Font Size
Line Height

Page 11 of Midnight’s Captive (Stroke of Midnight #2)

The antsy feeling was back and Taryn was grateful for the manual labor of working behind the bar. She’d sent Dani on a break and taken over. Slinging drinks had a way of emptying your brain. There was no substitute for focusing on doing it right, making the drinks as the orders came in. Keeping up with demand. Making conversation. Tracking payments.

She’d been brought to Razor Jack’s unwillingly. The previous Jack had purchased her from her pimp and kept her for his personal use in one of the back rooms. When he wasn’t using her in the bedroom, he put her to work behind the bar. Surprisingly, she’d taken to it. She was good at mixing the drinks and interacting with the customers. And she’d enjoyed it.

Despite the fact that the bastard who’d been the previous Jack had made her life a living hell, she’d never blamed the bar. Razor Jack’s had provided a roof over her head and almost regular meals.

Thinking of her deceased tormentor, she slammed a glass down on the counter harder than intended.

“Rough night?” a voice rumbled.

A voice she immediately recognized.

She’d spent more time than she’d admit thinking about its owner last night. Taryn looked up and there he was.

“Naw, it’s a pretty good one so far. How about you?”

“I’ve had better.” Ash gave her a tired smile.

That urge to learn what was bothering him—because something clearly was—was stronger than it should be.

“Two beers and a couple of house shots!” A waitress called out her order.

She’d never admit it, but Taryn was grateful for the interruption. “Sorry, gotta take care of this.”

She moved down the counter to pour the drinks and settle her thoughts. Why was she so interested in his day? He wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight. They weren’t supposed to meet again until tomorrow.

Setting the drinks on the tray, she filled a few more orders before there was a break in the crowd. Taryn pulled on her moderately interested bartender persona and approached him. “Whiskey?”

Ash shook his head. “Surprise me.”

He was dressed more casually today, jeans and a long-sleeved tee. Tattoos peeked out from beneath the collar.

Her fingers tingled with the desire to reach over the bar and trace the thin lines. Bad idea, Taryn. Bad, bad idea.

Instead, she gathered the ingredients for a Flashin’ Jack, a house special she could make on autopilot. Her focus was frayed and she needed every bit of it to talk to Ash.

She slid the bright yellow drink across the polished wood counter to him.

He looked at it, then at her. “Cheers.” He raised his glass to her, then brought it to his lips.

Ash didn’t take a tentative sip like she expected. No, he took a big swallow.

“Wow. That wasn’t what I was expecting.” He took another drink, savoring it slowly this time.

Taryn felt a rush of pride. Due to its garish color, no one expected the Flashin’ Jack to be a quality drink. Idiots. Her bar didn’t cheap out on the house special. Only quality booze went into that drink. “I know. Chip or tab?”

“Don’t suppose I have any credit left from last night?”

She laughed. “Not unless you still have that credit chip you tried to leave as a tip.”

Another drink order came in and she stepped away. When she returned a few minutes later, a credit chip sat on the bar in front of him. She wondered whose name the account would be under this time.

“You heard about that, huh?”

She swiped the chip. “J. Banderlee” popped up on the screen. Yeah, definitely not his chip. Not her place to worry about J. Banderlee and their credits, though.

“You want a tab?”

He shook his head, so she swiped the chip and returned it to him. Then, to make sure he knew she was dead serious, she braced her hands on the bartop and looked deep into his eyes. “I hear about everything in my bar.”

And it was true. Part constant presence, part intensely loyal staff, Taryn knew everything that happened here. This was her home, her business, her future.

“I didn’t mean whatever last night’s bartender seemed to think I meant.” Concern and confusion were reflected in his gaze.

She smiled. “Yeah, I explained that to her. I don’t think she’ll be quite so quick to turn down a tip that size next time.”

“Good to know.” He laughed, a deep earthy sound that sent shivers up her spine. Good shivers.

Dammit. Why was he affecting her this way?

“You never did tell me about that poor glass,” he said, the humor still in his voice. “Why were you abusing it?”

Damn, he was charming. She shook off the unwelcome attraction. “You’re right, the poor glass was innocent. I was thinking too hard.”

“Credit for your thoughts?” He danced the credit chip over his fingertips.

She smiled at his antics and shook her head. “Already forgotten.”

He leaned closer, studying her.

Her gaze flicked over the bar, and she made a pretense of checking on the other customers. Instinct told her that he would be more perceptive than she’d like.

“Can I tell you about my sister?” Serious words. A serious face.

