Chance Taken

She stops dead in her tracks to glare at me. “And you know that how?”

“I’m not saying she didn’t have a hard life,” I ramble. “Just that she went into it willingly. Or like, as willing as someone strung out on meth can go.”

“And you’re just such an expert, are you? How, I wonder.”

She starts walking again, more briskly than before and this time the sight of her swaying hips does absolutely nothing to make me feel better.

“She came through Anne’s place at one point,” I say, jogging a little to catch up to her. “She got on her feet for awhile, but then sunk right back down again.”

This Shanaya even waitressed at the clubhouse for a couple of months, but then she started using again and that was the end of that.

“Anne’s place? What’s that? One of your favorite hangout spots?”

Her tone is confrontational and leaves no doubt that she thinks I’m full of shit. If I’m gonna make her see me as anything other than a career sex-trafficker, I’m gonna have to tell her some things. But with all the things I need to keep a secret and that fact that I’m no good at knowing when to stop talking, attempting that could be dangerous.

Devil’s Nightmare MC keeps a very low profile around town, and there certainly is nothing that connects us to the various charities run by some of the members’ wives. One of those is Anne, Doc’s wife, and she runs a safe house for women down on their luck. She tries to help them get back on their feet. She fails a lot of the time.

“The Phoenix Rising House,” I say. “I know the woman who runs it.”

“You know Anne?” she asks, looking genuinely shocked. And scared for some reason. “How?”

“She’s married to my dad’s friend,” I say evasively.

“Your dad seems to have a lot of friends,” she mutters.

“Plenty, yes,” I say, not really sure what she meant. Nothing good. I know that much.

We’re at the sandwich place though and I couldn’t be happier that this conversation is over. At least for now.

When I suggested we come here for lunch, I was vaguely hoping that her meeting my uncle would soften her towards me, but now I’m hoping he’s not working today.

Why couldn’t I have been sent to pick up trash along the highway for my community service? Or anywhere else but with Veronica. I’m only about six hours in to my thousand hour sentence, but it already feels like an eternity. In hell.