Mercy (Atlee Pine #4)(14)

At the end she had given away over half her winnings.

She knew what the term “Good Samaritan” meant, but only because of the Bible reading. But that was not why she was doing it. She did it because today she had money and today they didn’t, but needed it. Keep it simple was Cain’s motto. When you thought too hard about it, you tended to want to keep what you had and dare others to try to take it.

She got back to her place and completed her daily workout with pushups, floor dips, chin-ups on a bar wedged in a doorway, lots of ab and core work with a medicine ball, and exercises with a kettle-bell she’d gotten for a buck from a gym going out of business. Then bodyweight lunges and squats and calisthenics followed by shadow boxing; she finished with some heavy-duty stretching.

The strong and vigilant don’t always survive, but it damn sure improves your chances.

She showered in cold water because that was all there was. She had started her period late last night. She had had her first period at age eleven while she was with the Atkinses. She thought she was dying when the cramps came and the blood dripped from down there. She had begged Desiree to help her. The woman had laughed and thrown her a roll of paper towels, telling her that it would come every month, like clockwork. She had added, “They sell stuff for it, but the paper towels will do for you. It’s not like you’re going anywhere. So deal with it.”

And Cain had dealt with it using the paper towels. Until Wanda Atkins had explained to Cain what was really going on, and given her boxes of tampons. That had been an eye opener. She remembered asking Wanda if boys had periods, too.

“No,” she had said. “Good thing, because they couldn’t handle it.”

Cain believed she spoke the literal truth.

Wanda had been nice to her, sneaking her books, taking care of some medical needs, bringing her some extra food. But she never once made any effort to free her. There were limits, Cain supposed, to people’s generosity. And morals.





CHAPTER





11


FOR TWENTY-FIVE HOURS A WEEK and nine bucks an hour Cain operated a forklift loading packing crates onto tractor trailers. They wouldn’t allow her full-time work, because that came with benefits and other rights. All the guys there—she was the only female—were also part-timers.

She parked her Honda outside the terminal, put on her hard hat and protective shoe coverings and safety goggles, punched the clock, and climbed into her little rig. They could have gotten plenty of guys with heavy equipment operating licenses to do this, and who had been laid off in the recent downturn. But Cain was a lot cheaper and didn’t demand full-time work. People like her were a hot commodity in the free market right now. She was a worker who didn’t mind getting screwed: Employers loved her.

She liked the work because she didn’t really have to talk to or deal with anyone. She just climbed into her seat, manipulated her ride hauling the crates and boxes, and did her thing. Years before, she had earned a good living doing similar work. Then she’d been injured on the job and the painkillers had helped a lot, so she kept taking them. Then came the day when she couldn’t stop taking them. And then it wasn’t just painkillers. It was anything she could snort, swallow, or stick herself with. And there went her job and everything else.

Someone had suggested counseling. She had gone to one person but when he’d asked about any troubles in her past, she got up and left. It wasn’t worth it. Cain knew if she waded back into that, she’d just slit her wrists. There was only one way for her to go and that was forward. Some psych guy could write a book on her, but Cain would never read it. She had lived it. One ride through hell was enough.

Cain had never been to prison, only in jails for short periods for stupid crap she shouldn’t have done. Petty thefts, DUIs, drug possession, throwing a drunk accountant through a plate glass window for grabbing first her ass and then her breasts, only to have his buddies swear it was all her. Stuff like that. Shit happened; shit just happened to her more than to a lot of others, it seemed.

Each time she was arrested she’d been afraid that her ID and manufactured past would not pass muster and uncomfortable questions would follow. Yet she had found that the police in real life were not quite the stuff you saw on TV. The computers were old and boxy, the offices drab, the clothes they wore drabber still. There wasn’t an ounce of sexy among the whole crew, the morale was low, and the energy to go above and beyond on low-end cases like hers was virtually nonexistent. She was one piece of dull paper in a billion. Just shuffle her through because who really gave a crap.

Thank God for that.

She clocked out on the dot. She was about to get into her car when a new guy came up to her. His job was to fuel and detail the trucks, or at least she had seen him doing that.

He was lean—too thin, really—with a scraggly, ill-groomed beard, twitchy eyes, and a conceited expression, at least to Cain.

“Hey,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Hear you don’t like guys.”

“What makes you say that?”

He grinned. “’Cause you’ve never gone out with none of the boys here.”

“You talking about the one guy who has teeth, or all the others?”

“Hey, that’s bitchy,” he said, frowning.

“What the hell do you care?”