First Girl Gone(59)

Charlie rested a moment. Took a few deep breaths. Working this way, the most she could manage was shoving his head around on his limp noodle neck. She needed to change tactics, get at the torso, shift the bulk of him to get out from under.

She slid her hands to the place where the shoulder and chest met and rolled him aside enough to shimmy her hips and then legs out, slithering back and forth like a snake. The removal of the pressure made her feel strangely weightless as she got to her feet, the sense of freedom light and airy.

The door lay open before her. She rushed out of the office, into the dark of the hallway. The girls’ room was straight ahead, the main floor to the right. Both ways looked clear.

She headed back toward the club. Best to get Will and slip out. They’d figure out the next step once they were away from this place, probably call in Zoe and the cavalry.

The pulse of the bass in the next room swelled as she neared the door. She could feel the rattle of it in her sternum.

That was when the euphoria hit. Roiling on her scalp. Tingling in her chest. Some floating, soaring feeling stirring in her skull. She felt incredible. That airiness persisted, an astounding physical sensation. She was free. Escaping.

Then she heard the bouncer call out from behind her. It sounded like the big lug had peeled himself off the floor, and now he was screaming into a phone or walkie.

“She’s headed for the main floor now. Grab her!”





Chapter Forty-Seven





As soon as she slipped through the door onto the main floor of the Red Velvet Lounge, a crew of bouncers closed in on her. An angry mass of deltoids, traps, and pecs twitching their way across the room.

The strobe effect of the lights made them look like stop-motion animation, hunks of chiseled clay encroaching. Every blink advanced them closer. Closer. Closer.

Will lunged into the picture then, his movements also lurching in the pulses of light and darkness. He tried to intervene, putting himself between her and the closest bouncer, his arms raised in a disarming gesture—his body language akin to a hostage in a bank robbery. Hands up. Head shaking in that slow-motion we don’t want any trouble way.

The bouncer hurled a meaty paw at him, the right cross almost too fast to see. Everyone heard it, though. The punch cracked audibly, even over the blare of the hair metal.

Will’s skull snapped straight back. His hands flew up to cup at the point of impact as he bent at the waist.

Charlie shot forward with her stun gun, zapping the bouncer under the chin. The weapon sizzled against his flesh and released the faint odor of ozone.

He went limp and belly-smacked the floor, convulsing a few times before going still.

Charlie whirled to face the circle of others closing on them. Too many. This wasn’t going to work. She and Will backed up toward the crowd huddling around the bar.

The next bouncer advanced, thick arms splayed at his sides. To her surprise, Will once again stepped forward to protect her. No hands up, though. This time when the bouncer swung at him, he ducked.

The haymaker swooped over Will’s head and caught an unsuspecting drunk sitting at the bar flush on the temple. The impact sounded like two coconuts smacking together.

The drunk went down, managing to rake a couple of beers out of other patrons’ hands on his way to the floor. It set off a chain reaction of pushing and shoving that worked its way down the length of the bar.

Beer went flying in all directions. First, spatter flung everywhere in roping tendrils, then a mist of it. Foam slopped to the floor and bar, and a couple of unlucky dudes sporting silk shirts now found themselves plastered with Pabst Blue Ribbon. Charlie watched them glance down at their sodden clothes with expressions of disbelief.

Two mugs shattered on the floor, glassy explosions that got all heads turned away from the boobs. That was when the pushing and shoving escalated.

Confusion.

Aggression.

Something wild rippled through the crowd all at once. Some switch flipping the mob mentality for violence on. Even Charlie could feel it.

Everyone went apeshit.

The pushing and shoving turned to kicking and punching, head-butting and stomping, elbows and knees flying, bodies flinging at each other. The brawl was underway.

An older man in denim overalls aimed a punch at the throat of one of the bouncers. The meathead dropped to his knees, hands clutching at his inverted Adam’s apple, eyes watering.

Will kept shoving the Goliaths away from them, directing the big sides of beef into the mosh-pit-type area near the bar. The violence swirled there like a turbulent sea.

Charlie watched a man clamber up onto the bar, swinging a glass vodka bottle like a baseball bat. He shattered the bottle over a behemoth’s head, and when the impact didn’t seem to faze the brute, he thrust it forward to try to stab him with the broken edge. The bouncer dodged the jagged weapon, surprisingly agile for his size.

And then Charlie was being swept away, caught up in the jostle of the crowd.

The lights came up. The music cut out, the MC’s voice demanding that everyone “Break it up!” over the PA. But it was too late for that. Even the strippers retreated now, tripping over the stage in their haste to disappear behind the curtains.

Charlie found Will’s eyes in the chaos. They needed to get out of here.





Chapter Forty-Eight





Outside the club, Charlie held Will’s phone to her ear. The dispatcher had told her to stay on the line until the police arrived, and so she did, pacing among the parked cars. She couldn’t pry her eyes away from the stone facade of the Red Velvet Lounge, however.