Daniel

It's getting late.

My flight was delayed. And trying to get through the warehouse district during peak fraternity club hopping hours is wearing down what’s left of my patience. My driver, Freddie, maneuvers my Mercedes around small groups of college kids who stumble through the poorly lit streets. It's a wonder more of them don't get flattened in traffic accidents every weekend. Idiot kids.

Freddie could have gone around the district, but he knows I like to run through it. This is my neighborhood, and I can't help but feel responsible. At one point or another most of these old rail yard warehouses belonged to me.

The last thing I expected when I sold the first one to some jackass with a trust fund and a pinheaded idea for a nightclub, was for the whole block to end up being the center of university nightlife. So, you could say I feel responsible. I should have seen it coming.

At this point, there are eight clubs in this half-mile stretch, and they're always up to something. Somebody's always trying to arrange some new underage drinking scheme or coming up with the brilliant idea to trick sorority girls into going topless. A de facto strip club, is what they want.

Unbelievable, these kids.

You'd think with a whole Internet full of porn, they'd at least find ways of entertaining themselves that didn't involve ruining the lives of underage girls whenever possible. But no. Like the old saying goes, you can never go broke underestimating the depravity in men's souls.

As Freddie rolls slowly down the street, I stare into the lines of young people, looking for troublemakers I know, catching a glimpse of the interior of the clubs. For the most part, it seems like a low-key Saturday night. None of the obvious signs of an amateur pornography video studio springing up in the middle of the block. Not again, anyway.

That's only happened three times in the last four years. Luckily, our local sub-geniuses don't seem to realize that kind of broadcast bandwidth leaves a signature that's easy to pick up. Easy for me, anyway.

Not that I'm spying on them, but it is useful for me to keep at least a finger on the pulse of what's going on. I at least need to keep aware in case somebody needs to step in. Most of these kids seem like they left their parents’ house way too damn early. Before they learned any real sense, anyway.

A flash of white and pink catches my eye up to the left. As Freddie rolls up to the Crow Bar, I see the sign they've got stretched over the door. My mouth fills with bitterness.

Goddamnit. Not again.

“Freddie, stop,” I growl. He saw it too. He doesn't even need me to tell him. He swerves to the curb and I get out, my fingers already twitching like I’m about to clench my hands into fists. But I don't. Not yet.

Big Boy, the bouncer, turns around as I'm coming, like he heard me. Maybe he did. Maybe I'm making some kind of sound. He's got about six inches on me so when he stands there, more or less blocking the entrance, I can't see in.

But I already know what's going on. He's bigger than me, but that doesn't always mean anything. And if he wants to keep standing there, he's going to have to make a decision about how he wants to treat the situation, because I'm definitely getting inside.

“Mr. Lockwood,” he says, his voice low and even.

I don't say anything. I just stand there as his eyes finally flicker to each of my shoulders and then my knees. It's an old military thing: checking out your opponent’s corners to see how committed they are to the fight. You want to see if they’re actually ready — rigid and coiled to spring. And I am, so he steps aside.

Once inside the bar, I stand outside the circle for a full fifteen seconds, taking deep breaths and counting backward from one hundred. It's worse than last year. There are sixty guys in here, all in a circle. In the middle of the circle are three young… I don't even know what you call them. Women? Girls? They’re on these little stages, dressed up and painted like Christmas hams, ready to be eaten.

And all these… I don’t know what you call them either. Men? Certainly not men. Boys? Animals?

Yeah, animals.

These animals think they’re bidding. They think they're buying these girls.

“Daniel!” I hear, and I don't want to look, but she's right in front of me. I won't lower my chin, so she steps back, right into my eye line. It's Claudia, from last year. She's not a girl, she's a woman. She might be a little on the young side, but she's got something going on that’s way beyond her years. And not in a good way.

She’s about half evil. Not genetically, but like she’s play-acting something she saw in a movie. She’s playing with things she doesn’t truly understand and if she doesn’t watch herself, she might just end up this way forever.

