Enforcer (18 page)

“What?” he asked.

“I need cigarettes,” she said, not looking at him.

“What kind?”

“Hamptons. One hundreds.”

“Got it.”

Connor shut the car off and took the key with him. Ryan gave him a funny look as he paid for the smokes. He glanced over at the office doorway and saw Dave spraying air freshener in a giant cloud inside the office.

“No offense again, man, but she fucking reeked. Hopefully you can get her to take a shower,” Dave said.

“None taken,” Connor said as he turned and walked back out of the store.

He knew all too well how the woman smelled.

*****

“Where are you taking me?” Jera asked as he turned onto the freeway ramp.

“I don’t know. Probably my place for right now until I can find something better for you,” he answered.

“Are you going to rape me?” she asked, staring at his face.

“What? No. Why would I rape you?”

“That’s right,” she said, her voice getting stronger. “You’re a faggot. You probably only have sex with your big faggot friend.”

“Listen, lady,” Connor growled, his anger beginning to flare. “Enough with that shit. I get it that you hate me. But you called me for help. I’m doing you a favor. I have no doubt you’ll crawl back to that piece of shit, probably before tomorrow evening. But let’s get some rules out in the open or I will just turn around and drop you back off at your boyfriend’s house.”

“Fuck you,” she said.

“Yeah. Not going to happen. So lose the mouth for a while. I’m not gay. You know it, so stop being a bitch. I’m going to take you to my apartment. The first thing you are going to do is take a fucking shower. You stink like you’ve been sleeping in a bed made of dogshit. I’m not letting you sleep anywhere in my apartment until you clean up. I have extra clothes you can wear.

“And don’t steal anything from me. I don’t have much, but keep your hands off it. I’ll feed you, I’ll help you clean up those cuts and bruises, and you can sleep. You’ll be safe. I’m not going to rape you. I’m not going to put my hands anywhere near you. Understand?”

Jera nodded her head. Her fingers removed the strip of cellophane from the cigarette pack, then the bright foil cover inside. She pulled a cigarette out and looked around the console for the car’s built-in lighter.

“No. No way. You aren’t smoking in this car. You can wait until we get to my place. And no smoking in my apartment. You want to smoke, take your ass outside. That shit stinks and I don’t feel like dealing with it.”

“I need it,” she said, her voice turning into the whining, screeching noise he hated.

“Need it later. Remember who is helping you. Don’t shit all over me or you’ll be right back where you started.”

“Why are you such an asshole?” she asked as she tried to stuff the cigarette back into the pack.

“Because tweakers get on my nerves, and because this isn’t my car. Unlike you, I’m not an ungrateful piece of shit who has no respect for anything.”

“I’m not a tweaker,” Jera said.

“Yeah, and I’m Don Cherry.”

“Who’s Don Cherry?” she asked, confused.

“No one. Shut up and be thankful you have a safe place to stay for the night.” Connor turned the radio on to the classic rock station and they drove in silence back to Boise.

*****

“Jesus,” Connor said, wiping the caked blood from her face. “He really beat the shit out of you, didn’t he?”

“No,” Jera said.

“Bullshit. Don’t lie to me. I’ve been in a lot of fights in my life, but this… this is uncontrolled rage.”

He wet the washrag again and wrung it out, watching the bloody water swirl down the drain. Jera sat on the toilet in nothing but her dirty panties and even dirtier bra. She made no effort cover herself. Connor thought she could pass for a wooden mannequin. Her foul odor was tried to make him gag and retch as he tried to clean her face up.

Jera’s already dark eyes were black and purple, the right one swollen. He’d cleaned the crusted blood from her nostrils, and it took three attempts to get the blood from her split lips. The top lip had a cut right under her nose, the kind that looked familiar to Connor. It was the same type of cut that came from a fist hitting it and forcing it into the bottom edge of her upper teeth. The lower lip was bleeding from both sides. The left cut looked like she’d bit almost through it, the right another instance of a fist hitting her with force.

She almost screamed at the stinging pain of the water and the washcloth rubbing on the wounds. Connor had had many cuts on his lips before, and knew how painful they were. Just breathing air over them sometimes made him want to cry out in pain. Jera’s face was a mass of bruises and cuts. Connor couldn’t help but notice her arms and even her thighs weren’t in much better shape.

“All right,” he said, standing up and throwing the rag into the sink. “I think I got most of the dirt out of them. Get in the shower, and don’t get out until you smell like you know your way around a bar of soap. I’ll bring a clean towel and some clothes. They’ll be big, but I don’t keep women’s clothes around. You’ll have to go commando and without a bra for tonight as well. Useless to shower and then put either of those back on.”

Jera said nothing, only stared at him. He walked past her and reached in through the shower curtain to turn the water on, waiting for it to get hot before leaving the bathroom. She waited almost a minute before getting into the shower, Connor finally hearing the curtain rattle while he rooted through his dresser to find a pair of shorts for her.

After he’d found a fresh pair of socks, his tightest pair of shorts, his tightest t-shirt, and a clean bath towel, he peeked around the doorway to make sure she was still in the shower. He’d seen her naked before, but that was a different time, under different circumstances. After the trauma she’d gone through tonight, he didn’t want to make her any more uncomfortable.

He laid the clothes on the edge of the sink and the towel on the toilet lid. He bent down to grab her panties and bra, disgusted by the slimy, cold feel of them. He was sure this was the first time in his life he’d been grossed out by a thong and a designer bra. He walked to the kitchen and threw them into the sink. When he heard the shower turn off, he plugged the bottom of the sink and filled it with hot water.

