THREE
Ward
I got an hour of sleep.
Not because I didn't have time for more, but because every goddamn time I tried to close my eyes, the look on her face came back to me.
The look when she found out I was leaving her there scared and alone and confused.
The look of betrayal.
It didn't matter that I knew she had no actual right to feel betrayed by my departure. I was just a stranger. A stranger who did the right thing. That was it. I had no obligation to her well-being after putting her into the capable hands of the hospital staff.
But there was that odd chest-tug sensation I had no way to place whenever I thought about it.
Finally, around six AM, I got out of bed, took a run, showered, dressed, and made my way out of my apartment, calling someone to deal with the bloodstains in the car, then waiting for it to be dealt with before I made my way back to Hex to check out the cameras.
For some reason, the feed wouldn't come through at home. I figured there was just a glitch. Though there damn well shouldn't have been one with how much I paid for it.
But shit happened.
And the hardwired system was at Hex where I needed to go to and do some work anyway.
I pulled into the lot, a little surprised to see a car parked across the street considering the early hour. Sometimes, if the lots in the main part of town filled up, it spilled over into the side streets, but there was nothing going on this early.
Figuring maybe it was someone from Hex who got wasted and Uber'd home, I shrugged it off, and let myself into the building.
Where I spent the next goddamn hour and a half on the phone with the alarm company because I couldn't get the footage off the computers in my office either. In fact, the system wasn't working at all somehow.
Two hours, and three cups of coffee later, I had two of my cameras working again - the one facing the street, and the one facing the back lot. The rest, apparently, they had to come out and look at.
I bit back a comment about incompetence, hung up, and went for another refill. It was just going to be that kind of day apparently.
Except, when I came to sit back down, my eyes drifted over to one of the two lit screens on my wall, seeing movement across the street. Figuring it was the hangover-laden idiot from the night before, I went to look away and get back to work, when something just made me pause.
And there she was.
The girl from behind the dumpster.
The girl whose eyes kept me tossing and turning all night, those obnoxiously appealing light green eyes, and their look of hurt.
Adalind Hollis.
Even her damn name was fucking beautiful.
There she was, walking up the street toward the car. A far cry from the outfit the night before, she had on a pair of gray yoga pants - and I tried (and failed) not to notice just how great they clung to her high, round ass - and a simple, hugely oversized beige sweater. It was big enough that I was pretty sure it belonged to a man, complete with dark brown elbow patches when I saw her raise her arms to cup around her eyes as she looked in the window. Her wavy brown hair was pulled up in a style I was pretty sure I hadn't seen since elementary school - two pigtails up high on either side of the head. I guessed it was the only way to keep it all out of the stitches she likely had.
I wasn't sure what she was looking for in the window of the small blue car, but then she looked around a little helplessly, taking in the couple of houses further down and, well little else. Then her gaze went to the school, I swear looking right at the camera, brows a little knitted, teeth nipping into her lower lip.
Then she was looking around before she crossed the street, moving into the dead space of non-working cameras before the one in the back lot picked her up again, making a bee-line for the dumpster.
I had a feeling she still didn't remember.
She was trying to piece it together.
She was trying to put her night back together.
My ass needed to stay in my chair.
It was none of my business.
But as she moved behind the dumpster and out of view, I, apparently, was no longer listening to my gut instinct.
I left my coffee, and made my way up the stairs then outside, moving across the lot to stand beside the dumpster, seeing the girl squatting down reaching her hand under the dumpster, dragging something small and pink out.
A purse.
"Thank God," she said as she brought it up, flipping it open, and going inside. It wasn't a joyous Thank God though. If anything, it was just a strange, resigned, hollow sound.
"Adalind," I heard myself call, without even realizing I was planning on doing it.
Surprised, she yelped and jerked back, but because of the awkward position, fell back, landing hard on her ass.
"Relax," I demanded, voice having an odd soft edge I had never heard there before.
Her head whipped over, lips parted. "You!" she said in a whisper-hiss, more accusing than any I had heard before.
"Yeah, me," I agreed, nodding, watching as she moved to her knees, then stood, reaching behind to brush off her pants. This close, I could see that the sweater actually swallowed up her hands when her arms went down.
"You just left me there," she said, losing the small bit of anger there had been there a second before, instead just sounding sad. Which, well, was a lot fucking worse. "I had no idea where you found me, where my belongings were, what happened to me. You were the only link to any of that, and you left me there. Without even giving me a name."
"Ward."
Her brows knitted at that information.
"Your name is Ward?"
"Ross Ward," I clarified, realizing that normal citizens went by things like first names. What can I say, the only people I spent any time around were decidedly not normal citizens. Gun runners, mafia, drug dealers, contract muscle, those were the people I saw in my daily life.
Criminals.
Thugs.
Lowlives.
You know, my colleagues.
"Ross," she repeated, and I liked it a little too much the way it rolled off her tongue. "What is this?" she asked, waving a hand at the building. "I mean, why would I be behind a dumpster in a party dress I don't remember owning, on a Thursday night?"
Shaky ground.
Hex was able to exist because only the types of people who went to things like underground fighting clubs knew about it. And those types of people knew that if you didn't keep shit on the DL, that the normal folks would happen in, be appalled, and rat it out.
But this woman clearly needed answers, and thanks to the cameras being on the fritz, this was the only one I could give to her.
"Hex," I supplied.
"I'm sorry?"
"This," I said, waving at the school, "is called Hex. It's a... club," I hedged, figuring it was best to keep it need-to-know.
Her eyes went past me to take in the building that genuinely did look like it was on the verge of collapse. The brick was filthy; the mortar between was chipping. The roof looked as though it needed replacement a decade ago. The windows, while intact, were covered in a layer of filth and grime so you couldn't just look inside. It looked every bit the abandoned school that it had been.
That was just how I wanted it though.
If it didn't look suspicious, no one would come sniffing around.
"The school is a club?" she asked, brows together. "But... there isn't a sign or any... oh," she said, nodding, looking back at me. "This is like one of those underground club things that you hear about, but aren't sure actually exist."
"They exist." Way more than most people realized. There were underground clubs for anything you could set your mind to.
"It's just... I don't really go to clubs. I don't understand why I would be here."
"Maybe you came with friends."
"I don't really have any," she said with a shrug. "Unless Millie, my seventy-year-old neighbor with the best shortbread in the world counts."
"Find it hard to believe you don't have friends, babe."
"I... I haven't been here that long. And, like I said, I am not a club-type person, so where was I going to meet any?"
Having no actual friends myself, I guess that made enough sense.
"I wish I had some answers for you, but my cameras aren't working right. I was hoping to catch whatever went down." She nodded at that, resigned to not knowing, though clearly upset about it. "Whoa," I said when she went to duck her head, and almost face-planted into the dumpster. My hands went out, grabbing her at the waist, pulling her a little closer as she slow-blinked. "You okay?"
"Dizzy," she admitted.
"Concussion," I concluded, wondering what the fuck would possess her to get out of bed after what had to be a pretty decent one. Or, for that matter, why the damn hospital discharged her when she clearly didn't have anyone to help take care of her. "Come on," I said, wrapping an arm around her lower back, then walking us both back toward the door that led down two flights, and into the finished basement.
"Whoa," was her first response, planting her feet, looking around. "Is that a cage?"