Chapter One

Sophie considered the potato chip carefully. It was in perfect shape, oval, curved in the middle, having come out of a can designed to hold a perfect stack of them. She held it in her fingers and chewed lightly on the other end of the chip, then fed the entire thing into her mouth. It had an odd taste to it, and she examined the can again.

Adobadas flavored. What in the fuck was adobadas anyway? It tasted a bit weird, spicy, salty, with some tomato and other stuff she couldn't identify. What the fuck was wrong with ordinary potato chips anyway? Why did some people insist on making them in weird flavors? Fucking idiots. The world was full of fucking idiots.

She upended the can, letting the chips spill across the coffee table of the fucking idiot who'd bought them. She was indignant that the sight of the can had pleased her and yet now she was disappointed. By a fucking idiot. Honestly, people needed to be beaten.

She sighed and walked across the floor to the stairs, then made her way up them. The house was silent, and so was she as she searched out the master bedroom. There on the low dresser was a jewel box. She opened it and spilled the contents on top of the dresser, letting her finger spread them out.

It was hard to tell what was real and what was fake. It wasn't like she was a jeweler, after all. But she had gotten some tips from those who did know jewels, and picked out the ones most likely to have a higher resale value, putting them into the bag strapped around her hips.

She opened the dresser drawer, her hands pulling out clothes and tossing them onto the floor behind her, searching for anything hidden. It didn't take long this way, and she found nothing of interest. In the taller dresser she found several watches, at least one of them expensive. That went into the bag, too.

She went to the closet and pulled down a camera. Did people still use those anymore? She shrugged and tossed it on the bed. She turned to the bedside tables and whistled as she found a semi-automatic handgun. Those always sold well!

She was leery of them, though. She pulled the clip and then worked the lever to make sure it was empty. She sure didn't want the thing going off while she had it on her. She stuck it and the clip into the belt then went around to the other side. There she found a gold bracelet and put it into her waistband.

She picked up the camera and went to the other rooms, then picked up a laptop computer from the smaller of the three. She went back downstairs, put the laptop on another she'd already found in a small side room.

She searched another closet and took down a striking looking black blazer, trying it on. It fit nicely, so she decided to take it. She sighed as she looked at the huge flat screen on the wall. She'd love to have that, but there was no way she could carry it. She'd need a partner with a truck, and hadn't arranged one.

She checked her watch, then grabbed the two laptops and stuck them in a backpack, putting the camera in on top and folding up the blazer to shove in after them. She went out the back door, climbed nimbly over the low fence into the neighbor's yard, then climbed another fence to emerge on the next street over.

She had a small dirt bike there, concealed behind a bush. She lifted it up and wheeled it up the back and around the corner, started it, then took off for home. Dirt bikes weren't technically legal, but then again the bike wasn't technically legally hers anyway. It would help her get away quick, and if a cop saw her he'd have a hell of a time chasing her. That was what was important.

She was able to cut through a park, as well, then up some side streets before heading down into her neighborhood.

Down being the operative word. Humboldt, where she had been 'shopping' as she called it, was on a hill. Fern Valley was... not. Nor did it have the nice houses with the landscaped yards and pools and ponds. What it had was a lot of weeds and scrub brush, and ratty looking single-story wooden houses with peeling paint and leaky roofs and rusting cars on blocks in the front yards.

She pulled into one such yard, past the low chain-link fence overrun with weeds, up a dirt path to the garage, which sat a few dozen yards behind the house. She got off and looked suspiciously at the house, then took off the waistbelt and stuffed it behind some oil drums.

Carrying the backpack, she walked across the yard and past the stairs leading up to the porch, then down a narrow set of stone stairs that led to a basement door. The door had peeling blue paint on it and half a dozen panes of glass, one of which had been replaced by cardboard. She stepped inside and closed it behind her.

The floor was linoleum, from nineteen seventy or so. The walls were made of thin paneling with a painfully fake wood grain look to it. The one directly in front of the door had thin twist screws a couple of feet apart. She turned them and pulled the panel out. Inside was a closet, and she put the bag in it then put the panel back.

She sighed and wandered around the staircase leading upstairs and into her bedroom. The bed sat on a cheap metal frame. Next to it was a leather sofa that had a foldout bed (and a lot of patches). There was a flat-screen sitting on a wooden table that could be seen from either bed or sofa, and a pair of dressers running along the wall under the window.

There was one window in the finished part of the basement, in a wheel well at the side of the house. It had an air conditioning unit filling it. She didn't consider losing the 'view' to be a big drawback to having cooler air in a place where the temperature often shot up to triple digits in the summer.

In the next room was the unfinished part of the basement, the walls of gray painted cinder-block, the floor of gray concrete. It had a furnace and water heater and a small bathroom.

She peeled off her black sweatshirt and pulled off the elastic band which kept her hair drawn back from her face, then reached up and turned on the air conditioner. It roared to life and within a few seconds was pouring cooler air into the basement.

