Robert M. Hazard wasn't the big crime boss of anything, least of all Roanoke, Virginia. He dealt on the side of his law practice in pills, a little cocaine, and some prostitutes, and walked around as if he only ever saw himself on a television screen—as a complex, interesting hero in a retro-vibed, critical-darling cable series. The American work ethic lived in bankruptcies, barters, and flamboyant suits by day; powder, women, and the same suit, sans jacket, at night. In the same vein, he frequently danced on the line of inappropriate with Virginia, but after four years she felt safe enough.
Accustomed though she was to the peculiar whims of Hazard's plotlines, when Virginia knocked at the door of the dusty law office in downtown Roanoke and a man declaring himself a bodyguard opened the door, she laughed.
Bodyguard?
He smoothed his braids and plucked at his wrinkled dress shirt. "I'm new."
"Hazard!" Virginia hollered. "Call off the puppy."
Radio silence.
Virginia took a step toward the back.
The man slid easily, blocking the way with an apologetic smile. He reached for the backpack on her shoulders.
Virginia handed it over.
"Thanks," he said, unzipping and riffling through the contents. Dumbass didn't think to look in her boots. He handed the backpack to her, gaze flitting between somewhere around her neck and the floor.
Virginia smiled and turned it up to Supreme Queen—satisfied when he blushed, fumbled with his magazine, and stumbled down into the high-backed calico-covered chair of the waiting room as the newest member of Team Virginia.
She still had it.
The front offices were dark, but Virginia followed the dim pathway of fluorescent light spilling past stacks of files, mail, warped paneling, and shelves lined with ancient law books. Her backpack slipped off her shoulder and she hoisted it up, stepping through the seventies-style mustard kitchen behind the offices to the back file room.
Hazard—Robert Hazard, Esquire—sat in a ripped red leather office chair, pawing through a file box propped on his knees. Boxes full of files were lined up on folding tables, on the linoleum floor underneath, and on mismatched aluminum shelves through the room. Out the barred window, sunset filtered through patchy woods.
He looked up and beamed. "There's the Queen."
"You wish." Virginia sank into an empty rolling chair and kicked her feet up on the edge of the table. The backpack was still on her shoulder.
He leaned back. "What are the Wardens up to this fine summer night?"
Shit. "Stuff." It'd been a week since she'd talked to Tourmaline. She'd called once but Tourmaline hadn't called back.
The master of the dramatic pause, Hazard simply stared at her until it became too uncomfortable to keep facing him.
She dropped her eyes to the files in his lap. "Don't worry. I'm working something."
He looked unimpressed and went back to the box, pulling out a ragged file and paging through it with thick fingers. "Are you wearing that?"
He had been her pageant coach for the first year. In the years following, he still had a lot to say about what she wore and where she wore it. This was not how he envisioned her for the role of Pageant Queen Gone Motorcycle Club. This wasn't even how he envisioned Shady Small-Town Lawyer's Minion, but he didn't have much say in her wardrobe these days, try as he might.
"Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap." She grinned, deliberately running one long finger along the frays in a hole in the thigh of her jeans.
Hazard's gaze flickered to the patch of visible skin.
When he came back to her face, she smiled. Score two for Team Virginia.
He didn't argue.
"What's with the bodyguard?" Virginia asked.
"Restructuring."
"Is there something I should know?"
"Weren't you at the staff meeting?"
Sometimes she thought he ran his side business a little too much like a law practice, and his law practice a little too much like his side business. "When the hell did we have a staff meeting?"
He laughed. "I'm just playing."
Virginia grimaced and looked up at the yellow water stains on the drop ceiling. "If you're restructuring, why don't you let me come work for you as a paralegal or something?"
"Jackie does a fine job, thank you."
"But does she get you coffee? I'll get you coffee. And that cornbread you like for lunch. And wear tight skirts. I'll smile real pretty for the clients. And I—"
"Do you have a résumé?"
Wait, was he serious? She stopped rocking. "I can ... I can make one."
"Give me an oral."
She put her feet down. "What?"
