the instinct to investigate what she might be about to sit down on. The inside corner of the rounded booth was so murky, it was like hurling herself into a terrible-smelling void. No telling what she’d encounter. Tallulah was watching her, one brow raised, lips tipped slightly. She had the feeling she’d passed some test Tallulah had just given. Good. Maybe she’d be more likely to open up to them if she didn’t see them as prissy and afraid of dark corners. She had a feeling Tallulah’s life was full of them.
Of course, she didn’t know that they’d wallowed in their own filth—and that of other strangers, too, though she hardly wanted to bring that to mind—for over a month once and lived to tell the tale.
Evan slid in next to her, his thigh pressing against hers. The interior of the booth smelled like old vomit and bleach and something sweet, but she didn’t think it smelled like a dead body, and so things could be a lot worse. “I’m a private investigator in Reno,” Evan said. “I’ve been looking into what I believe is a series of crimes, not only because I believe they might be ongoing, but because we”—he gestured between himself and Noelle—“were victims of the group of criminals orchestrating these crimes.”
“You were locked in cages like animals?” Tallulah asked.
“Yes,” Noelle said. “And asked to make sick choices between hurting the other person or being hurt ourselves.”
Tallulah watched Noelle for a moment from beneath the curtain of her jewel-studded lashes. “Yeah, that’s what they did to me,” she finally said.
“We read your police report,” Evan told her. “They didn’t take your claim seriously.”
“Listen, good-lookin’， I’m a prostitute with a drug past and an arrest record as long as my lashes.” She offered a smirk, batting said lashes, but her smile quickly faded. “They never take women like me seriously. They told me I needed to get off the streets and stop going home with perverts. True enough, right? Like I’m gonna disagree? Maybe you got a real nice penthouse and a bag of cash I could live off of for a few years. Get me off the street? I asked the cop.” She leaned in, her bangles clicking on the chipped brown or gray or dark-green tabletop as she laced her hands in front of herself. “But this wasn’t some weird pervert. And believe me, I’ve had my share of those. One guy I went home with when I first got started in the business locked me in his basement for a week and took advantage six ways to Sunday. That’s another story altogether, right? But this was different. This was . . . organized, I guess.”
Evan and Noelle looked at each other, and Evan nodded at Tallulah. “Yes, ours too.” He told her the basics of what had happened to them, waking in darkness, caged, asked to sacrifice the other in various ways. He made it brief. Which was good so he wouldn’t potentially lead her story, but he also obviously wanted Tallulah to trust him and be honest about what had happened to her. Noelle knew just by watching him that he was good at his job. Naturally empathetic. Easy to open up to. And it was clear to Noelle that Tallulah had good reason not to trust those who’d listened to her story before. Or half listened anyway.
“Wow,” Tallulah said once he’d wrapped up, her eyes moving between them. “You escaped. You burned that shit to the ground.” She looked vaguely impressed, raising her hand and leaning around the booth before yelling, “Stan, a round back here.”
They waited a minute as Stan shuffled their way, coming to stand at the head of the table.
“The usual,” Tallulah said, setting her gaze on Noelle and raising her arched brows higher.
“Vodka tonic,” Noelle answered the unspoken question, even though she wasn’t really in the drinking mood, and it was still before 2:00 p.m. But if Tallulah wanted to share a round, they should probably share a round.