Chapter 2
Six months later
Frankie looked over her cards at the man across the table from her. He looked back at her blandly.
"I'll raise you twenty," he said, throwing four red poker chips on the pile in the middle of the table.
The man to her right harrumphed and threw his cards down, "I'm out."
She didn't glance back down at her hand, instead she studied her opponent, looking for his tell. So far, she hadn't been able to detect one, but that didn't mean it wasn't there; it was just really subtle.
"Well, girl? Are you in or not?" he taunted her, his single gold tooth gleaming at her through the smoke that hung in the air.
Frankie had a full house, but it was a weak one: tens and sevens. It wouldn't take a lot to beat it and Jimmy was betting too heavy for someone with a crappy hand. Either that, or he was bluffing big time. She looked down at her pile of chips. It wasn't much bigger than when she started the game two hours ago and the pot in the middle was sweet.
"Don't rush me, Jimmy," she smiled sweetly at him. "It makes it hard to think."
The four men around the table laughed and the one that had just folded, Carlos, leaned towards her. "Show me what you have, and I'll tell you if you need to fold or bet," he said with a smirk.
She almost laughed at that. It had taken her almost three months to get into their games and had been holding her own for the last two against them, yet they still treated her like a little girl playing dress up. If it hadn't worked to her advantage so well, she might get angry over it, but they keep underestimating her, so what the hell. Let them think she was out of her depth.
She was about to fold and cut her losses when she finally spotted it. Jimmy tapped his little finger with the gold ring lightly on the table. Just three little taps, but that was the second time she had seen him do that. The first time he had lost a hand when Carlos called his bluff.
She heaved a big sigh and shrugged, "oh, hell, it's only money, right?" Acting reluctant, she laid her only remaining gray chip out, "I'll see your twenty."
Milo, on her left, shook his head, "only money? Baby, you have a lot to learn." He threw in his cards. "Show us what you got."
Jimmy cursed and put his cards on the table. He only had a pair of nines. Frankie grinned. He had been bluffing.
"You bet all that money on that?" she asked innocently as she showed her hand.
The other men groaned. "Fuck! I could have beat that!" Milo grumbled.
Carlos patted her shoulder. "It's called bluffing. Once you play for a while, you'll understand."
She resisted rolling her eyes at the condescending tone of his voice and raked in the pile of chips. She had just more than doubled her money. She glanced up at the clock.
"Shit, I've got to go to work!"
Jimmy looked angry, "you got to give me a chance to win some of that back!"
Carlos came to her aid, "man, leave her be. Chubby will lose his shit if she's late. You can win it back next weekend, right, Baby?"
"Am I invited back?"
"Of course," he said, winking. "Like Jimmy said, you got to give us a chance to win our money back."
She leaned over and kissed his greasy cheek, "thanks, Carlos. Cash me out." Over her shoulder she told the others, "if you want to give me more of your money, I'll be at Chubby's all night."
Outside, she hurried the three blocks down Wabash Avenue, pulling the collar of her heavy coat tight against her neck to keep out the cold wind that blew off the lake. In the months that she had been in Chicago she had learned that it was a lot like New York. She supposed all big cities were similar. They all had predictable neighborhoods: old vs new, rich vs poor, and ethnic enclaves. Frankie had settled easily in the rundown, tawdry area of South Loop; her not too light but not too dark complexion, dark hair and eyes, high cheek bones, full lips made her ethnicity ambiguous enough to blend in with almost any crowd.
She pushed through the door at Chubby's, the bouncer on the other side nodded at her.
"Cutting it close, Frankie," he rumbled.
She patted his dark arm as she walked by, "but not late, Tony."
She wove her way through the crowd to the dressing rooms in the back. Four women in various stages of undress crowded around the two mirrors touching up their makeup.
"See, I told you she would make it," a short, overly endowed blonde told the woman standing next to her.
"Why is everyone so worried?" Frankie asked them. "It's not like I'm the headliner."