She knuckles her hips with her fists, casting her weight to one side and bouncing subtly, a move that probably works on simple-headed males. It doesn't work on me.

“Aren't you going to say hi?”

She quirks an eyebrow at me. I start to move past her, but she sidesteps deftly, landing right in my way. She is so close that if I didn't stop I would have bumped right into her. Which is what I'm afraid she actually wants. I don't have a lot of choice but to retreat, so I do.

“You want to buy me a drink?”

“Where's Lizzie?” I say, surprised at how even my voice sounds. That's good, because that means I’ve still got some self-control left. I won't put my hands on a woman in anger, but I'm not going to let her get in my way either.

I hear her suck her teeth in disgust. “Oh you like redheads, do you? Lizzie’s over there, on the mic. I bet she’d love to see you. You want me to get you a bidding paddle? Round two is just about to start. I’m sure you can… catch up.”

Then I see her, when the overhead light catches a penny-bright flash of coppery hair. Elizabeth Whitmore, Lizzie to her friends. If she has any actual friends, that is. I'm fairly certain that everyone in her orbit is just a tool to be used.

She’s dangling a microphone from her fingertips as she struts around the perimeter of the circle, batting her eyelashes at every guy in this place. Got to be the center of the show, that Lizzie. If not as the sideshow, then as the ringleader.

“How about that drink, Daniel?” Claudia purrs as I sidestep past her. I hear her scoff as I walk away, cutting through the circle to come face-to-face with Lizzie.

This one, she's actually, utterly, irretrievably bad. Deep down bad as though brought up simmering in it. She doesn't even flinch when she sees me. Instead she squares off defiantly, setting her jaw and planting her heels about shoulder width apart. In all likelihood, she loves this: someone else to join her in the middle of the ring. When I feel everybody's eyes focus on us, I realize that's exactly what's happening too.

“Elizabeth, I believe I made myself very clear to you last year. This event is not sanctioned. Break it up now, or I will call the police.”

She tips her head to the side and pouts, her lower lip jutting out pinkly, glistening with a thick coating of honey-like gloss. She pauses dramatically, waiting for everybody to watch.

“I don't know what you mean, Daniel,” she simpers. She tosses her hair back extravagantly, letting it fan out in the light.

I lower my voice to a near whisper. I don't want to play into her games. “You know exactly what I mean. I'm only going to give you one chance, Elizabeth.”

She stares me down for a full ten seconds, her gaze never wavering, never blinking. She doesn't even twitch. I've seen grown men, trained men with decades of military experience who can't manage that kind of aggression. Truly, she is a terrifying beast.

And after that ten seconds, she winks at me and sticks out her tongue, then thumbs the switch on the microphone and turns on her heel so she can address the crowd.

“Sounds like somebody is mad they’re late to the party!” she announces over the PA, sauntering away from me, then pausing to jerk her head back in my direction. The circle of men laughs along with her, some nervously, some loud enough to indicate they’re already too drunk to have much sense left.

I stand there, considering my options. With this many people in the room, it's likely that at least a couple dozen are underage. Getting arrested in this town for underage drinking is an automatic expulsion from school. Since it is not exactly Ivy League, getting expelled from the school would mean the last chance a lot of these kids have for a college education would be going up in smoke.

I really don't want to call the police. I'm only slightly infuriated that Lizzie saw through that immediately.

She spins back around to face me again, taking a ridiculously exaggerated pose of sympathy. “Come on, Daniel! Big spender! You know you want to bid on some of these fine Chi Rho Pi cherry pies! Am I right, everybody?”

She sweeps her hand around the crowd, whipping these jackasses up into a bunch of catcalls and hoots. They think she's on their side. She knows getting them riled up means I'll have to back down.