As he soaked her undergarments and squeezed them out repeatedly, he began to wonder why he’d bothered to go get her, why he’d even bothered to give the Gas-Mart employees his number and instructions to call him. Jera was exactly as Petre said: trouble. Even once she showered, he had no doubt her personality would be as dirty, as nasty as always. At least she wouldn’t stink his apartment up and make him call in the steam cleaners to rid his recliner of whatever her grimy body might leave behind.

After a few more minutes of soaking and squeezing and rinsing, he decided that her panties and bra were as clean as he was going to get them without either burning them or throwing them into a washing machine. He wouldn’t have a problem burning them. When he turned to go to his bedroom for a hangar to dry them on, Jera stood in the doorway of his bedroom, watching him.

Connor said nothing, edging by her to get into his closet for the hangar. When he came out, she continued to stare at him. He draped the underwear over the hangar and took them into the bathroom to hang them from the shower curtain rod. When he came back out, she hadn’t moved, her eyes still locked on him.

“What?” he asked.

“Are you going to make me fuck you?”

Connor looked her for a moment. Her short, black hair was still wet and glistened in the bedroom light. His clothes barely fit her, almost comically too large. He was a touch over six feet tall, a muscular two hundred thirty pounds. Jera was lucky if she tipped the scales at a hundred and fifteen, and she couldn’t be any taller than a couple inches over five feet. He could see her nipples trying to poke through the white t-shirt, making his mind wander uncomfortably.

“No. I don’t want to fuck you. I have a girlfriend. Not that you aren’t attractive,” he added, somehow hoping to make her feel better.
Idiot!
he thought.
That’s exactly what a woman wants to hear after being beaten and probably raped
.

She was a beautiful young woman underneath all of the bruises. Her skin wasn’t as dark as he had thought at first. She looked like she was either of Middle Eastern descent, or possibly Mexican or some other Latin or South American country. Connor wasn’t an expert on genetics or nationalities, having grown up in an extremely caucasian area of the world, and Idaho wasn’t a hotbed of racial diversity to expand his experiences. He studied her for a few moments, deciding that without the thick coating of sweat and dirt and whatever else had attached itself to her, he could easily see why men would pay to have sex with her. As long as she didn’t open her mouth and let them hear her voice. Connor wondered if she had a different voice she used when she was with one of her tricks.

“You can either sleep in the recliner, or you can sleep on the bed with me,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to touch you. You get one side, I get the other. But if you sleep on the recliner, you will have to cover up with a coat or something. I only have the comforter that’s on the bed.”

She gave him a suspicious look. “I’m hungry,” she said as she looked away. “And I need a cigarette.”

“You can go outside and smoke. I have a pair of sweats you can try to wear so you don’t freeze. But don’t use my coat. I hate the smell of cigarettes. I’ll bring something to eat back with me.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, suspicious again.

“I’m taking my friend’s car back. She has to get to work in the morning.”

“You don’t have a car of your own?”

“No. Are you going to quiz me all night, or are you going to smoke?”

“Give me the sweats,” she said, her voice demanding.

“Here,” he said, tossing her a pair that had been on the floor near his bed. “Don’t steal anything. I won’t be gone very long. If you aren’t here when I get back, that’s up to you, but I won’t save you again. If I get back and you aren’t here and neither is my shit, I’m just going to have you arrested. What you do from there is up to you, but I won’t help you.”

“Fuck you,” she said as she put the baggy sweatpants on. “I’m not a thief.”

“And I’m not a hockey player,” he grunted, grabbing the keys to Dana’s car from the counter as well as his own apartment keys. “Just be normal for half an hour and I’ll feed you. What do you want?”

“A burger. And a milkshake. And some fries. And a cherry pie.”

“Anything else, Your Highness?” he asked, his hand on the doorknob.

“A fat rock to smoke and a glass pipe,” she replied.

Connor stared at her for another minute, wondering if he’d made a huge mistake rescuing a dope addict. He wondered if it was an even bigger mistake to leave her alone in his apartment for half an hour.

“Funny. Don’t steal anything,” he said again before he closed the door behind him.

*****

He expected her and his television to be gone when he returned. Dana had been unhappy about the whole situation, but at least she’d already been awake, so he didn’t have to worry about that being added on top of everything. She questioned him the whole time as she drove him through the Jack In The Box drive-thru, and all the way back to his apartment.

Dana’s nose had wrinkled when she first sat in the car, Jera’s stink somehow clinging to the upholstery. Connor had tried to air the car out on his way to her place, the windows down and the freezing wind blowing through, making him shiver even with the heater on high. He’d apologized at least twenty times, and Dana had accepted it, but she still didn’t look happy.

He figured it was because of the fact that Jera was a woman. He and Dana weren’t officially dating, according to them both, but the amount of time they had spent together over the last month or so said otherwise. Connor had tried to explain to her about Jera, her abusive boyfriend, and why he’d had to go get her, but because he left out all of the details of how he knew her and why he’d picked her up, his explanations sounded ridiculous. They sounded like lies. The more he tried to explain, the more they sounded like he was hiding something from her.

Connor thanked her and kissed her on the mouth before getting out of the car when they reached his apartment. It was like kissing a cold statue. Dana gave him a short smile, but it didn’t look genuine to him. She drove off, and left him standing on the sidewalk in front of his apartment, holding a quickly cooling fast food meal in a paper bag that he’d bought for a tweaker. A tweaker who had probably already robbed him blind and was long gone. He couldn’t help feeling like a complete asshole.

Connor opened the apartment door and walked in to Jera sitting in his recliner, a glass of water in one hand, the remote in the other. He handed her the bag and the shake, exchanging it for the remote and the glass of water. He dumped the water in the sink and changed the channel to the NHL Network to catch the pro scores, knowing they wouldn’t have changed since he had tuned in earlier in the night before he and Dana had made their way into the bedroom.