"That's for damn sure," a gorgeous redhead quipped as she lounged in a chair nearby.
"Chubby put you up first tonight, that's why," the blonde told her.
"Oh! Shit, I better hurry. Thanks, Candi." She went to her locker and deposited her purse with the $900 she had just won at poker and pulled out a bikini. Looking in the small mirror hanging on the inside of the door, she brushed her hair and applied some lip gloss.
"You'd get more tips if you tried harder," another girl said from her place by a mirror.
"Honey, ain't nothing going to cover up being plain," the redhead drawled in a southern accent.
"It sure as hell will cover wrinkles, though. Right, Ginger?" Frankie asked her as she shimmied out of her clothes and pulled on the bikini. "Aren't you the oldest one here?"
Ginger stood up and started towards Frankie but the club's owner, Chubby, chose that moment to step into the dressing room. His rheumy eyes lingering on the half-dressed women.
"Causing trouble, Ginger?" he looked at her pointedly. He had a firm policy against fighting among his girls. Fighting girls meant scratches and scratches meant less money.
"She called me old," Ginger pouted.
Chubby held up his hand to stop Frankie from protesting. "You are old, but you're still beautiful and you still bring in the most money, so it doesn't mean a damn thing." Then he turned his attention to Frankie.
"You're up first."
"Yeah, I heard."
He looked at her gold bikini with a critical eye and grabbed something from the rack by the door, tossing it to her, "were the gold fringe."
She caught the two lengths of fringe and draped one around her hips and the other under her bikini top. Standing in front of the full-length mirror she twisted from side to side, making the long fringe swing and brush against the tops of her thighs. It looked surprisingly sexy against her skin. Say what you want about Chubby, she thought, but he knew what made a girl look good. It may have been his only redeeming quality.
He gave her another once over then grunted his approval and left the room.
"Bitch," Ginger muttered, back in her chair.
Frankie ignored her as she heard her stage name being called.
"Okay, Gentlemen, let's get it up for Glory!"
There was a smattering of applause as the DJ introduced her and a couple of cat calls that got more enthusiastic when she stepped through the curtain and out onto the stage that stretched through the middle of the club. She mounted the stairs and strutted to the center as the first chords of Beyoncé's 6 Inch played.
Frankie knew she wasn't the most endowed or the prettiest of Chubby's girls. She was too thin and her face was too long and narrow to ever be called beautiful. Nor was she the best dancer. Her talent lay in assessing people quickly and using it to her advantage. She was a master at working the crowd. She immediately noticed a slightly built older guy halfway down the stage who looked like he could really use a pick-me-up. He was dressed in a very nice business suit and was absently twirling the ice in his drink.
She smiled and swayed down the stage to stand directly in front of him. For the next three minutes she swayed, gyrated, and smiled her encouragement at him, making him feel like he was the center of her attention. She enticed, flirted, and beguiled. At times she was classy, at others overtly raunchy. Of course, she had to include the others around him also, but her gaze always returned to him with a warm smile accompanying it. That was the trick, eye contact. It made them think she was singling him out, that he was special. Like others before him, it did the trick.
At intervals throughout her performance, she would remove an item of clothing, starting with the fringe and ending with her bikini top. When the music ended, she was clad in nothing more than a tiny G-sting that barely covered her clit. At one time in her life, she had thought stripping was one of the most degrading things imaginable and had sworn she would never be that desperate. Living under an overpass and not being able to sleep at night because she was scared to death of being mugged or raped had convinced her that there were different levels of degradation. Being hungry enough to dig through garbage looking for scraps had been the turning point. Now there was little she wouldn't do not to ever have to experience either again.
She left the stage with a $50 hanging from her g-string from the mousy businessman and a smattering of dollar bills from around the stage. She took her cut and stuffed it in her locker for safekeeping. Then she sat down and took her shoes off to rest for a moment before it was time to get ready for her next time on the stage.