The goddamn bake sale. It's a sorority “tradition” to haze the new girls by putting them through an auction of sorts. Tell them the money is going to charity. Tell them it's all for fun. But after one of these guys gets drunk and forks over a few hundred dollars to charity, he's going to think he's got some girl’s cherry pie coming to him, by rights. It makes me sick to my stomach.

I didn't want to look, but I can't help it. To my right, there are three girls on platforms, facing out to the crowd. Overdressed — or should I say underdressed — blinking against the bright lights and not saying a word.

One of them is absolutely clueless. She keeps brushing long strands of golden hair over her head and making cute little waving gestures at different guys in the crowd. Wow. I'm glad she at least appears to be enjoying herself.

The next one, a dark-haired girl with big, liquid eyes and a stubborn set to her jaw, looks like she's about to explode. She keeps scanning the crowd with her eyes narrowed, as though picking out potential targets. That's a good girl. That's definitely the right attitude.

Behind them is the third girl, facing away from me. She sways back and forth from foot to foot, her head tipped back slightly as though she's looking at the lights. The way she is swaying, I wonder if she's drunk. Another freshman trying to bounce out of college the minute they get here. So stupid! Were kids this stupid when I was their age?

I walk around toward her, trying to get a bead on her attitude. This poor thing, who dressed her up for this occasion? She's wearing this pink, stretchy top that crisscrosses her rib cage, barely covering her chest. Her arms hang limply at her sides, swaying as she moves her weight back and forth. As I watch, she picks up one ankle and then the other in a curiously athletic gesture, like a gymnast stretching before a floor routine.

She breathes out slowly, too slowly for the situation she's actually in, as though she doesn't even really know what's going on. I see the column of her abdominal muscles flexing with each breath and the pulse in her throat. Subconsciously, I count it: 54. So she is an athlete, with a resting heart rate of 54 beats a minute. Not bad, considering somebody's trying to sell her ass for money.

Her short, bobbed hair curls underneath the curve of her jaw, just brushing that downy, smooth skin. She looks like a doll, one of those porcelain Russian dolls. From the languid grace of her long fingers, I can easily imagine her as a gymnast, one of those magically gifted young people who seem totally unaffected by gravity like the rest of us. She so dainty, so unaware what's going on, I want to pick her up, to fold her inside my jacket and carry her away from here. She doesn't deserve this.

“So, you guys ready to get going again? You ready for round two?” Lizzie hollers, whipping up the crowd. They yell and whoop back in her, waving their round paddles in the air.

At the sound, the young one in front of me suddenly looks down, making eye contact with me. Her lips part as though she gasps, and she blinks slowly, too slowly. She almost seems like she's not going open her eyes again.

“No fair trying to cut in, Daniel!” Lizzie announces over the PA. “You guys don’t want to see Daniel cheat, do you? Let him know!”

The air fills with a round of boos. I can feel the tension ratcheting up, slowly climbing into the yellow zone. This is not good.

“Or… is this your daddy, Kita? Did your daddy come to save you?”

Kita? Is that her name? After a short delay, she looks toward Lizzie and I'm fairly certain that must be her name. She's responding, but far too slowly.

“Mike? Doug? Are you guys gonna let Daniel just step in front of you on the bidding?”

Shit. Lizzie is seriously trying to get me into a fight. If there are men here who've already been bidding on Kita, I don’t want to think about what they'll do if they don't get what they think they paid for.

“Kita? That’s your name?” I hear myself say, stepping toward her. I still don't even have a plan. I don't know what to do.

She blinks those big green eyes again, so slowly I can almost see her eyelashes waving in the small breeze they make. She's breathing through her mouth and tips forward, almost too far. It would only take a moment. It would only take just a simple nudge this way and…

Before I even have time to iterate the steps of my plan in my mind, I catch her behind the knees and dump her into my arms. She curls up like a kitten against my chest, automatically folding her forearms behind my neck, nuzzling her forehead into my coat. She weighs nothing, absolutely nothing.

