Prologue
A crack split the night.
Gunshots. Six of them. Rapid fire.
Piss-yellow light from the parking lot squeezed through the window blinds of apartment 160 at Lakeshore Apartment Complex, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Gianna Golds froze, listening to the dark. She pushed her head deep into her pillow, reflexively biting down on the pillowcase. The crack came from a bullet striking the wall outside her bedroom, just below her windowsill, inches from where she slept.
Gianna waited in the dead silence, then grabbed her cell from the nightstand, her body pressed firmly against the mattress, and dialed 911.
Sleep slid through her brain like mist, disappearing as adrenaline flooded her body.
“911. Do you need police, fire, or ambulance?”
“There was a gun shot outside my window,” Ginna said in a whispered hiss.
“What’s the address?” The operator’s voice was methodical, cold. Bored even.
“4801 Sunshine Blvd. Apt 160. 87109.”
“Was the gunshot inside or outside?” Gianna can hear the clicking of the operator’s nails on her keyboard.
“Outside. I think it came from the parking lot behind my complex. There’s a Goodwill and it gets broken into sometimes.”
Hurry, damn it.
“Did you see the perpetrator? Can you describe them?”
Click click click.
“I only heard the shots. One hit the wall outside my window. Hurry please!” Gianna couldn’t hide her anxiety, her voice rising an octave as she spoke.
Gianna risked a glance outside her window but saw nothing. She quickly ducked down again and then rolled off the far side of her bed, crouching on the floor. Her room was pitch black, just how she liked it, but in her haste, she tripped over a pile of laundry on the floor.
“Fuck me!” she mumbled.
“Are you ok, ma’am?”
“Just tripped.”
“We have officers heading out your way. We’re getting several similar reports from that area.”
Gianna felt for the doorknob and was into the hallway quickly, walking into the kitchen that stood just a few feet outside of her tiny one bedroom. She risked turning on the kitchen light.
What the hell, they’re probably long gone.
Still, Gianna could feel her heart pumping quickly, the beat pulsing in her ears. She turned on the coffee maker, knowing that she wasn’t going back to sleep again.
It was 4:15 a.m.
Might as well stay up until work. The red light on the coffee maker blinked as the water heated up.
“A police officer should be there within a few minutes. Do you want to leave your name and number for a callback from the police officer?”
“No. Thanks,” Gianna mumbled, although she had questions to ask, she couldn’t remember what they were.
“I can stay on the phone with you until…”
“Nope.” Gianna disconnected the call. She was never one to waste time, especially when she was woken up at the ass crack of dawn by gunshots.
She stared at the clock on the stove, yawning widely, lips dry. Blue light from the stove clock emitted into the abyss of the watery dark apartment and rain began to fall in heavy smacks against her living room window.
Gianna’s heart slowed, as did her breath. Her body began to tremble, but from the early morning chill in her apartment or from the adrenaline wearing off, she did not know.
Probably both. She licked her lips as the coffee began to drip slowly into the pot, filling the kitchen up with a sweat, chocolate smell. A siren approached. She exhaled loudly and scrunched up her face, then relaxed it.
Whoever it was will be long gone now.
She closed her eyes to forget the gunfire but all she saw were bullet holes in the brick wall in her bedroom. She checked the clock again, wishing the dawn to break.
4:23 a.m.
Shit.
A wet draft flowed underneath the front door of her apartment. Gianna grabbed a large yellow ceramic mug from the cupboard. She splashed the hissing coffee over the handle, then cursed under her breath as she quickly wiped the sting away with a dishcloth. She grabbed the cream out of the fridge, splashed some into the mug, and onto the counter, not bothering to wipe it up, and took the coffee into the living room to listen to the rain.
More sirens arrived on the wind. Gianna opened the blinds and watched as a cop car zipped down the street in front of her complex, before disappearing behind the building to her right as it looped around behind her complex and into the Goodwill parking lot. Red and blue lights danced in her eyes. She put the coffee on an end table and wrapped herself in a blanket on the couch. It was a tattered red, yellow, and black thing; a childhood remnant from a grandmother she barely knew.
The police don’t come as fast when bullets aren’t flying.
Anger bubbled inside her mouth. She swallowed it along with the coffee.
Like I always do.
Gianna concentrated on the rain as it streaked down the window, her skin warmed from the heavy blanket. The sirens went silent. The rain spun color from the blunt yellow porch light.