For the rest of the night she worked the crowd, unaware that there was another set of eyes watching her from the shadows in the back of the club.
It was nearly 3am when Tony escorted Frankie to her Uber ride. It had been a good night. Friday's usually were. She had nearly $500 in her purse from the night. That combined with the money from the poker game earlier, she had rent for her studio apartment covered for the month, with some left over for food. One good thing about Chicago: apartments were a hell of a lot cheaper. Still, she missed New York. Maybe she could go back there one day.
It was strange, though. There had been nothing in the newspapers about the stabbing. Even if it hadn't been fatal, there should have been something, anything, in the news about it. She couldn't imagine that someone could just go around stabbing Avengers without there being a big uproar over it. Granted, public opinion was still divided over them. Some thought they were heroes. Others felt they were too powerful to be controlled and, thus, could not be trusted. She fell into the camp of the later. After all, she had seen firsthand the results of their wanton use of power.
Shutting and bolting the door behind her, she slipped out of her shoes and left them in the entrance way to be put away later. She was dead tired, and just wanted to go to bed, but she hadn't eaten since breakfast the day before and she was feeling lightheaded from hunger. She needed to eat something before she slept, or she would feel like shit in the morning.
Not bothering to turn on a light, she tossed her purse on the small table by the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. There was a box with some leftover fried rice and Szechuan Chicken that was only three days old. She popped it into the microwave and poured herself a glass of water while it heated. When the timer chimed, she pulled it out and turned to take it to the couch to eat.
"You're a hard person to find, Frankie," a familiar voice said from the shadows on the other side of the room.
Frankie gasped and her dinner and water slipped out of her numb fingers. The glass shattered on the floor spraying her bare legs with water and shards of glass. On instinct, she spun and reached for the block that held her knives, but it wasn't there.
"Oh, no, there's no way I was leaving those where you could get to them. Not after our last meeting," Hawkeye told her as he stalked across the room in the dim light that filtered through the windows. Details that she caught during their last encounter jumped out at her this time: the sword strapped across his shoulders and the bow that he held loosely at his side.
Trying not to panic, her eyes went to her purse only feet way on the table. She had a .38 special in it that she carried for protection. If ever there was a time she needed it, it was now.
His eyes followed hers. "Don't even think about it," he warned.
But Frankie was not going down without a fight. She dashed for her purse, unmindful of the glass on the floor and her bare feet. Just before her hand touched it, the bow twanged, and an arrow pinned it to the wooden table. She froze where she stood, watching the quivering arrow and considering her options. They were getting narrower by the moment.
"The next one goes in you," he growled, walking towards her. "Sit down."
She briefly considered defying him, but he raised his bow with an arrow strung and pointed it at her.
"Sit. Down."
Defeated for now, she sank into a chair. Hawkeye approached, grasped the arrow in her purse, pulled it free, and stuck it back into the quiver on his back, then he dug inside her purse and pulled out the handgun. She tried to keep her expression steady, but she must have given something away because his eyes flicked to her momentarily before he reached back into the purse and found her can of mace, followed by a switchblade and a butterfly knife.
"You expecting trouble?" he asked with a wry grin.
"I was a girl scout," Frankie shrugged. "You know, 'always be prepared'."
He snorted. "That's the boy scouts."
"Huh, that explains why I was always being thrown out of camp."
He looked like he was going to smile, but then just shook his head. Coming close, he bent down and grabbed her right wrist and cuffed it to the leg of the chair she sat in. Then he retreated and took one of the other chairs.
"I've been looking for you for months."
"Well, now you found me. What are you going to do to me?" She asked.
He ignored her question. "When I got out of the hospital, I went back to the bar. Your boss, Manuel, couldn't wait to rat you out." He leaned back in his chair and regarded her curiously. "The problem was the name he knew you by didn't exist. The name you rented your apartment under did exist, but it belonged to a really sweet seventy-year-old lady. The deeper I dug, the less I found. You were a ghost."
