Trial Run, available soon.
The sky was beginning to darken, taking on a purple
hue topped with an orange layer of whipped clouds, when a sharp trill came from
the house.
“Phone,” Jason said and hauled himself out of the
pool. “Bit early for Amelie,” he said as he sprinted to the house.
The conversation can’t have lasted more than seconds.
In a flash, Jason ran back out and waved his car keys at Rob.
“You wanna come along?”
“Sure.”
“I won’t lie,” Jason said as he unlocked a shiny new
SUV parked by the roadside, just outside the green arch formed by the aging
banyan trees. “I might need you for the muscle.”
“You’re taking me to a brawl?” Rob chuckled. “Feels
like yesterday...”
Jason laughed as he peeled out and drove faster than
the legal speed limit toward Boca Raton. “Only that fight had nothing to do
with Amelie.”
“I couldn’t close my right fist for two days,” Rob
said, flexing his fingers now, as he remembered their last fight together when,
aged just eighteen, they’d walked away relatively unscathed from an encounter
with the Ramos brothers. Well, apart from the deep gash in Jason’s thigh and
Rob’s split eyebrow and grazed knuckles. They were lucky the patrol car arrived
when it did, and the fact that there was a warrant already out for the
brothers’ arrest didn’t hurt either.
Rob squinted as Jason turned down a less
well-cared-for street. Most houses displayed signs of neglect here, and not all
street lights functioned. Jason stopped the car in front of a property set back
from the road, bordered by tall hedges and with a blinking neon sign over the
double door.
Black Tulip Tattoo and
Piercings, it read, and
there were two black stylized tulips painted straight onto the white wall by
the door. An offending odour permeated the space surrounding the house, and Rob
sniffed twice, trying to place its origin. Chemical... antiseptic with a slight
charring whiff, maybe.
“Watch my back,” Jason ordered and burst through the
front door.
The small reception desk hid a girl who couldn’t have
been more than fifteen. She took one look at Jason and shrunk back into her
chair.
Rob gestured to her to get out, and she didn’t have to
be told twice. The door swung shut behind her at the same time as Jason’s shout
came from the room at the back. Rob sprinted over and caught the fist that had
missed Jason’s face by a hair’s breadth. A quick twist and shove, and the
pierced skinhead who’d launched it crumpled to the floor. Rob’s heel to the gut
made sure he’d stay there for a while.
To his right, Jason was sinking his fist into the
tattooist’s stomach, but that didn’t hold Rob’s attention for long. Because on
the cot in the middle of the room the most perfectly shaped woman lay naked on
her front, her peachy and flawlessly tanned ass cheeks glowing in the light of
the overhead projector. Two parallel
stripes of white powder marred the round contour of her right ass cheek. The
projector’s light outlined the word SLUT on her upper back. Only the S and part
of the L had been inked, Rob realized with relief.
Relief was not the expression she wore when she turned
her head around to see what the commotion was about. The scowl on her face
deepened when she saw Jason bent over the tattooist, and then she sat up,
scattering the coke, and turned to the door. Her ice blue eyes locked on Rob.
“Amelie?” he whispered, his heart skipping a beat.
