Out of the Ashes by Kara Thomas

Author:Kara Thomas [Thomas, Kara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

Two p.m. on the dot. The air was thick with the threat of rain. I was in the parking lot of Cloud 69, psyching myself up to take another run at Brenna Corbin.

She knew more about Dani, about Rhodes, than she offered to me in my car yesterday. I’d been inclined to think it was because Brenna had no reason to want to help me.

Inside the club, I blinked, my eyes transitioning to the darkness. The stage at the center of the room was awash in green and blue. I made my way to the bar, aware of the lone dancer in the club, her tattooed arms wrapped around one of the poles. A dishwater blonde in a black bikini, bony, back arched like a cat. Stretching, bored.

The bouncer, an enormous bald man dressed all in black seated in a folding chair by the stage, disregarded me. Probably pegged me for a desperate day drinker.

Behind the bar, a door thwacked open. Brenna Corbin barreled out, carrying a crate of clean glasses. The sight of me sitting at the bar nearly sent them crashing to the floor. Brenna was quiet as she composed herself, but I detected the tremor in her fingers as she stacked the glasses under the bar.

“I can’t talk while I’m working,” she said.

“Okay. Do you think they’ll talk to me about Dani?” I made a show of looking around the club. “Think the bouncer knows something?”

Brenna rounded the bar. I flinched, as if she were about to slap me, but she waved over the bouncer. He lifted his head, curious.

Brenna said, “Watch the bar for a sec.”

She took off toward a curtained room labeled PRIVATE. I assumed I was meant to follow. Down a grimy tiled hall occupied by an ATM and two toilets. Brenna held open a door that led to a locker room.

The space smelled of sweat and hair spray, but Cloud 69’s strippers were a tidy bunch by the looks of the dressing tables. Hair straighteners with the cords wrapped neatly around the handles, lip glosses arranged by color.

Brenna shut the door behind me. “What the fuck do you want from me?”

“Did Dani stay with you when her boyfriend kicked her out?”

“Yeah, for like a week. What does it matter?”

“You said you weren’t friends.”

Brenna turned her back to me, strode over to a locker marked by a holographic sticker in the shape of a lotus blossom. “We weren’t. But she had nowhere else to go, and I wasn’t gonna tell her no when she showed up at my house at two a.m. tweaked out of her mind.”

“Brenna. What are you too afraid to tell me?”

“Nothing. I just don’t fucking feel like talking about her, okay?” Brenna used the open door of her locker as a shield, blocking out her face, but she couldn’t hide the tremor in her voice.

I closed the space between us. “Why didn’t you want to talk about Rhodes?”

Brenna slammed the locker. She shut her eyes, palming the door, as if in prayer.

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