Frankie was only listening to him with half an ear. Her mind was whirling, evaluating and discarding options quickly. She was also testing the cuff, twisted her wrist in it to find out how much play there was to work with. He hadn't put it on too tight and there was a bit, but not much; just enough to not cause her discomfort. Still she continued to twist her wrist. If she could free her hand, she would open up more options. One step at a time, she told herself. First, free her hand.
"Good thing I have friends with serious computer skills," he continued, oblivious to her internal dialog. "They were finally able to find a sealed juvenile record for a Francesca Cabrini. The mugshot was pretty terrible, but it was definitely you. From there I was able to trace you back to the orphanage you were raised in and a series of foster homes."
She flinched when he said the name the nuns had given her at the orphanage. They named all their charges after dead saints and dear old Saint Francesca was the name pulled out of the hat for her. She hated it. That's why she always went by Frankie instead.
"Your birth certificate was no help. Both parents were listed as 'unknown'."
Again, she flinched. It sucked to be reminded that she had been so completely unwanted.
"When you were fourteen, you ran away from your foster home and just dropped off the map, until you were picked up for beating up that homeless man two years later."
He paused here and waited for her to respond. When she didn't, he asked, "what did he do to you?"
She just shrugged, "it doesn't matter. It was a long time ago."
"It must have mattered to you then; you nearly beat him to death. There was a lot of anger there. The only reason you were never charged is because he disappeared after he was released from the hospital." He leaned forward and asked her in a soft voice, "what did he do to you to make you that angry?"
Frankie had enough of this shit. "What the fuck do you care?" she spat. "Look, whatever you are going to do, do it. Just don't sit there and pretend you care about someone like me. People like me and Rory are just trash that people like you throw away like we're nothing!"
"That's the second time you've thrown that name in my face," his brows drew down over his hooded eyes. "Who is he and what do you think I did to him?"
Furious tears involuntarily gathered in her eyes and she blinked furiously to keep them from falling. He didn't even know the name of the boy whose life had been cut short by his actions.
"Fuck you. I'm through talking," she turned her head away from him and stared out the window behind her. Through the dirty and torn screen, she could see the building across the narrow alley and, more importantly, the fire escape. A viable option finally presented itself. But her fatigue and hunger were kicking back in. She was definitely feeling lightheaded, so she needed to act soon, or her body was going to turn against her. It didn't help that her right foot was starting to throb from the sliver of glass in it. She was trying to keep as much of it off the floor as she could to keep from pushing the glass in deeper.
At her side, she twisted her wrist in the cuff again. At some point over the last few minutes, she must have broken skin with her efforts because her wrist was burning and she could feel the stickiness of her blood making her wrist slippery, and she could slide more of her hand through the cuff with each attempt. She tried not to flinch at the pain she was causing herself.
Across the table from her, Hawkeye sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. That was the second time she had seen him do it. Frankie almost smiled. She had found his tell. He was bluffing. He didn't know what to do with her now that he caught her. Obviously, he had not though past that point in his planning. Well, his shortsightedness would work to her advantage.
Surreptitiously, her eyes darted towards the door of the apartment and then immediately back to him. At the same time, she purposely tensed her muscles. He took the bait. He stood and looked at the door of the apartment then back at her. She met his eyes with a calmness that so completely belied the situation even the most trusting of people would suspect something and this man was not a trusting individual.
Hawkeye walked over to the entrance and to the closet door that was set into the wall just inside the front door. Turning so he could keep an eye on her as well as the closet, he slowly turned the knob and eased it open. Of course, there was nothing in there but outerwear and shoes, the same as many other apartments across the city.
As he stood there, trying to figure out her game, Frankie gave her wrist a final hard tug and twist and it popped out of the cuff, taking off a strip of skin in the process. To hide her grunt of pain, she let out a mocking laugh.
"Made you look!" she giggled.