"An oral overview." He smoothed over his hair and propped his chin in his hand, in a way Virginia could see framed in tight by the camera. Scene: eccentric lawyer, sitting behind the gleaming mahogany desk in his front office, finagling his way around the law with cunning and darkly comic moments. "Of your résumé. What's on it? What kind of jobs have you had? Who are your references?"
Virginia couldn't tell whether he was serious or simply messing with her. "Well, you're my reference." She pressed her lips tight. This had to be a game. "And ... ," she started slowly. "I've had several years' experience as an independent contractor for a large company."
He snorted. "Doing what?"
She blinked.
"Have you ever held a job other than with me?"
Virginia tightened her jaw. He knew the answer. "No."
"Well, then, I'm sorry to say, you have no work history."
"What do you mean? I've been working for you for—"
He tossed the file on top of the file boxes. "You haven't had a job. J-O-B, job. You haven't had to show up on time every day. Or work eight or ten hours a day, five days a week. Have you paid payroll taxes? Social Security? You've damn sure never worked in an office. Do you know how to work a copier? Use Excel?"
It was a sharp zinger in his dialogue. Written for himself. Played for himself. A game meant to mortify her twice over. Once for failing for his test again. Twice for not having the wisdom to see herself realistically in the first place.
"... dictate a letter? Do you even know how to put things in alphabetical—?"
She leaned forward. "Fuck you," she snarled.
A hand caught her under the chin and yanked her back into the chair.
She gulped. Shit. The bodyguard. She'd forgotten.
Hazard laughed and waved his hand. "Let her go, D."
Virginia jerked away and the hand released her.
"Like I was saying," Hazard continued, smirking. "You can't mouth off to a judge. Or another lawyer. Or a client. Or me. It's not just me. Any place you try and go for employment is going to say the same thing." Scooting forward on the chair, he pushed the box back into its place. "Sorry about the ..." He waved across his neck.
She glared, rubbing the spot under her chin, where she could still feel the bodyguard's fingers. It used to be none of his guys would touch her. It unnerved her to find that that had changed. She bit her lip and didn't say anything else, pulling the backpack off her shoulder and tossing it at him.
Hazard didn't blink, just caught it and quietly pushed off the floor, wheeling himself deeper into the shelves of filing boxes so he was hidden from view of the door. Unzipping the bag, he started pulling out the stacks of bills she'd carefully smoothed out and tied together with hair ties—laying out stacks of twenties and fives and tens. "Any problems?" he asked.
"Nope."
"You aren't with the Wardens tonight," he said matter-of-factly. "What have you been doing?" He yanked a hair tie off the bills and began counting under his breath, mouth moving silently.
She turned her eyes to the ceiling. Her count was never off. Not even by a penny. He insisted on counting it three times, every time. But she'd always been good with the numbers.
She'd walked into Hazard's office as payment against the $1,822.15 legal bill her mother had accrued during a DUI. No one thought her worth much at that point—she was a scrawny, tall girl-child who could barely stand to look anyone in the eye.
But Hazard had looked her up and down, sucked on his teeth, and agreed to the deal. He'd put her to work with his last pageant girl and, somehow, magic happened. Scrawny became lithe. Tall became fierce. Girl-child skipped straight to woman. Her mother had simply been desperate, but Hazard had known Virginia was worth more than a petty legal bill. In return for his faith, she'd worked hard and stayed loyal.
And she never forgot the eighteen hundred twenty-two dollars and fifteen cents, or messed up her count.
"I met Tourmaline Harris," she said.
"Who?"
"Calvin Harris's daughter."
He paused for a moment. Frozen with a stack of twenties fluttering in the air-conditioning. Numbers dropped off his mouth. He blinked at the pile.
Virginia smiled. "Eleven sixty."
He gathered up the pile, licked his finger, and started over. "Oh, I see." He tsked softly.
"She was in my class at school." Virginia watched carefully under her eyelashes.
He finished counting out the stack and picked it up, shuffling the bills into his palm and carefully rubbing the edges to unstick them. "Is this girl hanging out with her dad's club or something?"
"Uh ..."
"Seems odd."
"Well ... ," Virginia hedged.
He looked at her over the edge of the bills. "Does this girl know anything?"
