Chapter 9: Cover Up Work
The whiskey in his glass caught the flicker of the neon OPEN sign, a miniature amber storm. Two days had passed since Jenny’s victorious scream had faded from the walls. The silence since felt different—thicker, like the air before a detonation. Gunnar traced a finger over the sketch of the bear, its lines blurred from where a splash of bourbon had smudged the paper. He was adding thorns to the forest, dark and sharp, when the bell jangled.
He didn’t look up. The footsteps were wrong. Not the hesitant shuffle of a local kid with a fake ID, not the purposeful stomp of a biker. These were steady, measured clicks of expensive heels on worn linoleum. A scent cut through the ink and antiseptic: jasmine and vanilla, too sophisticated, too out of place.
“You Gunnar?”
The voice was a low alto, smooth as aged whiskey. He lifted his eyes.
She leaned against the counter, one hip cocked, as if she owned the stained glass surface. She was tall, her curves poured into a simple black dress that cost more than his tattoo machine. Dark hair cascaded over her shoulders, framing a face of sharp, elegant angles and full, painted lips. Her eyes, a cool gray, assessed him with an unnerving directness.
“Depends,” he said, setting his pencil down.
A smile touched her lips, not warm, but knowing. “I’ll bet it does.” She pushed off the counter, the movement fluid. “Name’s Lola. Heard you serve special clients. Discreet ones.”
“Heard from who?”
“A little bird who squeals when she comes.” Lola’s smile widened at his lack of reaction. “Relax. Your secrets are safe with me. I’ve got bigger ones.” She let her gaze travel the shop, lingering on the darkened hallway that led to the private room. “I need something covered up. From my past life.”
“That’s what I do,” Gunnar said, his voice flat.
“Good.” Her cool confidence never wavered. Her manicured fingers—nails sharp, polished a blood-red—went to the side of her dress. There was no zipper. Instead, she undid a hidden hook and eye at her hip, then another. The fabric loosened. Without a word, she turned her back to him, letting the dress fall open to reveal the sleek line of her spine, the curve of her ass barely contained in black lace. High on her left hip, just above the lace, was the tattoo.
It was faded, the ink a blurry, greenish-black. But the design was unmistakable to anyone who’d served: a crude insignia, a dagger through a stylized skull, the mark of the 3rd Battalion, 75th Rangers. A unit. His unit.
The air vanished from the room.
He knew her. Not this polished creature, but someone else. The memory slammed into him: dust, heat, the acid-tang of fear. A Forward Operating Base near the border. A different woman, leaner, harder, her hair stuffed under a helmet. A civilian intelligence liaison they’d called “Sphinx.” She’d been there the night everything went to hell.
“You were at FOB Mercury,” he said, the words sandpaper in his throat.
She glanced over her shoulder, that cool gaze now sharp as a blade. “So were you, Sergeant Bjornstad.” She faced him again, holding the dress open. “This was a mistake. A drunken night with a corporal who thought he was an artist. I need it gone. I need it replaced with something beautiful. Something that doesn’t smell like sand and blood and regret.”
He stood, his chair scraping loud in the silence. He walked around the counter, his eyes locked on the tattoo, on the scar that cut through the lower part of it—a thin, white line he recognized as shrapnel track. He stopped a foot from her. The jasmine and vanilla couldn’t mask it now—the faint, eternal scent of cordite under her perfume.
“Why come here?” he asked, his voice low.
“Because you know what it means to want to erase a piece of your own skin,” she said simply. “And because I heard about your… method of payment. I prefer direct transactions. Less complicated.”
Her hand moved, not toward her dress, but to his belt buckle. Her fingers were deft, undoing it with a practiced flick. “I don’t want gentle, Gunny. I don’t want sweet. I want you to fuck me like you’re trying to bury that memory for both of us.”
He caught her wrist, his grip firm. “The tattoo first.”
“After,” she countered, pulling her hand free to unbutton his jeans. “I need to know you’re the right man for the job.”
She pushed his jeans and boxers down in one hard shove, freeing his already hardening cock. Her cool hand wrapped around him, a firm, sure stroke. “Yeah,” she breathed, a crack finally showing in her polished veneer. “You’ll do.”
She turned, bracing her hands on the counter, arching her back. The dress fell away completely from her hips, pooling at her feet. “Don’t be gentle.”
He wasn’t. He drove into her from behind in one deep, brutal thrust. She was tight, a hot, silken vise, but she took every inch without a sound, her body absorbing the impact. He set a punishing rhythm, each slam of his hips driving her against the counter’s edge. The mirrors shook.
“Harder,” she hissed, the word a venomous plea. “God, yes. Fuck me like you hate it. Like you hate me.”
He gripped her hip, his fingers digging into the skin beside that damned tattoo. He fucked her with the pent-up rage of a thousand sleepless nights, with the grief for men whose names were etched on a wall he never visited. The shop filled with the raw, wet sounds of their collision, with the sharp scent of sex and sweat overtaking the perfume.
Lola’s composure shattered. “You feel that, you fucking beast?” she snarled, pushing back against him. “That’s all there is! Sand and blood and this! Just this!”
Her words unleashed something feral in him. He yanked her back by her hair, pulling her upright against his chest, never stopping his relentless pace. One hand clamped over her mouth, the other gripped her throat, not squeezing, just holding. She screamed against his palm, the vibration humming through his bones. Her body tightened, then convulsed in a violent, seismic climax. Her cunt clamped down on him, milking him, and with a final, ragged groan, he spilled into her, his own release a hot flood of oblivion.
They slumped against the counter, a mess of sweat and spent rage. Her dress was ruined, crumpled on the floor. His knees threatened to buckle. The buzzing of the neon sign was the only sound.
Slowly, he pulled out. She turned, her makeup smeared, her gray eyes blazing with a fierce, exhausted light. She reached down, picked up her dress, and wiped herself clean with a corner of the black fabric before letting it drop again.
“Now,” she said, her voice hoarse but steady. “The tattoo.”
He worked on her for three hours. The buzz of the machine was a monastic hum, a focus that cleared the chemical fog from his brain. He covered the old insignia with a phoenix, its wings of vibrant red and gold erupting from flames of orange and black, its tail feathers sweeping around her hip. It was beautiful, violent, alive. She lay perfectly still, not a flinch, as he etched the new history over the old.
When he was done, he applied the balm and the bandage. She sat up, looked at the work in the mirror, and nodded once. “It’s good.”
She dressed in silence, pulling on the ruined dress as if it were a suit of armor. From a small clutch, she counted out a stack of hundreds, twice the standard rate, and laid them next to his whiskey glass. Then she pulled out another, thicker stack, and placed it beside the first.
“That’s for the cover-up,” she said, pointing to the first stack. She tapped the second. “And that’s for your silence. Not just about me. About the fact that Corporal Driscoll, the one who gave me that original piece of shit, is out. He got early release for good behavior. He’s looking for people from the old team. He’s looking for you.”
The ice in his glass cracked. “Driscoll.”
“He blames you for what happened. He always did.” She leaned in, her jasmine scent now mixed with the coppery smell of his ink. “He’s not the broken boy you remember. He’s mean, and he’s clean, and he’s coming. Consider that a professional courtesy. From one ghost to another.”
She walked to the door, her heels clicking a final, deliberate rhythm on the floor. She didn’t look back. The bell jangled, and she was absorbed by the night.
Gunnar stared at the money, at the phoenix drawn on his sketchpad, at the empty space where she’d stood. The thrum of the needle still vibrated in his hands. He poured the last of the whiskey, but didn’t drink it. He just watched the neon light bleed across its surface, waiting for the ghost outside to take solid form.