But this might not have been complete genius. The crowd erupts into a roar of disapproval and by my calculations I’ve got about twelve seconds to get the hell out of here. I walk around to the other two podiums, whistling between my teeth to get their attention. The girls both flinch, scowling at me immediately, but at least they have the sense to listen.

“You ladies need to get out of here immediately! Come with me, and you won't be here when the cops arrive!”

Without even waiting to see what they do, I turn around, still carrying Kita's feather-light body in my arms as I stride back toward the door. I hear yells behind me and can only hope that a few more seconds of confusion will work in my favor.

“Get back here, Daniel!”

“What the fuck is that guy doing?”

“Hey! Don't take her!”

“Give me my money back!”

Big Boy is smart enough to get the hell out of my way as I rush back to the entrance and into the open door of the Mercedes. To my absolute delight, the minute I’m in the back seat, the other two sorority pledges tumble in after me. Freddie slams the door closed and gets us back into traffic.

“What the hell happened in there?” pouts the one with the long blonde hair.

The other one crosses her arms over her see-through blouse and wedges her knees together. She glares at me darkly.

“Thanks,” she says meaningfully. It shuts the blonde one up, and for that I'm grateful. At least this one has the sense to know that I saved her ass.

Freddie drops them off at the sorority house, when I realize I've still got Kita in my lap. Somehow, during the whole ride I've been holding her to me, cradling her weight as though it's always been there. As though it's completely natural to have her pressed against me like this. And it's not natural, not at all. But every time I look down at her, her half-lidded eyes bring a wave of something that crashes through me. I don't even know what it is, but I can't let her go yet.

I think she's been drugged. She doesn't smell like alcohol, so that's the only thing that makes sense. Every few minutes my thumb just wanders to the inside of her wrist and I find myself counting her pulse again. Still 54, sometimes 58. She's fine, she’ll sleep it off.

So why can't I let her go?

But I can’t answer the question yet. I'm just going to see this mission through, and then debrief myself tomorrow. I will think more clearly about it tomorrow, when I know everything is taken care of here.

Freddie doesn't say anything, to his credit. He just gets me back home, parks the car in the rear garage and then silently makes his way out to his quarters. The overhead lights bang on in the garage all at once and I leave the car, still holding her fairy weight body to mine. Every once in a while she makes a small, kitten like sound, but she doesn't seem to mind.

I walk past the cars to the back entrance, opening the door quietly so as not to disturb her. As we move across the silent great room and then through the marble hallway to the loft stairs, I keep counting her breaths. In this space, where I'm so used to everything being completely silent except for mechanical whir of appliances and computer equipment, having an extra sound is sort of strange. Sort of nice, really. It fills out the space.

I’m not entirely sure where to put her. After standing at the bottom of the loft stairs for a moment, I consider how utterly inappropriate it is to bring a college student up to the bedroom level of a grown-ass man. A strange man. A man she doesn't even know… I realize it's also the safest choice. If she wakes up in the night, it's the best way I can hear her. If she gets sick. If she’s afraid.

That makes sense, or at least that's what I'm telling myself.

But I can feel it in my heart as I try to lay her on the simple, charcoal cotton bedspread in the guest bedroom. A tugging... a feeling like pushing her away from me means pulling on a connection I don't want to pull on. It's like she's already been knitted into my fabric, and the only way to get rid of her is to cut her away.

God, you are so stupid sometimes, I tell myself. Put her down.

And I do put her down. She is so small in this big bed, curled into a C shape. As soon as her head hits the smooth cotton pillow, her tiny hand slides up next to her face in a sweet gesture that is so trusting, so completely at ease, I’m flooded with gratitude.

Then she says something. I lean down to hear. “What?”

“Save me, Daddy,” she murmurs indistinctly. Something inside me jumps.

She's not afraid of me.

Though maybe she should be.

But I did give her a much better night than Lizzie had planned for her, certainly.

And hopefully she never knows that.