She patted it happily. She'd had a hell of a time getting it back from where she'd stolen it. She'd had to give Joey Bishop not one but two blow-jobs to get his help, which mostly meant him driving her back from where she'd 'shopped'.

She turned on the TV, then went into the unfinished part of the basement where she kept a mini-fridge – acquired in the same shopping expedition as the air conditioner. She grumbled as she took a beer from it. She had to replace one every time she took one. She never left more than three beers in there at a time or Hal would decide she wouldn't notice if he took one.

Hal was an alcoholic, her mother's current live-in boyfriend, and her nemesis.

She lifted the bag of garbage out of the big container and reached underneath to where she kept her beer, took one out of the case, then put the garbage back and put the warm beer into the fridge. Doing it this way meant she couldn't have more than three cold beers at a time, but it was either that or have Hal steal half her beer.

She went back and collapsed onto the sofa and flipped through the TV channels as she took a drink. A moment later she heard the door open up above, and shook her head at his predictability. She reached down beside the sofa and took out the dirk she'd stolen from someone a year ago. It was a dagger, twenty inches long, with a thirteen-inch blade. It looked wicked and dangerous and was sharp as a razor.

She slumped on the sofa, feet on the coffee table, and brought the blade up against her fingernails, pretending to saw lightly at them as Hal came down the stairs.

He looked at her and smirked, his eyes greedily feasting on the exposed parts of her breasts.

“Pretty girl,” he said.

“What the fuck do you want, Hal?” she demanded. “And I told ya'll to knock before you come down.”

“You ain't got nothing I ain't seen, girl,” he said.

Which was true enough since he'd endeavored to 'accidentally' walk in on her in various stages of undress a number of times over the past six months. She'd wanted to put a lock on the door to upstairs but he'd persuaded her mother that since the furnace and water heater and washing machine were down here, and that they used the unfinished part of the basement to store all kinds of junk he had to be able to go down.

“You got the rent?” he demanded.

“I ain't dealing with you over no damn rent,” she said scornfully. “I'll talk to my mom about it.”

“Your mom is busy. She asked me to look into it.”

“You are such a liar,” she said.

“And you are such a thief,” he said.

She could smell his sweat from here. He was wearing loose jeans, a dirty yellow wife-beater shirt that showed hairy armpits, hadn't shaved in the last few days, and had curly brown hair spilling across his forehead.

“You say,” she sniffed, taking another drink of beer as she lay the blade across her shoulder.

He stepped off the stairs, licking his lips as he stared at her breasts again – the way she intended, and then looked around the basement as he walked past her.

“You touch my beer I'll castrate you,” she said.

“Your mama wouldn't be too pleased with that,” he said smugly.

He wandered around the stairs and she put the beer down as she heard him opening up the storage area under the stair. She looked down at herself, tugged her drawstring sweatpants lower on her hips, low enough to show the string of her thong, then marched around the stairs to confront him.

“Well lookie what I done found,” he chortled, looking at the laptops in the backpack.

“Those are mine.”

“Oh right. Sure they are. And you bought them somewhere, right?”

“I traded a friend of mine for them.”

“Traded what, I wonder?” he said with a smirk, his head turning as his eyes ran up and down her lithe body.

“Whatever I feel like trading,” she said.

“Ha. You knew what the trade was worth you wouldn't be livin' in this dump. You could make a fortune at Lorenzo's.”

“I ain't stripping for a livin',” she said with a glare.

“You got what they want, honey. Might even be willing to drop a few bucks into your thong myself,” he said with a leer.

“I jus' bet you would.”

She brought the dagger down off her shoulder, and let it slide between her fingers and he turned his head back to examine the laptops. He shrugged, put one back, and took the other.

“This'll do for the rent,” he said.

“That don't belong to you!” she said hotly.

He drew his shoulders back and looked at her arrogantly.

“I'm the man o' this here house. Whatever's here belongs to me. You should learn that, girl.”

“This ain't your house. It's my ma's, and you are the one who should be payin' rent.”

He sneered at her, eyeing the dagger warily as he sidled past.

“I think we'll let your ma decide that.”

She sniffed and let him go. She had a very uneasy relationship with him. She despised him, of course, and he lusted after her, of course. But he'd lust after her if she was wearing a nun's outfit. So she let him see her like this because it helped distract him and kept his alcohol-fogged brain from thinking about anything else. Also, she loved taunting him with what he couldn't have.

Meanwhile, the dagger and her attitude combined to make him wary. She had no doubt he was reasonably confident he could overpower her any time he wanted. But he knew it wouldn't come easy, and he knew there'd be repercussions – and not from her mother. If he ever did he'd better sleep in another county thereafter or he'd wake up with his dick gone.

Around here, you survived by making sure everyone thought you were tough. Anyone seen as weak would be jumped on and robbed and used by whoever thought they could get away with it. And Hal was just the sort to do so.