He glared at her, slammed the door, and stormed back across the small space to lean over her.
"Do you think this is funny?" he snarled.
She leaned forward, hiding her now free hand, "it's fucking hilarious. Know what's even funnier?"
"What?" He was only inched away from her face now; she could feel every exhalation he made.
"This!"
She snapped her head forward slamming her forehead into the bridge of his nose the quickly kicked him in the balls as hard as she could. Just like any other man, he curled down and around to protect them from further injury. Unlike any other man, he kept his wits about him enough to spin away from her to get out her reach quickly. But Frankie had spent her youth on the streets, and she was both quick and tough. She also was not above playing dirty. She stood, grabbing the back of the chair and swinging it up and over to smash it over his head. He was a bit too fast for it to be completely effective, instead the chair slammed into his right shoulder and knocked him to the side and against the kitchen cabinets.
That was enough for Frankie. She had already calculated how long it would take her to reach the front door to escape and it was too long. Plus Hawkeye was blocking her most direct route. Behind her, though, was the large window that led to the fire escape on the back of the building. She shoved the table across the floor to be a temporary barrier between them and went for the window.
Now that adrenaline had kicked in, she could ignore the pain of the glass in her f00t and was feeling more clearheaded than before. She dove through the ragged screen and landed on her back on the fire escape, not the most graceful exit, but, hell, at this point she would take it.
An arrow twanged past her head, encouraging her to get to her feet and move. As a kid in the city, fire escapes had been her jungle gym. She was able to fly down them, sliding with her hands on the rails instead of actually using the stairs. The only time her feet touched the grating was on the landings. She could hear him right above her, chasing her, but as long as she was under him, the grating would keep him from using his arrows.
Midway down, she chanced a look up and was alarmed to see that he was much closer to her than she anticipated. She was fast, but apparently, he was faster. On the next landing she spied a cable reaching from the side of the building to the one across the alley. She vaulted over the railing and leaped for the cable, saying a quick mental prayer to Saint Francesca that it wasn't a power line. She grabbed it with one hand that began climbing across hand over hand. From the sounds behind her, Hawkeye was continuing down the fire escape rather than following her.
She had almost made it across when she heard the twang of his bow. Shit, she thought, he was tired of playing and was just going to kill her and be done with it. To her surprise, the arrow flew past her and severed the cable she was hanging from.
She landing heavily in a pile of garbage on the side of the alley and rolled gracelessly again to extract herself. Scrambling to her feet she took off towards the mouth of the alley, ignoring the pain from her foot. She had dealt with far worse from the nuns at the orphanage. It was still too early for any crowds as sunrise was still a few hours away, but there was a convenience store just around the corner that was open 24/7.
But he was ahead of her, stepping out of the shadows with his bow drawn.
"That's enough!"
Frankie still wasn't done, though. She skidded to halt and spun around to run back down the alley. She was only a few feet from the deep darkness that enshrouded the depths of the alley when a new figure floated down front of her. He was clad in a form fitting gray bodysuit with a gold cape and had some kind of red mask that covered his entire face. It was hard to make out any more details in the dim lighting.
"Excuse me, miss, but you seem to be injured. If you will stop running, we will get you some medical attention," he said in a calm, amiable voice.
Frankie skidded to a halt and spun around to go back, right into the black armored chest of Hawkeye, who immediately grasped her upper arms to held her still. He looked around her at the other man.
"She's hurt? Where?"
"She has numerous small wounds on her feet with what appears to be glass in them, and she is also bleeding from her right wrist," the stranger said coming up behind her soundlessly.
Frankie wasn't going down without a fight, though. She kicked out at him again, but he anticipated her action and twisted to the side to block her. When that failed, she brought her hands up to use her nails against him. He let go of her arms and grabbed her wrists to prevent it.
"Some help here, Vision?" he asked the other one as he tried to protect himself from her attacks.
Frankie felt something cold on her neck, then blackness claimed her.
