All For 1 Page 2

  1:31 p.m.

  How … I don't even have words to form into thoughts. How can he be here, standing right in front of me like he never left? Those ice-blue eyes are impossible to forget. The first time I saw them, I was wrapped in shadows and despair, but even then, I knew. I knew that somehow, this man would change my life. He fucked my virginity away; I wanted him to. And then he left me there with nothing but the rain for company. Yet, when I returned home … he’d saved my life in more ways than one.

  I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure that I’d ever see him again. I’ve always known he’s there though. Always.

  But for us to run into each other like this? On accident?

  How is—

  1:32 p.m.

  —this possible?

  Staring at Cyrah, I have the strongest urge to run. I get the feeling if I do though, I’ll become an impossibility, a shooting star she’ll want to chase. Even though it fucking kills me, I stay relaxed. I look at this woman like she means nothing to me, like her brown eyes don’t cut into the depths of the soul I’ve never really been sure I had. When I’m around her though, everything changes. Ice flakes off the coldness of my heart; I feel it beating in my chest.

  It’s maddening, the want that surges through me, pools in my head and chest and cock.

  Exhaling sharply, I flare my nostrils and do my best to stay calm. I’ve been given lessons in self-control my whole life, taught to crush my feelings to dust and let them float away on the wind.

  So why does it seem like an impossibility right now, with Cyrah aka Rebecca staring at me like she’s been searching for me for years? I know she has; I just can’t ever let her catch me.

  “It’s you,” she whispers, her voice this husky purr that brings parts of me to life that are better off dead. I can’t afford to give into these feelings and neither can she. If I could, I’d take her into my arms and I’d never let her go. As things stand, that one simple moment under the bridge is all I’ll ever have.

  One.

  Because it’s my name, and it’s all that I’m worth.

  Just 1.

  1:33 p.m.

  A man is looking back at me from cool blue eyes, his brown hair shaved close to his head, his face an expressionless mask—at first. But then he stops and takes me in with a single flick of his gaze from head to toe, that mask crumbling away into shock.

  “It’s you,” I repeat, my voice trembling, my heart stuttering behind my ribs. “I was starting to think I’d dreamed you.” Blood. A cold dark night. A bridge. A man's warmth filling me. I blink to clear the memories, but they won't stop. They play again and again in my mind, filling me up the same way he did that night when he took me hard and fast, when he made me bleed in the only way I've ever loved. “It's you. It's actually you.”

  The man's face flickers through a series of emotions, like a children's kaleidoscope, sliding from one image to the next until he settles on an empty stare. It doesn't last long. Whatever it is he's feeling right now, it burns right through that blank gaze and cuts straight into my soul.

  He's tall, taller than I remember. And those eyes … they're so blue, like a summer sky. Bright and open, but cold at the same time. His mouth is like a wicked slash, carved through the dark stubble on his lower jaw. Hard. Angles. Lines. That's what this man is, a lesson in geometry. Muscles show beneath the black fabric of his shirt, bulge in his arms as he tightens his fingers into fists.

  He continues to stare at me as sweat drips down my spine, crawls across my collarbone and makes me gasp when it slides between my breasts.

  And then, then he smiles.

  The look is wicked. Sin. He's all sin this man. Sin and power and purpose.

  I wonder for a brief second if he's even human.

  And then I wonder if I care.

  1:34 p.m.

  Cyrah Alessa Crouse.

  It's the name I gave her, not the one she was born with. That name is gone, wiped from the system like it was never there. I did it to protect her, to keep her safe. This … woman standing before me is the only person I've ever loved, the only human being on this planet that I would die for.

  And we've never met. Not officially.

  I try to keep my cover, putting on an award-winning smile, just like I've been taught.

  I'm not sure that it works.

  “Do I know you?” I ask, and I think my breath sounds husky. Fuck. I try not to let my emotions show through, but I can't help myself. I've never been this twisted up and turned around in my entire life. I've been at the business end of a gun, shot people dead from the other side. I've bled and I've made others bleed. I've outrun cops and chased down criminals. But I've never felt like this before.