Damn, he was persistent. “We’re meeting tomorrow, Mr. Cutter. We can do story time then.” She used his last name as a shield, a way to maintain distance between them.

“Ash,” he said.

“What?” she asked.

“Just call me Ash. Mr. Cutter makes me... uncomfortable.”

That was weird, but fine, she would call him what he wanted. “Fine, Ash, we’re meeting tomorrow.”

“I went to see her tonight,” he blurted when she was about to turn away.

“Her?” Taryn asked, even though she knew what his answer would be.

“My sister. Hope.”

Sorrow coated his words and tugged at her heart. Enough so that she signaled to a customer down the bar that she would be with him in a moment. “At Tremaine headquarters?” Dammit, she really should wait to have this conversation.

But it was her job as a bartender to listen when customers spoke. Dammit.

“No,” he said softly. “The Tremaine hospital.”

Her jaw dropped open and she snapped it closed before Ash noticed. That was terrible. And would make it nearly impossible to get the girl out. She’d already been leaning toward rejecting his request. This would make that decision easier.

At least, that was what she told herself when she placed a comforting hand on his forearm. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “I’ll be right back. I need to take care of another customer.”

She poured two beers with an easy smile for the customer at the end of the bar and refilled Jed’s drink as she passed by. Despite outward appearances, her brain was still struggling to process what Ash had told her.

She drifted back toward him, drawn by an unwilling need to hear more.

“This is my sister,” he said as soon as she reached him. He slid his phone across the bar toward her.

Reluctant to take it, she nevertheless picked up the comm. A young woman with a hint of baby fat still in her cheeks looked out at her. If Taryn had to guess, she’d say the girl was around eighteen. Hope had an impish smile and gray eyes that sparkled. The dark hair that looked unruly on Ash fell into a tangle of curls threaded with blue, pink, and purple on his sister.

“Cute,” Taryn said. It took effort to keep a sense of distance. And with the next words out of her mouth, she completely failed. “She’s sick?” She set the phone back on the counter, turned away so Hope wasn’t staring hopefully back at her.

“Brain burn.” His voice caught with emotion. He flipped to another picture on his phone. If he hadn’t told Taryn that the two figures were the same person, she never would have guessed. Lank hair, slack features. So much medical equipment. “She’s in a coma.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Ever since he’d mentioned the hospital, Taryn had assumed some type of injury. She knew next to nothing about brain burn, only that it happened to hackers and was never good.

Using Hope’s injury and need for care to keep Ash in line was as effective as it was vile. The ruthless part of Taryn even admired it. She’d learned how threats could motivate people from the best.

“What happened?”

“It was a perfectly normal hack,” Ash said, his voice sad. “We’d made it past the early defenses. They weren’t too hard, weren’t too easy. No different than any other hack. Except it was. We just didn’t know it yet.”

“Hope’s a hacker too?” Dammit. Why had she asked that? Taryn didn’t want to give Ash false hope. Especially now that she’d seen all the equipment required to care for her.

“Yeah.” His sad smile broke her heart. “She wanted to be just like me. So we—I—trained her. She was good, proficient, but she was young and smart. Destined for better things than hacking.”

Taryn nodded and was grateful—again—when more orders appeared in the system for her to fill. If you didn’t come from money, it was so easy for this city to chew you up and spit you out. Hope, like so many other young girls, deserved more than what she’d gotten.

“You were hacking the Tremaine Corporation?”

He nodded. “Then, all sorts of firewalls popped up. We could stop some, but they were too fast. It was obvious that someone knew we were coming.”

He paused, swallowed hard. “I told Hope to pull out. She was right beside me on the net. When I came out of it, my chair was surrounded by Tremaine Security. Hope was next to me in her chair, but she... wasn’t there.”

“And that’s brain burn?” Taryn asked carefully.

“Nobody knows exactly,” Ash said, “but that’s my best guess. You get pulled out of a hack before fully disengaging your consciousness. You come out without actually coming out.”

“I’m sorry.” It sounded awful. Taryn placed her hand on his, a simple instinctive move that surprised her.

She pulled her hand away before he could react. Where the hell had that come from?

She wasn’t a toucher and the Jack certainly didn’t go around offering comfort. That could ruin the reputation she worked so hard to maintain.

Off balance, Taryn settled into her most comfortable role: the Jack. “We can discuss this further tomorrow.”

Tomorrow she’d be ready for him. She’d have her talking points and would let him down as gently as the Jack could. Going up against a corporation was the definition of insanity and would threaten everything she was working to build.