“So, like I was saying, I’ll see you here at ten.”
Ronnie bounded up the steps to the second-floor apartment. As she entered the cozy space, she realized she was still smiling.
Brian pulled into a parking space in front of the dealership, and Ronnie smiled as several salesmen made quick tracks in their direction. Every dealer that morning had been eager to help the man in the luxury Lexus—only to discover that his female passenger was looking for a cheap preowned vehicle, thank you very much.
Even better, it turned out that Brian was a whiz at cars and could see through a sales smokescreen in a second. Fifteen minutes later, as Brian lifted the hood and examined her latest find, Ronnie thanked her lucky stars that she hadn’t had to do this alone.
Brian shook his head at the salesman. “I thought you said this car had never been in an accident.”
“That’s what we understood from the woman who traded in this vehicle. We can only go on what the original owner has told us.”
Brian grunted. “Then you all aren’t doing your job.”
He gestured Ronnie over and turned his back on the salesman. “See here … and here … classic result of a front-end collision. Probably had to replace the hood and the front bumper, and it might’ve thrown other things out of whack. Who knows what that might mean for you in a year?”
Brian started a heated discussion with the salesman, and Ronnie moved on down the rows. She’d been excited about finally buying her first car, but all the cars she liked, she couldn’t afford. She’d wanted to look at cool SUVs and convertibles like Tiffany’s. Within the first ten minutes, she’d downgraded to sensible, five-year-old sedans in unpopular colors. The down payment on some ugly lemon was going to cost her the precious advance she’d saved for tuition. She resented the car already.
She stopped in front of a champagne-colored Civic and shaded her eyes from the sun. She squinted toward the price tag in the front windshield. She looked closer and called Brian over. He took one look and raised his eyebrows at her. The salesman approached, and Brain began the usual discussion while Ronnie circled the car, trying not to appear anxious.
It was beautiful. A four-door sedan, sure, but a nice sporty line and a great color. She peered inside. Simple upholstery, with all the usual amenities. And only twenty-one thousand on the odometer. It was higher than her intended price range … but only by a few thousand dollars.
Brian fiddled under the hood and seemed to like what he saw. Ronnie crossed her fingers. After a morning of finding no cars even close to her price range, this little number seemed like a bargain. But why the great deal … what was wrong with it?
The salesman’s voice drifted in through the windows. “Former rental cars sell back to us at twenty thousand miles, and since they’ve been driven harder we lower our price.”
Ronnie settled behind the wheel. It fit her perfectly. If Brian said the engine looked okay, she would buy it. It would be more than she wanted to pay—even after she haggled the salesman down—but at least she would enjoy the car she was driving.
Forty minutes later, the salesman and his manager shook hands all around and ushered Ronnie and Brian out of the office.
“Congratulations. We’ll fix those few items, and you can pick the car up tomorrow.”
Ronnie smiled and thanked them, suppressing the butterflies in her stomach. Had she really just signed a loan agreement for that high of a monthly payment?
She settled into Brian’s passenger seat and thanked him quietly. As he pulled out onto the highway, she laid her head back against the soft leather and closed her eyes.
“Hey, Ronnie, don’t worry, seriously.” Brian sounded like he was grinning. “It’s always a little nerve-racking to get your first car, but—”
“It’s not the car I’m nervous about—it’s the car loan! I’ve never been on the hook for a monthly payment like that, ever.”
“Ahh, don’t worry about it. I bet you’ll be trading it in for a luxury model in a few months. You’ll have no trouble making the payments once you get onstage.”
Ronnie’s eyes flew open. “What did you just say?”
“I said it would be easy to make the payments once you go onstage. Heck, you’ll probably earn enough to pay for a full trade-up within a few weeks.”
“What makes you think I’m going onstage?”
Brian jerked in surprise. “What—you don’t want to?”
“I keep telling everybody—”
“Look, no offense, Ronnie, but it just seems silly, that’s all. You’re an attractive girl, you’ve got a great figure, and you’ll make a ton of money. No one understands what your problem is. I know you’re young, but you’re in the real world now and you have bills and obligations. You at least have the ability to make a good wage, unlike some others. Trust me, I’ve seen girls go through this for several years now, and once you get up there, you’ll wonder what the big deal was. Trust me.”
Ronnie sat in silence, her monthly expenses parading on the screen of her mind. Even working extra shifts, it was going to be tight. And there was still the advance payment for her tuition. Assuming she even got in.
Ronnie groaned and bent double, her head near her knees, her hair hanging down around her face. “Have you ever felt like you just wanted to crawl into bed, pull the covers over your head, and keep the world at bay for about a week?”
“All the time.”
Ronnie felt his hand find her shoulder and give it a gentle rub.
“It’ll be okay, Ronnie. Honest.”
Brian watched as Ronnie waved good-bye and bounced up the stairs to her apartment. Two hotties in one place. Maybe she’d be even better in bed than Tiffany was. Sasha, he reminded himself. And Ronnie would get a stage name, too—soon, if he had anything to do with it. She was so silly to keep protesting such an obvious step.