  Fuck.

  “You,” she says again, because Cyrah Alessa Crouse isn't an idiot. I might not know her like I'd want to, but I know of her. About her. I send her money every month. What meager scraps the government pays me for my life, I give to her. Always have. Always will. Until the day I die, I will protect Cyrah with everything I have, and I'm still not sure why. Something about the way those tears crawled down her face that day touched me and I haven't been able to shake the feeling since. “It's you, isn't it?”

  “I don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about, sweetheart, but if you want to fill me in, I'd be more than glad to listen?” I light up a cigarette and pretend I enjoy smoking. I don't, but whatever makes me look human, right? I think I was once, when I was born. Maybe. But when the government formally adopts you at birth, trains you from your first breath to your last to be a soldier, you have to wonder. “Maybe over a drink or two?”

  “One,” Cyrah whispers and my eyes go wide. Did I tell her that all those years ago? Did I tell her that I have a number and just a number? That I'm not worth even the simple courtesy of a name?

  But then I piece myself back together and realize she's staring at my arm. 1. It's tattooed on my forearm in black. A constant reminder of who I am and what I have.

  One.

  One purpose.

  And that's to serve.

  I stare back at Cyrah, at her headful of curls blowing wildly in the wind. Her satin dark eyes. Her smooth brown skin. Her full ripe lips. The way her dark lashes curve up towards her forehead when she blinks at me. I've caught her by surprise; she's got me by the balls.

  Shit.

  She takes a step forward. I should take one back, but I can't seem to move from this spot.

  Transfixed.

  I'm not sure if that description fits her or me better.

  Cyrah wets her lips and I blink hard, like I'm trying to clear a vision from my gaze. Only this one, it doesn't fade away when I open my eyes.

  “You got rid of him for me, didn't you?” she asks softly, but I can't break cover. I'm still clutching the mic and cam I took to the mission; if my supervisors tune in and find me with the girl I send all my money to, well … let's just say that it won't end well for either of us.

  “I don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about,” I say, dropping my cigarette to the pavement and catching Cyrah's wrist when she reaches up to touch my face. I draw the line there. I can't feel her fingers against my cheek because then I'll remember the feel of her body surrounding me, the hot wet heat of her cunt against my cock. The icy drip of her tears against my thumb. The searing burn of her mouth. “Whoa, there. I don't know who you think I am, but I'm not looking to get friendly today, alright?”

  I shove Cyrah's hand back and watch as her face falls, crumples in on itself until the wonder's gone and there's nothing left but anger. Cyrah, as much as I've tried to help her, save her from the safety of the shadows, she's an angry girl. Pissed. Her cheeks darken and her pupils widen as she stares up at me with clenched teeth and trembling fists.

  “I'm not a prostitute,” she snarls because she knows the rep of the Daily about as well as I do. Probably better. This is her game as much as it is mine. Me and Cyrah, we're the good guys, but we'll always be on different sides.

  The thoug
ht makes me sick.

  “Because of you,” she adds before I can say anything else. “I escaped that trap because of you.”

  1:45 p.m.

  After all these years, I find him. The man I've been looking for since I was eighteen years old. He just … appears, walking out of the Daily Motel's shitty rundown office with a blank expression on his face and an agenda burning in his gaze. For a split-second, I was freaked that he was here as a client, that he was fucking one of my girls in the cheap tiny rooms upstairs. But then our gazes locked and I knew.

  So how could he shut himself down like that and act like seeing me meant nothing? His stance, his face, his whole body said that I was everything.

  He sends me money. Anonymously. But he sends it month after month like clockwork, even when I refused to take it at first. For an entire year, I shredded the money orders and tossed them aside. Men don't give girls money for no reason, not even girls they've fucked. And I'm no whore. Never was. Never will be.

