Page 65 of Two Kinds of Stranger

The alarms sounded like thunder. Steel doors banged open. Boots thudded on the floor. Cries and screams rent the air and Elly looked on as Suze fell to the floor, and the blonde continued to stab at her left side.

They landed in a pile and were enveloped by corrections officers, one of them grabbing the blonde round the waist and hoisting her clean into the air before pivoting and slamming her down onto the concrete floor, face first.

Calls for a medic.

The blonde was cuffed, unconscious, and dragged out by two COs, her face a bloody ruin. One of the COs picked up the shiv, while more worked on Suze.

Elly got up, moved toward them, trying to help, but she was told to back away.

The chaos was over as a medical team came in, and the house fell quiet.

Suze was carried out in the arms of a medic, her blood dark and shiny on the floor.

And, in the corner, her back against the wall, Nance glared at her, wearing a wicked smile.

There would be no one to protect her in the cell tonight against Nance.

With all that she had been through, Elly knew if she didn’t do something she may not live another day. She stared at the bank of three phones on the wall. Soon as the COs left, she had to make a call.

Her life depended on it.

21

Logan

Logan sat at a bar in the St. Regis, wearing his Armani suit, Versace shirt, Ferragamo Oxfords and the Cartier wristwatch.

He had made a mental note to take off the watch if things turned dark later. He didn’t want to get blood on the timepiece.

He swirled the hand-cut cube of ice in his whiskey glass. He drank Nikka Yoichi, twenty-year-old single malt. Depending on the bar, you could pay between two hundred and three hundred and fifty dollars for a single pour. The bottle was six grand, retail, if you could find one. He only drank one glass, though. Not because he couldn’t afford it, but because he didn’t want the alcohol to dull his senses.

‘Hello, stranger,’ said a voice.

He got up off his barstool and smiled at his date.

Grace wore a little black dress, silver heels and a delicate silver chain round her neck. The pendant was a heart-shaped locket. Scratched. A little beaten up, but clearly treasured. The dress was off the rack, and the color had faded slightly on the shoulders, as if it had been worn on many hot summer days. Still, it fitted well. Her hair was up. She smelled sweet, like strawberries and lime.

‘You look wonderful,’ he said.

‘So do you,’ she said with a smile, a little out of breath, and not from the exertion of walking through the lobby. Logan noticed a vein pulsing in her long throat.

She was nervous.

He pulled out a barstool, and held it steady while Grace stepped up and shifted onto the seat. It was then that Logan noticed the seam at the back of her dress, just to the right of the zipper. The stitching was thicker for about two inches on this side of the seam, and some of the thread was a dark navy color instead of black. This suggested the dress was not only cheap, but old, and had been repaired more than once.

She ordered a mojito and they talked a little about life in the city. As well as studying English Literature at NYU, Grace worked in a Starbucks in the Bronx five days a week and waited tables in a restaurant on the weekends.

‘When do you have time to study?’

‘I’m always reading. On the subway, on my break– books for college and for me. Mostly I like dark romance.’

‘What’s dark romance?’

‘It’s like a romance novel, but it’s fantasy and the characters kinda hate each other at first, or sometimes the girl has sworn an oath to kill the guy, or the guy is a vampire or a monster or something, but they fall in love despite their differences. . .that kind of thing. It’s cool. What do you read?’

‘Mostly academic studies and non-fiction, for work.’

‘What do you do?’