Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,2

toward the bathroom. When I was sure he couldn’t see me, I wiped away my tears with rough hands.

He’s an asshole, I told myself. All of them are. Everyone who might get hurt in this stupid thing deserved it.

Including me.

Especially me.

—

The girls used the bathroom backstage so the women’s bathroom in the Velvet Touch was usually empty. Occasionally we got a bachelorette party from Cherokee, or a married couple looking to get their freak on, and a few women would come into the bathroom and see that there was no toilet paper. Or hand soap.

They’d complain. But Zo, the owner, didn’t do much about it. He was too busy hosting drug deals. Being the crap conduit between madmen.

Tonight the women’s bathroom was empty. Finally, one thing going my way.

I pulled the brown paper towels out of the dispenser one after the other until I had a handful. I sparked my lighter and lit the bottom edge and tossed the handful in the garbage can. I made sure it was burning and then ducked back out into the hallway.

Eva was coming out of the back room, readjusting her tits in the neon-green bra she wore.

One of the bikers came out after her. That Rabbit dude with the fucked-up teeth and the menace that surrounded him like stink. He smacked Eva’s ass and then turned the other way, toward the back exit that led out to the rear parking lot.

Fuck.

My car, rigged to blow was in the rear parking lot. Like way out in the rear, practically buried in the tall weeds and kudzu. But still, I really was banking on that parking lot being empty.

Because it usually was.

It’s all right, I told myself. It’s a small bomb. It’s mostly for show. They’d only get hurt if they were like…sitting on the car.

But even as I thought that, I didn’t believe it.

If he gets hurt he deserves it. He’s a sociopath.

That I believed.

Eva strutted by me and then paused. I held my breath. Eva and I weren’t close, but she was fucking wily. I wouldn’t put it past her to recognize me.

“You smell that?” she asked.

“What?”

“Smoke.”

She reached past me and pushed open the women’s bathroom. Smoke came drifting out.

“Jesus Christ. Fucking Zo. Can’t take care of shit,” she muttered and then before I could stop her she stomped up the hallway and pulled the fire alarm.

Lights flashed and the deafening siren drowned out the bass line, and without it, my heart pounded out of rhythm.

So much for my save-my-own-skin survival instinct theory.

At the end of the hallway I could see the minor pandemonium caused by the fire alarm as everyone made a beeline for the front door.

Good, I thought. At least that was going my way.

The door across from me was the door to the meeting room, which also moonlighted as Zo’s office. That was the door I needed to open. Zo, Lagan, and Max, before he took off weeks ago, had been locked up in there for days. And I just saw Max leave so I knew he wasn’t in there. Which just left Zo and Lagan.

Come on, come on.

Finally the door swung open and Zo, in his shitty rayon shirt straight out of the eighties, came out. He turned back in the doorway and over his shoulder I could see Lagan, in his white linen suit, his thinning black hair slicked back straight off his high forehead.

He was tall and thin, and at one point I thought he was handsome, which was hilarious. But I also thought he was kind, which only proved how unhinged I’d been months ago.

Because despite his pale skin, he gave every impression of being a crow. A vulture. Something that feasted on death and rot.

I could not stop the shudder that ran through my body. He’d touched me. That man with his disgusting hands and horrible heart. He had been inside me at one time.

“Sit tight,” Zo said. “I’m sure it’s just some kind of prank.”

Apparently, Zo didn’t see me standing sideways in the doorway of the women’s bathroom, or smell the smoke seeping out from under the door behind me.

The power of the alarm drowned out every other sense.

Once he left the hallway, I slipped into his office, shut the door behind me, and hammered home the big deadbolt. The alarm was muffled in the room, which had been soundproofed against that heavy strip club bass line.

Adrenaline roared through me and I nearly felt like I was floating out of my body. I couldn’t