  But even the most prideful have breaking points. I was hungry. I was homeless. I had no shoes.

  So I started cashing the money orders, fearful that he'd soon show up and demand payment, this nameless man I knew for all of fifteen minutes. He never did, this dude with the number one tattooed on his arm.

  I close my eyes and pull my beer closer. The coldness of the bottle is a welcome sensation against my sweaty palm.

  All this time, all this mystery, and I run right into him. And then he walks away. I clench my jaw hard and squeeze the bottle. Soon, I'll make myself head back across the street and into the lobby of the Daily. I'll do what I always do and pass over what little cash I have for information, try to figure out if Greer Coburn ever walked in those doors. If she ever walked out.

  First, I'm going to finish my drink and give myself a rare moment to think. I'm always go-go-going, fighting a one woman war against the cruel underground world that the people in this city refuse to acknowledge.

  Rampant sex trafficking in the Pac Northwest? No way. We're the most tolerant people in the world, right? We accept others. We protect them.

  Not my girls.

  I close my eyes and lean my forehead against my arm.

  When I glance up, I see red and blue lights across the street and my heart explodes inside my chest.

  An ambulance … a firetruck … police at the Daily. That's never good.

  6:41 p.m.

  Greer Coburn's mother cries, just like I knew she would. It seems like a huge duh, but it's not. Usually, they get angry. At me, at themselves, at whoever. Or go blank. That's the worst actually, when they don't react at all.

  I let Mrs. Coburn hold me tight for several minutes, her tears warm on my chest as she weeps for the daughter she'll never see again. When she pulls back and goes for her purse to pay me, I decline. I always get half up front, before I even start looking. I do that because I know that afterwards … afterwards, I feel too human to collect money. How could I take a damn thing from this woman who's lost everything already?

  “Call me if you need to talk,” I tell her, handing over my number. I wish I had business cards, but as things stand, all I have is a blue lined piece of paper with my digits scrawled in black ink. Mrs. Coburn thanks me, looking at me from eyes as green as her daughter's once were. Drenched in tears, the green of her irises reminds me of kelp, swimming in the navy of the sea.

  “You truly are an angel, Cyrah Crouse,” she says before closing the door softly in my face. I stare at the weathered surface of the wood for a long moment before shutting my eyes and taking a deep breath.

  If I were an angel, maybe I could've delivered you a daughter instead of a corpse.

  9:28 p.m.

  Back at home, I change my clothes and find myself in the kitchen with an entire countertop covered in food. On the table, a scented candle flickers brightly against a backdrop of light jazz and the gentle, almost inaudible buzz of the TV. I need all that sound and color in my life to stay sane. I know a ton of people, care a whole hell of a lot about them, but in all reality, I'm lonely.

  So lonely.

  I drag a cluster of green onions from a bag and start to chop them up, tossing them in the already boiling waters of my soup pot. Tonight, I'm making Chinese. Tomorrow, sushi. The day after that, who knows? I can't travel the world myself, so I have my food take me places.

  I start to hum to myself, an African song that my dad used to sing to me. He was a proud man, a good man. But nothing lasts forever.

  My breath hitches and I start to chop faster, channeling my anger into the mushrooms lying in front of me. I can't think about dad's death. Mom's. My own loss of innocence. Four significant moments drenched in blood and there's only one I care to remember.

  I suck a huge breath in between my teeth and pause at the gentle rocking motion of my knife.

  At the door, there's a knock. At this time of night, that can only mean one thing.

  Another girl's gone missing.

  10:15 p.m.

  “What a crock of shit,” 2 says, his voice a gravelly mess. He's never been good at fitting in. When 2 talks, people look, and they listen. It makes him terrible for any undercover work. Good thing he's off the clock right now. “Seventeen years old, kidnapped right off the streets in Okinawa. By the time we found her … ” 2 trails off because he knows I know, and I don't want to fucking hear about it. We're not supposed to care, but some of us do anyway. I don't know why, and I can't stop it either. It is what it is.