He turned out of the complex and onto a nearby tree-lined parkway. The subdivisions got bigger and more elegant as he passed, and his gaze lingered on the sweeping, gated communities.
Someday. Someday soon.
He slowed and pulled into a circular entrance with a discreet guardhouse. A uniformed man leaned out the window.
“Yes, sir?”
“I have a meeting with Marco Navarre.”
“Just a moment.” The guard scanned his computer screen, then peered at the monitor that showed Brian’s license plate number. In front of Brian, the tall gate began to open. “Okay, sir. It’s your fourth right, up the steep hill and—”
“I know where it is, thanks.”
Brian drove along several wide, hilly boulevards, admiring the view. Several new houses had gone up since he’d been here last. Well, houses wasn’t quite the word for it. By any definition, these were mansions. Not the sprawling manor homes of the “old money” elite in Buckhead, but certainly all the understated elegance of the new money South—entrepreneurs who owned blue-chip businesses, technology companies … and adult-entertainment empires.
He turned into a cul-de-sac. At the far side, a long driveway led upward to a graceful building hidden among massive trees on the side of a hill. Brian drove into one of the many bays under the house and took an elevator to the main level. The elevator opened onto a wide front porch with a dizzying view of the steep hill below. He stayed close to the wall and rang the doorbell.
At the first ring, Marco himself answered the door.
“There you are!” Marco waved him inside and shut the door. “The others will be here soon, but I’m dying to know.”
“Everything went fine.”
“And she …”
“She bought a nice little Civic—about three thousand dollars higher than her top price range.”
“Excellent! Well, sit down, sit down. I’ll get you a drink and you can tell me all about it.”
Brian ventured into the seating area near a wide sweep of windows. Glass doors led out onto a large deck that seemed designed to induce acrophobia. Brian had been out there only once, and even during
Marco’s parties, which had a way of dropping one’s inhibitions, he had never been out again. Before Proxy came on the scene, stoned loyalists had sometimes been dared into walking the banister, and Brian had no intention of joining that group. One girl—there for the men’s amusement during a bachelor party—had fallen and broken her back. They’d given her a generous sum to keep her quiet during two years of rehab.
Proxy had heard about it and supposedly demanded an end to the frat-party shenanigans, but Brian wouldn’t chance it. There were far better ways of proving his loyalty.
“So.” Marco came around the side of a wide couch, handed him a glass, and took a seat nearby. “How’d you arrange it?”
Brian shrugged. “I made her think that all the cars she could afford were wrecks under the hood. Once we finally saw a nice-looking car close enough to her price range to seem feasible to her, I gave her the green light.”
“And that one …?”
“Actually, that one wasn’t too bad. No obvious problems.” At Marco’s grunt, Brian made an apologetic face. “You can’t have everything. But it was a rental car so it’ll probably require some expensive repairs within six months or so. And if it doesn’t, we can always arrange something.”
“Excellent. Well done.”
“The other thing is—I think she may be easier than we think to get up onstage. I got the impression that her money worries were working overtime way before the financial burden of the car. I don’t know what other hooks you’re pursuing, but I’d keep ’em active.”
“Good.” Marco had a pensive look on his face. “With your typical waitress, we could expect her to ask for a stage audition in—what—three and a half months?”
“Three and a half or four.”
The doorbell buzzed long and loud, and Marco stood up, looking down at Brian. “We can’t wait that long.”
Outside Washington, D.C., a satellite engineer received a good-bye kiss and was shooed out the door. He climbed into his new car and gave his girlfriend a little wave before he backed down the driveway.
His heart pounded as he watched her blow him a kiss, saw her eyes darken with a smoky promise for their next encounter. That very evening, if he was successful in his task. Oh, he was a lucky man.
He drove the few miles to his office, his mind turning over the job set before him. He shouldn’t do it … but he couldn’t help himself. And what harm would it really do, anyway? The lazy financial sharks of the world made hundreds of times what he did for working so hard, day after day, without complaint. Why shouldn’t someone settle the score a little, skim off some of their profits? He didn’t mind receiving some of the windfall.
Especially—a little shudder passed through him—when it came via her. And she really loved him, too; she had told him so. She couldn’t imagine her life without him.
He was proud that he had gotten her out of the club, convinced her to stop stripping. It was worth it, this business proposition, since it helped her, too. And it was so easy for him. She had made it clear how admired his skills were in certain circles.
Even on a weekend, the security checkpoints were busy—no rest for low-paid, overworked government contractors these days—but soon he was in his office, the door closed behind him. His colleagues knew he needed to rework the satellite code again, and would leave him alone with his boring, arduous task.
His breath came faster as the minutes stretched on, his fingers busy on the keyboard. He was skilled at writing programs that took up little space and ran invisibly in the background. He also knew a thing or two about erasing his tracks. There was no way anything but the most direct search would find the changes he had made.
He queued up the program, tested it to ensure it would run properly, and relaxed back in his chair, smiling. Two hundred thousand dollars for creating a simple electronic “back door.” One afternoons work. Not bad.
By the time he left the office that evening, he had already been fantasizing for hours about his planned rendezvous, and was impatient with the usual exit-security procedures.
