Free FOR THE BABY'S SAKE by Beverly Long

close. He smelled like cigarettes and cheap rum. “Let’s you and me dance.”
    He stood five inches taller, probably eighty pounds heavier and had wrists twice as big as hers. Liz felt the fear spread from her toes to her head. It didn’t matter that he was ten years younger. Age and experience didn’t give her an advantage. Brute strength would win every time.
    She took her free hand and stroked him under the chin with the back of her fingers. “I’d like that,” she said. When he took his free hand and cupped her butt, she forced the smile to stay on her face. “You stay here,” she said. “I’m gonna be right over there with those girls. You’ll be able to see me.” She opened her purse and pulled out a twenty. “Buy me a drink, sugar. Buy yourself one, too.”
    Then she pulled away from him and edged over to the group of girls that were still gathered just feet away. Several of them turned and stared at her when she joined the group. Then they started talking again as if she wasn’t there.
    Lord, it was just like high school.
    She couldn’t wait for them to warm up to her. She had only minutes before the creep at the bar got tired of waiting. She moved around the group, stopping when she stood next to a girl she guessed to be about five months pregnant.
    “What do you want?” The girl took another drag off her cigarette.
    Liz wanted to rip it away. Didn’t she know what that was doing to her baby’s lungs?
    “I’m looking for Mary Thorton.”
    The girl looked over both shoulders then started to move away. “Stop, please,” Liz pleaded, keeping her voice low. “My name is Liz, and I think she’s in trouble. I want to help her.”
    “Liz who?”
    “Liz Mayfield. I work at Options for Caring Mothers on Logan Street.”
    Liz saw the flicker of recognition in the young girl’s eyes. “You’ll get in trouble asking about Mary,” the girl advised, her voice low. “She ain’t around anyway. She and Dantel went to Wisconsin. She said they were going fishing. Up by Wisconsin Dells.”
    “Are you sure?” Liz asked, aware that the man from the bar, a drink in each hand, walked toward her.
    “That’s what she told me. I don’t think she wanted to go, but I don’t think her boyfriend likes the word no. ”
    Liz wanted to hug the young woman. Instead, she winked at her, took a step backward and loudly said, “Hey, if you don’t know Annie Smith, you don’t need to be such a bitch about it. I just asked a freakin’ question.”
    She turned toward the door, but the guy with the drinks intercepted her before she got five feet. Damn. “Oh, thanks,” she said and reached for the drink that she had absolutely no intention of sipping. She might be thirty-two and well past the bar scene, but she knew all about date-rape drugs.
    Creepy Guy looked her up and down. Then he put his nearly empty glass and her full glass down on the nearest table, grabbed her hand and yanked her out into the sea of bodies. “Let’s dance, baby. You can drink later.”
    The smell of sweat and cheap liquor almost overwhelmed Liz. When the man pulled her close and she could feel his erection, her mind almost stopped working. He had his hands on her butt and his mouth close to her ear.
    She thought she might throw up.
    Suddenly, the crowd parted and girls started screaming. Twenty feet away, two men were fighting. One had picked up a chair, and the other had a knife. Liz watched as yet another man, holding a beer bottle like a club, stepped into the mix.
    Creepy Guy let go of her.
    “I gotta pee,” Liz said and ran for the bathroom.
    There was no damn window in the bathroom. She moved into one of the stalls and grabbed her phone out of her purse. She dialed Sawyer’s number. It rang and rang.
    “Hey, don’t take all day. The rest of us got to pee, too.” An angry fist pounded on the door.
    “Just a minute,” Liz said. Sawyer’s voice mail kicked on. Liz flushed the toilet so that she could talk. “Sawyer, I need