  “What are you doing here then?” I ask him as I sip my beer and cast a wary glance around the bar. I get one day off a month and I spend it here. Go figure. What a waste of time. I should be on the job right now, looking into this Greer Coburn thing. She's the fifth girl from Portland to go missing and die in the last six weeks. There'll be more. There always are. “You've got assignments in Japan and China, so what do they need from you in Portland?”

  2 pauses, his dark hair cropped short like mine, his number tattooed in black across his forearm. In so many ways, we're identical, like clones or something. It never used to bother me, not when I was a kid. In fact, I liked it. There was something to that deep-seated feeling of belonging, that surety that would sweep over me when we stood together before our morning exercises. Just a row of boys without smiles, with short cropped hair, with numbers tattooed on their arms.

  A shiver travels down my spine.

  I don't much like it anymore. Part of me seethes with the thought that I'll never be different, that I'll never stand out or mean anything to anybody.

  I suck in a harsh breath that 2 notices, but doesn't mention.

  “The number of girls being funneled out of the area is growing at an exponential rate.” 2 pauses and pitches his voice just so, just enough that the sound infiltrates the raucous babbling in the background but doesn't stand out. “They're shipping them all over the world, selling them to the highest bidder.” 2 gives me a look that's hard to interpret. I think it's disgust. Hard to tell with him sometimes. “The ring leader of this one's a real asshole, some guy named Hui Yin. He's made millions off these girls. Millions.”

  2 takes a sip of his beer as I stare at him, curling the fingers of my right hand into a fist. I focus on his words and try to ignore the fact that I ran into Cyrah Crouse today.

  My heart starts to pound and a bead of sweat runs down my forehead.

  Fuck.

  I can't think of her right now, not here. Like me, 2's spent his entire life learning how to read people, and for whatever reason, when it comes to Miss Crouse, I can't seem to hide my emotions.

  “I'm gonna head home,” I tell 2 and he grunts noncommittally. By home, I mean whatever hotel room it is that I'm squatting in tonight. I don't have a home, not really. Never have. The only place I belong is on the job and on the hunt.

  Everything else—including Cyrah Crouse—is inconsequential.

  Or, at least it's supposed to be.

  11:19 p.m.

  There's a pair of pictures on my
phone. Identical twins. Big smiles. Warm brown eyes.

  I feel sick.

  Their mother, Keesha, was in hysterics, sobbing on my welcome mat. When I let her in, she practically threw a series of twenty dollar bills at me and quite literally fell to her feet, begging for my help. She made so much damn noise that Anouk showed up, knocking anxiously, her nine mil tucked into the back of her skinny jeans. I made her go home, but not before grabbing a Tupperware container full of leftovers from my fridge.

  Keesha left a while ago, but not before texting me a series of photos. Too many of them really. Most of them too personal for me to look at without feeling sick. Her daughters—Aneeta and Lanae—haven't been home in almost a week. Keesha admitted that coming here to see me was one of the hardest things she'd ever done. Guess she knows that I'm the last stop. That after the police say they've done all they can do, and the news stations turn up their noses, it's time to see me.

  It's time to accept that maybe, just maybe, I'll bring home daughters. But that I'm also just as likely to bring home bodies. Or even worse, nothing at all.

  I take a deep breath and close my eyes.

  Most of my business consists of pimps, roommates, and boyfriends, but lately I've been getting whole families in here looking for their lost loved one. Something isn't right. It's one thing for girls with no roots to go missing. It's like plucking a flower right off the end of a stem. That's not so hard at all. It's quite another for girls with sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers to be dug up and hauled away. It causes a much bigger stir and it's a hell of a lot more difficult to cover up.

  Something rancid is seeping into Portland's streets. Something much worse than I'm usually used to dealing with.

  If I'm not careful, it'll take me down along with it.

  1:00a.m.