Free Eden by Candice Fox Page B

you’re gonna work for me and then you start sharing that pussy around, you understand those boys who employ you gotta pay me for the labor I’m losing. You either work for me on whatever I put you to, whether it’s horses or whatever I got going, or you work for them boys and they pay me for the privilege. Most likely, you won’t get a day into straight work before one of these boys puts you in his bed. But I find out you’re freelancing that tight round ass and I’m not getting what’s owed and I’ll have you out on it before you can spit.”
    “I’m good for my word.”
    “Word’s as good as shit round here.”
    The girl leaped from where she was crouched, onto the couch beside Eadie. She was all arms and hands and cold fingers, hugging and molesting Eadie’s hair and neck in a flurry of affection. Eadie felt sick.
    “Oh, I can’t wait for us to be friends,” the girl said, gathering Eadie’s ponytail and curling it around her fingers. “Jackie, baby, can she live here with us?”
    “No. I got enough mess here as it is. Take her to the empty van near Pea’s, and tell Pea to take her out in the morning. And don’t you fucken come back ’til my show’s over. Sick of your noise.”
    Eadie tried to pick up her bag but the girl had it. The Biggest Loser ’s opening credits had begun and Jackie turned up the volume until it was painful. It was a relief to be out in the night, despite the heat, which met Eadie’s face like a hot breath.
    “I’m Skylar,” the girl said, letting her hand trail down Eadie’s arm and into her hand. “I’ll show you everything.”

I wasn’t really expecting to find anything the next night when I set out for Utulla to catch Hades’ watcher. I spent the night before and all that day near Rye’s Farm, cooped up in a van parked behind a liquor store in Camden with a tall, gangly ginger bloke named Juno, one of those 100 percent gingers so speckled and spotty and orange all over he was fascinating to look at. Hipster glasses with thick black frames and an unkempt flame-orange beard. Juno fit into the van the way a spider might fit into a straw, all joints and thin limbs tucked in toward his center, fingers clicking and tapping, sensing vibrations in the string and things near to his grasp.
    It was clear to me within minutes that Juno was new to our station and had never done much for the force other than tech work. For one thing, he was constantly going on about how “hot” Eden was, even in her feral down-and-out camouflage. He talked about all the gear littered around the van, the cameras and monitors and radios and laptops, like they were his impressive and successful friends. I got sick of his jabbering midway through the night and wandered into the liquor store just for something to do. The Jack Daniel’s pre-mixers I bought were from the back of the fridge and painfully, gloriously cold in the summer night. All we were doing was watching Eden sleep anyway, in her unnaturally still and silent and beautiful way. I got out of there before Juno started sketching her in charcoal.
     
     
    Juno was useful for the techy little iPad-looking thing he lent me, a flat-panel computer no bigger than my palm that had an infrared display. I planned to use it to catch the watcher. He gave me instructions in about ten thousand words more than were necessary, so I was pretty confident I’d be all right.
     
     
    It was weird driving the company car on a job without Eden. I wondered if all this restlessness might have been a strange kind of longing now that Eden was nowhere that she could hassle me and intrude in my life. Eden being away meant that I was thinking about her, trying to fill the empty spot in the car with some vision of her and what she’d do and say and think as we drove along. This was awful, because it meant I was thinking about Eden all on my own, without prompting. I didn’t want to be the kind of cop who thought about his female partner when she wasn’t