Gianna curled up on the couch, hidden beneath the covers. Her coffee cooled on the table beside her. She begged in the dark for the violence that plagued her neighborhood to end. She wanted to move away, to escape the gun shots, the burglaries, the drugs, but the housing market forced her to live here. Sometimes she thought she’d be stuck in this apartment forever.
Please just go away. Make it all go away. She closed her eyes tighter.
She never quite felt safe in her apartment—even though she believed herself to be a strong and capable 25-year-old woman.
I’ll never feel safe again.
Gianna buried herself deep into her blanket, her coffee forgotten.
Gianna’s burner phone rang at 7:32 a.m., startling her awake. It had ended up underneath her back, vibrating incessantly. She fished it out with a sleep tingling hand and had to stop herself from hurling it through the living room window.
It was too early for Gianna’s first appointment. That wasn’t until 11 a.m. But the only people that had her burner number were clients, so she figured it was probably just a drunk who’d seen her ad after pulling an all-nighter.
It was good business to have a second cell phone. She’d known that from the beginning. It was rule number one for sex workers: Never give a john your personal number, no matter how well they treated you. Always protect yourself.
Lexi had taken her to get her first burner phone.
Was it really only two years ago?
She’d listened to her friend’s advice ever since. She knew, however, that a sex worker could never be careful enough. Darin’s disappearance since late last night throbbed in her head, a reminder of how true it was.
Did she really disappear, or am I being paranoid?
She picked up the phone. Rick’s name popped up on the display screen. A repeat client, and her 11 o’clock.
Why was he calling so early? It’s not her.
She sent the call to voicemail.
Disappointment, mixed with a feeling of dread, choked her. Again, she tried to tell herself that Derin wasn’t missing, that she’d just forgotten to call last night, that Gianna’s unanswered texts were nothing more than Derin turning off her phone because she was with a client. It all made sense.
Then why am I so anxious?
Gianna kicked the blanket off her and let it lay in a lump on the floor. She stretched, yawned, and rolled off the couch in one motion. She pulled back the curtains of the living room windows. Morning light flooded inside. Shadows fled into corners. She buried her knuckles in her eyes, pressing the sleep away, and peeked outside. It’d stopped raining, the water quickly evaporating in the dry heat of the Albuquerque high desert.
My head hurts. Too much stress.
Dragging herself to the bathroom, she sat heavily on the toilet, her body numb with fatigue. She took a piss, then stood in front of the sink to brush her teeth, her eyes closed to the harsh yellow light of the five bright bulbs above the bathroom mirror. She brushed the wild, dark curls with sharp, quick strokes and then tied her hair into a loose knit bun.
My hair looks like a bird’s nest. She plucked at a grey hair near her temple.
I’m only 25!
The phone rang again. This time it was her main cell. Gianna ran into her bedroom and grabbed the phone off the glass-topped nightstand, the blue light of the phone flashing in the darkness. She looked at the number and hurled the phone across the room. It landed with a dull thud in the pile of unclean laundry she’d tripped over the night before.
It was her mother, who called twice a month, usually in the morning, and with nothing ever important to say.
Gianna walked over to the laundry pile and grabbed the phone, tapping it off. She didn’t need to be connected to the rest of the world today. Unless it was Derin or Lexi, who was Derin’s roommate.
Gianna desperately wanted to speak to Lexi and had left several texts and even voicemails late last night, but to no avail. Lexi normally didn’t respond if she was with a late-night client, and Gianna assumed that’s why she hadn’t texted back yet. It wasn’t unusual for any of the girls to go silent once their date showed up, but Derin always texted Gianna at least once in the night, usually before she went to sleep, when she was with a client. It was one of their rules to let each other know that they were safe. You never went to bed with a client without making that call or text. Gianna knew it, Derin knew it, and Lexi knew it.
Maybe Lexi and Derin were together. They could be sharing clients, camming, drinking until early in the morning, sleeping in. Maybe it was all just one big orgy over at their place, and she hadn’t been invited.
Right.
Gianna willed the phone to buzz, just as she willed for the gunshots in her run-down neighborhood to be silent. There was no reason to panic. She just needed to find something to quiet her mind, to keep her occupied until she heard from Derin or Lexi.
It was Monday morning. April 1st.
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