Free Thief by C.L. Stone Page B

fussed at you before. I just ... you know how it is around here.”
    “It’s fine,” I said, but I lost him after he said four weeks. I hadn’t even finished talking to these guys yet and they had already kept their first promise? I didn’t know how to respond to that. “Could you do me a favor, Colby?”
    “Sure.”
    “Can you tell my brother I may be a little late coming home today? And let him know that it was paid?”
    “I’ll leave a note under the door.”
    I hung up on Colby and turned back to Marc. “How did you do that? Why?”
    “We told you we would,” Marc said, determination settling into his eyes. He needed me to believe this. “I’m not playing with you right now, Kayli. This is your chance to get out of the gutter before something bad happens to you. You’ve had a rough start, I get that. You went to a shitty downtown school, and got tossed around a lot. Your dad’s a drunk. Your mom’s dead. That’s fucked up. From what I understand, you take care of your brother, and you do your best. Well, here’s fate for you giving you a leg up. Pickpocket, but this time, do it for the good side. Work with us this one time, and I guarantee you, that you’ll never need to pickpocket again. You’ll always have a job. I’ll make sure.”
    My heart thundered under my chest. I had a hard time controlling my breathing to look as cool as I was pretending to be. He could have been offering me solid gold. A job. I had no idea where to start with that. I was willing to take anything before.
    I still wasn’t sure I believed it, but now that I could walk out of their apartment, and possibly never see them again and still had my rent paid for a month ... what would I do with the next month? What happened when Jack drank all the money I earned? Would I just start this endless cycle again? Maybe Marc was right. I didn’t want to steal forever. “I just need something until Wil gets into college,” I said. “If you know of anything ... I mean, as long as he can keep going to school. That’s all I need. I can take care of myself from there.”
    Marc’s once intense smile softened. His eyes lit up. Raven next to him started smiling, too. When I glanced back at Corey and Brandon, they had the same stupid look. Kevin looked pleased.
    I groaned, rolling my eyes. “Will you idiots stop grinning like that? Just tell me what I need to do.”
    “There is no name calling on my team,” a voice said, the severity and sternness catching me me off-guard.
    It took me a moment to identify who had spoken, because lips around me didn’t move and the voice didn’t fit any of the boys in front of me. It was only when heads shifted to the second hallway, the one where the boss was supposedly busy and behind a closed door, that I realized they knew who had spoken.
    The door was open, exposing a tall man, with longer jet black hair, parted down the middle, and the ends hanging around his chin. He shoved it back with his fingers as if used to his hair being in the way. He wore black-rimmed glasses on his face. He had an olive complexion which made me think he was as foreign as Raven, but more Mediterranean or perhaps Native American. He had strong, thickly muscled shoulders and a defined, tight abdomen that looked like he spent every moment flexing to strengthen it. He had a birthmark on his lower right hip. There was a trail of hair running from just above his belly button, right down to his crotch.
    His exposed crotch.
    Outside of the glasses, he wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing. His length was partially erect, and already impressive, as if he rolled out of bed with morning wood and wasn’t even going to bother waiting for it to go away before baring himself to everyone.
    I’d seen a few naked men in my life, mostly from movies and the few times I’d been exposed to the internet. There were guys at school who liked to expose their genitals to me if they thought they could get some attention. Only a handful of times