Well, that and Lenny.
Fucking Lenny. She’d known he wasn’t going to amount to anything when they were dating her junior year in high school, but it hadn’t mattered. He had the Celebrity and was willing to take her far away from her house and the shit that went on inside those four walls. So what if his idea of a job was gambling while she worked random waitressing gigs to make sure they had enough to scrape by? Frustrating, but certainly not the worst scenario she could imagine.
However, the situation they’d barely escaped in Nashville half a year ago had gone from merely frustrating to life-threatening. Lenny screwed up bad when he got himself twenty grand into debt to the biggest crime boss in Tennessee. Hell, Sicoli was probably the only crime boss in Tennessee, and Lenny had still managed to get mixed up with him, of all people.
They’d gotten the hell out of Nashville after Sicoli’s guys gave Lenny a reality check message—’cause nothing says “pay up or else” like putting a guy’s girl in the hospital with a few cracked ribs, a concussion, and a swollen face to rival the final scene in a Rocky movie—and ended up in the Podunk town of Alabaster.
Kat scoffed as she shook the contents of her purse, hoping her keys would rise to the top. What a total misnomer. The person who named this town had either been hopeful for its future or completely blind. There wasn’t anything white or translucent about the place, but rather a palette of greens and browns in the muddy water swamplands of the Mississippi.
But even as shitty as it was, Alabaster had proved to be decent as far as a place to lay low. That was until last month when Lenny got arrested for “possession with intent to sell” a fairly large stash of crystal meth. Crystal meth! When she’d finally gotten him to agree to stop gambling, she never thought in a million years he’d get into selling drugs. Not that she’d expected him to get an upstanding job this side of the law—after all, that’s why he kept her around—but drugs?
Either way, it didn’t matter. By getting arrested, Lenny had indirectly done her a favor. Living on her own for the first time made her realize she could stand on her own two feet. Her entire life she’d depended on someone else to take care of things. But not anymore.
Since he’d started his stint at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, Kat decided to save every penny she could and leave town—and Lenny—before he got out of prison.
And she’d foolishly thought things were going well. For the first time in ten years, she’d enjoyed her freedom, the chance to live without worrying about what sort of crap Lenny was up to. But now, ironically, the EHCC might as well be a safe house for him while she was stuck out here in the real world with guys who wanted something she couldn’t deliver.
Fucking beautiful.
Finally, she felt her keys and pulled them out, only to fumble them in her shaking hands and drop them in the dirt and shadows at her feet. Cursing, she bent down to retrieve them when she heard a loud shuffling sound several yards behind her. Her heart raced and the air whooshed out of her lungs at the thought of actually facing Sicoli’s thugs, until she heard the drunken rendition of an Alan Jackson song that accompanied the footsteps. Kat was fairly sure no self-respecting mob muscle would approach a target so carelessly. Or so out of tune.
Taking a deep breath, she grabbed her keys, stood up, and turned to face Rick, one of the triple-regulars at Lou’s. Meaning he was regularly there, regularly drunk, and regularly an asshole.
“Hey dere, Syd the Sexy. You been waitin’ on me?” he asked, bracing himself with one arm on the Celebrity.
Having to answer to an alias was bad enough. Rick turning it into a ridiculous nickname was even worse. Considering she’d just worked a double, she was tired, her feet ached, and the muscles in her upper back burned from strain. And that was all before she’d found the cheerful note on her windshield. So dealing with his shit now was almost more than she could handle.
“Fuck off, Mullineaux, I’m not in the mood. Go sober up in your truck. Which is in the front parking lot, by the way.” Then, hoping he’d take the hint, she turned away from him to unlock her door.
“Dere’s no need to be so damn rude, missy,” he spat out, his bayou accent thick and slurred. “You tink yer so much bedda dan de rest uh dem sluts dat work fer Lou, but you ain’t.”
His words crawled over her skin like a thousand spiders. She slipped her keys between her fingers and made a fist, creating the self-defense move she’d named after one of her favorite Marvel characters: the Wolverine. Not for the first time—not even for the hundredth—she wished she had actual superpowers. Then she wouldn’t have any problems dealing with scum like Rick Mullineaux.