Not that he was even half as tough as he thought he was. He was a few inches taller, but in crummy shape, and the only exercise he got was lifting a beer to his mouth. She thought she could probably take him given any sort of warning.

She closed off the storage area and walked around the stairs, then went up them, closing the door. Somehow or other he always 'forgot' to do that. She came most of the way down then paused and strung a thin thread across from the rail to a nail on the wall she'd put there some time ago.

She went back down and into the unfinished part of the basement. She closed the door behind her, then took some rope she kept on a shelf, tied it around the doorknob, then drew it across the frame to a pipe, where she wrapped it so the rope was tight, then tied it off.

She sighed and put the dagger down, then slipped off the sweatpants. Now wearing just her black thong and half-bra she went over to the area next to some steel shelving. She'd put a wooden bar across two shelves from the two different units, which were several feet apart.

She jumped up and caught the bar, hung there briefly, her body stretched out below her, then pulled herself up. She grunted with effort as she did, then lowered herself, then pulled herself up again, and again and again.

Very few girls she knew could even do one chin-up. Girls didn't tend to have a lot of upper body strength. That was one of the reasons they were so easy for men to push around. She couldn't ever equal a well-muscled man, but most of the men around here didn't fall into that category.

She pulled herself up even higher, panting already, then let her bare feet climb up along the wall until she could pull them in and up and slide her legs over the bar. That took some effort, but when she was done she was hanging upside by with the bar jammed in behind her knees.

She did some crunches now, arms folded across her chest as she raised her torso up again and again, until it ached too much to continue. She let herself hang loose then, gulping in air, sweating profusely. She forced herself up a final time, throwing her arms upward as she bent, grasping the bar again with her hands and pulling herself up.

She slipped her knees off and dropped her legs to hang freely by her wrists, then did more chin-ups before dropping to the floor. She pulled the yoga mat out where it was rolled up and tossed it on the floor, then began to do some stretches, squats and twists.

It would have been nicer to do this in the other room, preferably in front of the TV, but there was no guarantee Hal wouldn't 'accidentally' surprise her at it. So she'd have had to wear more clothes. And despite the air conditioner working to lower the heat and humidity out there she was still going to sweat heavily.

Besides, working out where she could see the body she was exercising gave her more motivation. This body was all she had, after all. Well, and her face, she was willing to concede. Hal wasn't lying about her body being valuable should she ever decide to rent or sell it.

She couldn't see herself really doing that. Though she had toyed with the thought of stripping a few times. The thought of all that money combined with all those lusting men wanting what they couldn't have – much like Hal did – was quite attractive.

But she didn't see how she could do it and keep any sense of self-respect. Not to mention strippers had a reputation out there, and that reputation said 'easy'. Easy not just for sex but for any sort of abuse certain men might want to inflict on them.

Sophie worked hard to maintain her reputation as a tough girl so people wouldn't try that sort of thing on her.

Not to mention, looking hot was an ego thing, and also useful in finding dates and getting favors. And if she got chased, as she had a time or two, once by police, it helped to be nimble, quick, and have the breath to keep running.

She stood up, chest heaving, and rolled up the mat, then cursed herself for forgetting to bring any clothes in. She untied the rope and gingerly eased the door open. She peeked out at the other room, and at the stairway, then quickly eased out, taking a chance.

She kept her eye on the stairs as she went to her dresser. She'd padlocked all three drawers, and kept the keys on a string that hung from her neck. She'd done that after finding what she suspected was dried semen on some of her things, particularly her thongs and bras.

She took out a thong and a bra, then got another pair of drawstring sweatpants, all of them gray, and a gray t-shirt before locking the dresser and going back into the other room. She tied the door closed, then went into the bathroom and inspected it for any changes.

Hal had talked about how much money she could make if she became a camgirl on the internet, and even suggested one of those voyeur sites that had cameras in all the rooms so people could watch you twenty-four hours a day.

She'd turned him down, naturally, but a week later he'd put a new 'smoke detector' in. Suspicious, she'd gotten a stool, climbed up to the ceiling, and inspected it. The thing had a hidden camera in it.

Naturally, he'd professed shock, saying he'd bought it off a guy, and he'd been very indignant that it wasn't what he'd wanted. He'd been even more indignant she'd ever suspect he wanted to use it to watch her naked.

He was very good at that indignant, innocent act. Of course, her mother was a moron for believing him. She was a moron for dating him. She was a moron for letting him persuade her to let him move in.

Satisfied he hadn't managed to find a way to put a hidden camera in the little bathroom she removed her bra and thong and tossed them on the floor. She looked at herself in the mirror with a sense of satisfaction. Her dark hair spilled down well past her slender shoulders, and the only fat visible came from her high, firm breasts.

Yeah, you'd like to get your hands on these, wouldn't you, Hal, she thought with a sneer, cupping and squeezing her breasts.