Page 18 of The Allure of Ruins

“Very badly,” I confessed quietly, unable to look at him.

“No. Don’t hide. Eyes here.”

I met his gaze.

He took a breath, girding himself. “Were you molested?”

“No.”

“But you had the crap kicked out of you on a daily basis?”

“I did.”

“Broken bones?” he asked, and I heard how professional he sounded, like he was interviewing a witness, and for whatever reason, how dispassionate he was helped.

“Many. Yes.”

“Until when?”

“Until I ran away at sixteen,” I said, starting to walk, knowing where we were headed. He immediately got moving as well.

“You realize the trauma you suffered up until you were sixteen would be enough for a lot of people to be fucked up forever, right?”

I nodded.

“But then something else happened. Someone new came into your life.”

“Correct.”

“How did it start?”

“I got a job at a twenty-four-hour laundromat in West Hollywood, and one night this guy comes running in, and he’s bleeding, and begs me to let him into my cubicle so the guys who are after him don’t get him.”

“And you did that?”

I made a face at him. “Oh hell no. I put him in the big washer for rugs and quilts and whatever and flipped the latch so he could breathe. When three guys came in ten minutes later—all big guys, maybe Russian, definitely Slavic from the accents and the sound of the words—I put on my bored face, and they talked to me through the plexiglass.”

I had described how I was locked in there until eight in the morning, showed them the combination panel on the outside—didn’t show them the override on the inside—and yawned a lot and said they could search all around if they didn’t believe me.

“You have cameras,” one of the men said, pointing at all of them, one in every corner of the room. “Show us the footage.”

“Those don’t work,” I lied.

“Then what is to stop us from shooting you right now?” another guy said, pulling his gun from his shoulder holster and pointing it at me.

I tapped on the six-inch-thick plexiglass. “All I have to do is duck and hit the silent alarm under the counter here.”

They looked at me, at the box I was in, and when I arched an eyebrow, the guy with the gun holstered his weapon. It was a good choice. The police station was five minutes away, and a lot of patrol officers stopped in to say hello at three in the morning when there wasn’t much else to do. Even criminals were in bed at that time.

They gave the laundromat a cursory check, saw nothing out of place, and left. I waited fifteen minutes before I went to the washer and informed the guy that he could come out. He said no, thank you, that he would remain there.

“But you’re bleeding,” I reminded him.

“It stopped already, and I’ve been hurt worse than this.”

Since I had been as well, I got a couple of clean towels from the lost-and-found bin, opened the door, and gave them to him. I also got him a bottle of water from the machine and then closed the door again. He thanked me, and I returned to my cubicle. The same guys came back another twenty minutes after that, checked more thoroughly the second time, and still found nothing. They would have had to open every machine, and by then, there were college students in there watching them, eyeing them suspiciously. When they asked me if I was sure I hadn’t seen anyone, I squinted at the main guy like he was stupid. He groaned and left. Not even mad, disgusted with himself was my guess.

Now, had any of them been remotely smart, they would have known that locking me in a cubicle all night—what would happen if there was a fire?—was against the law. But they didn’t, so I got lucky. Not one of them knew what an OSHA violation was.