“Then why were you so upset?” She narrowed her eyes and studied Taryn. “Was he a bad kisser?”
“No!” Her cheeks flamed. “That was... He was... The kissing was great. I just got hit with some bad memories.”
“Oh,” Dani said quietly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed.”
“Pfft. That’s what friends are for. Before I was so rudely interrupted,” she gave her friend a wide smile, “what I was going to say was that he’s going to help us figure out why Giselle’s pimp was here.”
Dani had settled back in her chair, but now she leaned forward again. “How?”
“He’s a hacker, so he’s going to use his computer magic.” Taryn waggled her fingers in the air to indicate the magic.
“Didn’t you say he worked for Tremaine?” Dani asked.
Taryn nodded.
“Won’t that be a problem?”
“It would,” she said, “except he’s going to be doing it here. That old hacker chair in the basement. That’s why he was here last night. He was updating it so he could use it.”
Dani considered her words. “It still seems like it would be easier to just get rid of him.”
“Ash?” Taryn’s eyes widened.
“No, the pimp.”
Taryn swiveled in her chair. “Yeah, probably. But we don’t do that. And we won’t make an exception,” she growled, preempting Dani’s suggestion. She hadn’t seen Dani’s bloodthirsty side in a while.
“He’s going to be a problem,” Dani repeated.
“I know. But first, Ash will help us determine how he figured out Giselle was here. Then we’ll decide on next steps.”
The fact that he had uncovered Giselle’s location was unacceptable. But she needed help to figure out where she’d made a mistake.
“I checked on Giselle this morning,” Dani said. “She’s still a bit freaked out that he tracked her down. Not to mention, still processing the fact that she’s free.”
Dammit. Taryn should have done that, but she’d been too caught up in her own pain. “Thank you for taking care of her.”
“Of course. That’s what we do.” Dani looked like she was deciding whether to ask a question. “Do you know what you’re going to do with her?”
Taryn rubbed her forehead. Dani had voiced one of Taryn’s own concerns. “No. Not yet. She’s the youngest we’ve ever rescued. She’s too young to work at the bar. Do we send her to school? Find some family to foster her? I have no idea what to do with a sixteen-year-old. At her age...” She trailed off.
At sixteen, Taryn had been on the streets, living some of the worst years of her life. She rubbed her shoulder, where the prosthetic joined the skin and bone. “Do you have any idea what to do with a teenager? I sure as hell don’t.”
Dani shook her head. “At her age, I was turning tricks and drugged out of my goddamn mind. All I wanted was my next fix.”
“If you’d had a choice at her age, what would you have wanted to do?’
Dani blinked in wonder, then stared past Taryn’s shoulder. “I... don’t know,” she said after a while. “My family sucked, so I wouldn’t have gone back to them. And I wasn’t the type who liked school.”
“I don’t know what I would’ve wanted either,” Taryn said. That was a lie. She’d wanted to know why her parents had abandoned her. But she’d finally made peace with not knowing. “Shit, I guess we ask her what she wants.”
“Glad I’m not the boss.” Dani laughed. “So, we’ve got one baby former prostitute. One stalker pimp. And one hot hacker. What next?”
Chapter28
Ash tooka deep breath and pushed open the door to Razor Jack’s. He’d thought long and hard about whether he should come back tonight, given what had happened yesterday. Seeing Taryn wasn’t going to get any easier, no matter how long he waited.
The bar was hopping when he walked in. Every table was full and people were lined up two deep at the bar. What the hell was going on?
