For the first time in years, maybe for the first time since the last time he’d held Lulah in this fashion, Tiger found himself content to just be. He wasn’t worried about his next job or the next payment on the Jenny Lou. He wasn’t concerned about somebody trying to kill him because he’d saved some weird creature from being raped by a bunch of even weirder humans. He wasn’t worried about how he was going to get back off this polluted and overcrowded rock and back out into space where he belonged. For the first time in what seemed an eternity, his mind floated free and easy.
It wasn’t to last. The rude, persistent buzzing of Jocko’s PDC would bring him unceremoniously back to reality. Reaching down and picking it up, he immediately recognized the number.
“I reckon I need to take this.”
“If you must,” she purred, as the hand on his chest slid down to his groin, where her fingers began lightly caressing him.
“Easy now,” he smiled contentedly, planting a soft kiss on the top of her head before pressing the “Receive” button. “Let me get this before you get me all worked up again.”
“Hello, Tiger.” The sound of Cutter’s voice brought Lulah out of her state of bliss. She opened her eyes to the 3D hologram of the gangster, smiling down upon both of them. “And hello to you too, Lulah. It’s been a while.” The look in those cold, dark eyes, as he knowingly grinned at the two cuddled up together, made her feel as if she needed a shower. Unconsciously, she reached for the bed sheet, pulling it up around her neck.
“Don’t get all modest on my account,” Cutter said, attempting to make it sound like nothing more than a flippant comment, yet a look passed between the two that was so quick it never registered with Tiger. It took everything Lulah had to repress a shudder. But he was already looking back to Tiger as if she were yesterday’s news. “Call me when you can talk. I may have a solution to all your problems.”
“Do tell,” Tiger tried to temper optimism with the skepticism that this was coming from a man whose solutions rarely came without some significant strings attached … and they all led back to his manipulative puppeteering.
“Later!” Cutter gave a cautious glance back to Lulah, making it clear she was not to be privy to the conversation. “When you can talk.” And with that, he hung up.
“Aren’t we all cloak and dagger this morning,” Tiger said to the vacant space where Cutter’s image had just been.
Lulah remained silent, her eyes still locked on that same space. But her mind was somewhere far away.
***
They went back a long way, all the way back to the heyday of the Great Space Rush. Tiger and Cutter had been young pilots hanging out in the bar at the Spaceport Inn in between missions. Eventually, Lulah, who worked as a dispatcher for NASA, would start dating Tiger, and the trio would become almost inseparable, the best of friends.
That had been nearly two decades ago. A lot of water had gone under the bridge since then. All three had experienced changes in their lives, some good, some bad. But none had been as drastic as those that had occurred in the life of Cutter. He had gone down a dark, dark road.
Cutter had grown up in Rocket Town, a low-income, high-crime slum south of the river. It was an area infested with gangs, pimps and drug dealers. After leaving the Space Service, he’d returned to those childhood roots. He’d quickly risen to power as head of his own criminal enterprise. He was now a gangster and a stone-cold killer. He scared Lulah. Scared her bad. But not for reasons most might think.
She knew she had little to fear from him physically. She only wished it were that simple. A girl from the coalfields of eastern Kentucky could take care of herself if she had to. No, she feared that he would gradually seduce Tiger down that same black path. She knew, once traveled, it was a road from which one rarely returned.
She knew Tiger. She knew Cutter. Tiger was a simple man. What you saw with him was what you got. He wore his heart on his sleeve, and everything was black and white, good and evil. He acted first and worried about the consequences later. She knew Cutter was the kind of man who could manipulate people like Tiger. He was the kind of man who could take the goodness in a man like the one with her now and twist it into something else, something malignant.
She knew this all too well. He’d done it to her.
It’d been the biggest mistake of her life. A few years back, she’d agreed to a night out with some of her former co-workers from NASA. Just a little reunion of sorts down at the Inn to reminisce about the old days and catch up on current events. One of those nights away from the hubby and kids, have a few drinks, gossip and see what had become of everyone. Who’d married who, who’d had kids and how many, and who’d already gotten divorced. Although she would’ve never let such a salacious morsel of juicy information be known to her former girlfriends, her own marriage had started to unravel by this time.
Maybe it was fate. Perhaps it was bad luck. Whatever the alignment of the stars, Cutter would be in the bar that night. Despite his increasingly notorious reputation, he’d once been a close friend, and she got his attention with a wave and a smile. It took a moment for him to recognize her, but his face lit up when he realized who she was, and he rushed over to give her a warm hug and sweet kiss on the cheek.
Of course, the girls were awe-struck at being this close to