He waited in a short line, watching the guard scan the woman in front of him. Both faces were serious, intent. What went on in that building was too important to national security to take lightly.
When it was his turn, he submitted to the same process, his conscience prickling. Thank goodness the scan couldn’t read his mind. They had assured him—she had assured him—that it was purely a moneymaking venture, that they needed access to the communications satellite network for bank wire transfers and the like. It was just by chance that his satellites were used for homeland security purposes as well. She had been offended at his “allegations,” his nervous questions, and had pulled away.
He never brought them up again.
TWENTY-ONE
The sun sent long beams through the tall glass walls as Ronnie sank into the bubbling Jacuzzi. Thirty minutes of swimming laps and she was ready for a little pampering.
For once, she was glad for the amenities that upped the rent in Tiffany’s complex. A heated indoor pool and Jacuzzi were almost enough to make her forget the craziness of the last few weeks. She had a new car, was working constant double shifts to pay for it, and was almost finished with her GED. And if she didn’t hear soon about her early admissions application to Georgia State, she would keel over and die.
Last week, she’d taken a chance and called Mr. Woodward’s office. He hadn’t been available, but his secretary told her that although they couldn’t commit to anything yet, things were “looking positive.”
Looking positive? What does that mean? That you can’t find any reason to reject me yet?
Under “employment history,” Ronnie had not mentioned her current job. She’d listed the pizza place and included a glowing recommendation from her former boss, but nothing from her current one. Maybe they wouldn’t notice.
She sank down into the bubbling water, buried up to her nose. Why was she so ashamed of her job? Her coworkers were nice people, and even though Marco was pushy he was a good boss. She didn’t know the strippers very well yet, but Tiffany said they were a nice group. They were former schoolteachers, real estate agents, stay-at-home moms, students, high school dropouts … people just like her. The club treated her well, and she made a better wage than she would flipping burgers. So why the hang-up? Did she think she was somehow better than everybody else?
She saw a gleam of blue and red through the wall of glass. She watched as the little truck pulled up at the mail pavilion, and the mailman began slotting his load into the boxes.
Fifteen minutes later, Ronnie pulled on a comfy pair of sweats and headed for her mailbox. She took one look at the large envelope from Georgia State, and breathed out a sigh of relief.
Inside her apartment, she read through the cover letter.
“We are pleased to inform you …”
A month ago, she would have been jumping around the room. But admittance seemed a minor hurdle now. She flipped through the pages, and there it was.
“An advance tuition payment of $750 is due by …”
Ronnie shook her head and shuffled through the papers, looking for a financial aid application. Was there any chance that Seth would share the family’s lousy financial information so she could get that scholarship? If not, how could she come up with seven hundred and fifty dollars so soon?
It would only take one weekend onstage …
Ronnie started to bat the intruding thought away, and then stilled. She knew she could probably make that much in just a few nights as a stripper. But she had protested the idea so much and so publicly that it had become a point of pride. She couldn’t change her mind now; everyone would rag on her for weeks.
Shouldn’t your college dream be worth a few weeks of teasing!
For the first time, Ronnie allowed the thought to take shape in her mind. But as soon as she pictured herself onstage in front of her panting, hooting customers, she felt sick to her stomach. And she’d also have to entertain them at their ta
bles, endure their intent eyes searching every inch of …
No way.
The ring of the phone startled her.
“Hello.”
“Ronnie! I wasn’t sure you’d be around. You’ve been working so much.”
She sat up in surprise. It had been so long since she’d heard her mother’s voice. “Yes, I have been.”
“Is it going like you’d hoped? I—I’m worried about you, you know.”
You’ve got a funny way of showing it.
“It’s going okay. Work is keeping me busy. I bought a car.”
“Really? What kind? Can you afford it?”
“It’s a great car. You’d love it.”
She gushed about the deal she got, and what the car looked like. She described the excursion with Brian, playing up her amusement at the salespeople falling all over themselves to help him only to regret the hard bargain. She talked about Tiffany’s great apartment, the gym, pool, and Jacuzzi.
“Wow, sweetheart, it sounds like you’re really thriving up there.”
“Well, it’s a lot of work—but I have the best news of all.” Ronnie paused. “I got into Georgia State!”
There was a gasp on the line. “You got in?”
“I got in, Mom! I’m going to college!” She hesitated, then plowed ahead. “But there’s just this one issue …”
For the next five minutes, Ronnie explained the financial aid application process. She could get loans and maybe even scholarships, but the family would need to disclose their financial statements. Her mother grew quiet.
“Please, Mom. Please don’t say no. I don’t think I can do it otherwise. I’d need to pay cash, and there’s no way I can make that much.”
“You know how much I want to support you, sweetheart.”
“Don’t say that! Either you support me, or you don’t. Either you tell Seth you have to give the school our financial statements, or you don’t care about me and my dreams. There’s no middle ground.”
“Ronnie, that’s unfair.”
“What’s unfair is for you to say you want to help, but to never actually do it.” Tears prickled Ronnie’s eyes. “I can’t believe you care more about what Seth thinks than about my life. Especially after all that’s happened.”