"She's the president's daughter," Virginia snapped. Tourmaline had to know something. "She said they're not one-percenters."
He shook his head, annoyed. "None of that bullshit motorcycle club law applies to what they are."
"What are they?"
"Dangerous." He went back to counting. "They don't like people like you and me. I told you to befriend them, not their goddamn family."
"People like us? She said they weren't criminals. It was very clearly explained."
He smirked. "And every teenage girl knows everything always."
She clenched her jaw tight and began scanning the boxes in the filing room to calm down. Roughly a year ago, she'd caught a glimpse of a gun hidden in one of the file boxes, and every time she had to sit there and suffer through his counts or his condescending dialogue zingers from whatever dull episode she was stuck inside, she would recite the number in tiny beige print at the left-hand corner back to herself, looking for it. 7602XF-1842066.
"Virginia." His sharp command brought her eyes to his. Gaze unflinching. "Make friends. You're a friendly girl. This is simple." That same heavy gaze dropped slowly. Sizing her up the way he did everything else—though he never found fault with her body. "That's why I sent you."
There was no question what she was supposed to do.
Virginia's throat tightened and she didn't say anything. Easy and simple, probably. But it felt like a boundary marking the end of something. A place she'd known she'd come to, someday.
"Are they outlaws?"
"Absolutely."
"What exactly do they do?"
He cocked an eyebrow at the stack—counting to a whole number before glancing over. "They are predatory."
"Yeah?" Virginia ran her fingers through her hair, shaking out some of the tangles. "In what way?"
"They own too much of southern Virginia. It's constricting with them around."
Virginia rolled her eyes. Sometimes it seemed as if half of her problems were simply due to posturing.
"Nothing goes on here without the Wardens knowing. I don't want them to know what I'm doing. And the way you sell shit to someone is with a pretty woman." He waved a stack of fives in her direction. "We're moving on to bigger things, Virginia Campbell."
"Restructuring," she said flatly.
"Get the Wardens to pay more attention to you than to me, and both of us are going to get out of this shithole of peddling the same pills over and over again. Find a way into their parties, into their homes, into their lives, and make them love you. Make them bow down and worship at the altar of a beautiful woman."
The same shudder rolled deep in Virginia's stomach.
"Stop jerking around with this child." He waved his hand into the air as if brushing Tourmaline out of the way. "And when they're in love with you, come back and tell me who they are, who they're loyal to, who they hate. I didn't pick you just because you're gorgeous. You're smart. You can hold your own there."
The flattery was true—she hoped—and Virginia softened to it. "And when I finish courting your wolves?"
"I'ma take care of you," he answered.
"You've said that before, you know."
He eyed her. Licked his thumb.
A chill ran down her arms.
"I won't have your usual stuff here tomorrow," he said. "You'll need to come by the house. Nine sharp."
She nodded.
Turning, he started in on a third count. "Go get me supper while I finish counting this. Three-piece meal from Moe's. White meat. Biscuit. Greens. Get extra butter." He pulled out his wallet and took out a fifty. "Keep the change for gas. A bonus. My prettiest employee. And one of my best." He gripped her hand as he handed over the bill.
Virginia stood with her throat thick, allowing her hand to be held until he released both her and the money. She pulled out her phone and headed out, texting Tourmaline. You busy?
Virginia waited with the phone in her palm. It stayed silent. Come on, she urged the screen. Laughter shrilled outside her truck windows and she lifted her head to two women on the corner just past Hazard's office.
Danylynn and Wave. They tugged down their tank tops and yanked up their shorts, long trails of cigarette smoke hanging like wispy clouds around them in the sultry streetlight. They were Hazard's, but never came close to his door. He'd made complaints about them to the police, even. Which was smart. The light changed. The cars sped through the intersection, not slowing. Danylynn leaned against the telephone pole. A train whistled and the railroad crossing began dinging. Virginia's stomach rolled. If Hazard thought himself the hero of some country crime show, there was no question what role she played. She tossed the phone and started the truck. Hazard was waiting for his dinner.
At the drive-thru, the text lit on her screen. Come and get me.
