what happened to that money. Ask Sara to come up here, would you?”
Abby furrowed her brows as she stuck a frozen lasagna in the oven. She retraced her steps after lunch, which was the last time she had seen the money in her wallet.
“Can I have some cookies?” Sara asked as she entered the kitchen.
“No, wait for dinner. Did you take anything from my purse?”
Sara shook her head solemnly.
“Mom was looking for something in there,” she said. Abby froze, not wanting to believe her mother could have stolen money from her.
“Is she in her room?” Abby asked.
“No, she left. Somebody picked her up.”
Abby sighed and shook her head.
“Okay,” she said. “Audrey, let’s see what we need to study.”
Abby squinted as she scanned the crowd in the club, trying to locate John Houston. It was her last Friday night, and she was hoping to say goodbye to him. He was one of the few customers she’d met that she would have liked to know outside the club.
“Did I hear you’re leaving?” the bartender, Dave, called to her. She smiled and nodded, and Dave’s look said it all. He was happy for her.
Mickey had asked her to work this last weekend, and it was hard to believe that tomorrow night would be her last night dancing at the club. After working there three nights a week for the past four years, she wondered if she would miss it at all.
Not likely, she thought as she pictured Chris. The next chapter of her life felt more promising than the one she was closing. After Malibu, she wasn’t feeling unworthy of him anymore.
As she shook her breasts in the face of the large black man she was doing a lap dance for, her mind was elsewhere. She had learned long ago to fake enthusiasm at times like this. His hot breath moved across her breast to her nipple, which he closed his mouth around.
“No,” she said, moving back. “No touching.”
“Come on, you’ve got me all hot,” the man said.
“Well, it is a lap dance.”
He scowled at her and Abby reached for the twenty he had given her, tossing it on the table and walking away. She didn’t care anymore.
She spent much of the night in the back room, talking to the other dancers and killing time. She would miss seeing them, and she hoped a friendship between her and Charlotte would develop to make up for losing all her friends her age.
Though she usually stayed until the very end of the night, she decided to leave at two. It was slower by then, and she was anxious to go see Chris. She packed her bag for the next to last time and headed to her car.
As she was about to open her door, she was distracted by a sound she couldn’t place. She strained, waiting for it to return, and realized it was a woman moaning. She frowned, looking around to see if another dancer was outside having sex with a customer. It had been known to happen.
She walked toward the noise, crossing the parking lot and reaching the woods that bordered it. The sound was in there, but it was fainter now. Abby wondered if she should just go. But it worried her to think of a dancer alone in there with a strange man. Which of the girls had been stupid enough to go in there with someone?
She sighed, walking into the line of trees. As she got closer to the sound, her skin prickled with the awareness that it did not sound like the moans of sexual pleasure. Someone was in pain. Abby picked up her pace, dialing Mickey’s number on her phone as she struggled to find the voice in the darkness.
“Yes?” Mickey clipped in answer.
“Mick, get out here! Someone’s hurt! In the woods, by the parking lot. I can’t find them.”
Abby gave a gasp as her cell phone sailed from her hands. She momentarily wondered what had happened before her head struck the ground, hard. Had she tripped? As a fist made contact with her face, she knew she hadn’t.
For a second, she was too stunned to even think. The pain was intense, and she was still breathless from the blow to her head when she’d hit the ground. As her eyes focused, she made out the outline of the figure standing above her. The lights that glowed bright from the parking lot cast just a little light this far out.
A heavy foot delivered a sharp kick to her