Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
The streets of San Francisco aren’t as sunny as the city pretends they are. Inspector Lennon Gray has learned this the hard way, and it’s starting to wear on her. When a new case plunges her into the depths of the transient community, Lennon must once again face ugly truths about humanity.
Her new partner makes things a little easier, though.
Agent Ambrose Mars is charming—innocent, somehow, despite his own hard years in the field. The combination leaves Lennon fascinated and disturbed at the same time, and she’s even more drawn to him for it.
As they investigate the hallucinogenic drug that’s forcing homeless citizens into bizarre and dangerous role-plays, Lennon and Ambrose find their relationship intensified with every new twist. But when these revelations begin to uncover secrets she wasn’t prepared to know, Lennon will have to decide how much more she can take…before something important is taken from her.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER ONE
“Cherish”
Episode from podcast The Fringe
Host of podcast, Jamal Whitaker
“Hello, welcome to The Fringe. Thanks for being here, Cherish. Very pretty name.”
“Thanks. It’s my real name, not just my street name. That’s what my mom named me, Cherish Joy.”
The interviewer, Jamal, sitting in a chair across from Cherish, smiles. He’s a dark-skinned man with a shaved head who appears to be somewhere between forty and fifty. “Can you tell us a little about yourself?”
The young prostitute with the pale, sallow skin, wearing a pink crop top and jean shorts that barely hit the crease at the top of her thighs, brings her thin legs underneath her on the blue velvet sofa. “Who’s us? You and the mouse in your pocket?”
“For now, just me and my cameraman, Franco, but the show has three and a half million subscribers.”
Cherish repositions herself, sticks her hands between her knees, and then removes them almost as quickly. It’s difficult to tell whether she’s nervous or on something. “I was just jokin’. One of my stepdads used to use that line about the mouse. Can’t remember which one, and I never really knew what it meant anyway. It seemed stupid, but here I am repeating it.”
“How many of them were there?”
“Mice or stepdads?” She lets out a throaty laugh that fades almost immediately. “Sorry. I make dumb jokes when I’m nervous.”
Jamal smiles kindly. “Don’t be nervous. If, at the end of this conversation, you decide you don’t want this interview aired, you have my word no one will ever see it.”
She gives a jerky nod. “Anyway, yeah, there were a lot of stepdads. My mom only actually married two of them, or maybe three, but she made me call the rest of them dad, too, so that’s what I did, and I guess that’s also why they blend together.”
“Did you grow up here in San Francisco?”
“Yeah. Over in the Mission.”
“So, it sounds like your mom had a lot of men in her life while you were growing up. Other than that, what was your childhood like?”
Cherish plays with a long string on the edge of her shorts for a second and then shifts again. “Pretty shitty. I hated school and got in trouble a lot. My mom did drugs, so we never had much food in the house. She tricked, too, when there was no man in the house, and she’d bring me with her sometimes.”
“Bring you with her?” Jamal’s eyebrows rise, but his voice remains calm and almost unaffected in a way that makes it obvious he’s used to hearing stories like Cherish’s. “For what reason?”
Cherish shrugs, and she seems to zone out for a moment before sitting up straighter. “Sometimes I just watched, or I waited in the bathroom. Sometimes I went next.”
“Went next?”
“Yeah, you know, the trick paid to have sex with me too.”
“When did this start?”
“I don’t know. Maybe six.”
“Six years old?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“What do you remember thinking about that?”
“It sucked. I didn’t like it.”
“Why do you think your mom let that happen? Even arranged it?”
Cherish’s shoulder jerks, and she wraps her arms around herself as though suddenly cold. “She’d do anything for money, so she could buy her drugs.”
“And do you take drugs? Now?”
“Yeah. Well, I’m tryin’ to get clean. But you know . . .”
“What’s your drug of choice?”
“Heroin.”
“Okay. And why do you think you followed in your mom’s footsteps as far as the prostitution?”
Cherish shrugs. “I mean, I need money. What other way do I have, you know?”
“How far did you get in school, Cherish?”
She looks away for a moment as she twists a piece of her lank brown hair. “Ninth grade, I think? Maybe tenth? I can’t remember. I was flunking out anyway, didn’t matter, so I just stopped going.” Her eyes meet his. “I never got good grades. When I was in elementary school, I used to try to hump the boys in my class. Freaked the teacher out.”
“Did the school address it?”
She zones out again, then meets Jamal’s eyes. “Address it? With who? With my mom?” She looks away. “I got sent to the principal’s office a lot. But he was gettin’ some too.”
“The principal was molesting you?”
“I guess. But I was okay with that. He had this big bowl of candy on his desk, and he’d let me take as much as I wanted afterward. It wasn’t so bad. But anyway, I never got taken away from my mom or nothin’, so I guess the teachers didn’t call anyone but him.”
Jamal remains quiet for a moment. “Has anything bad ever happened to you while working the streets?”
Cherish pauses, her eyes moving upward for a moment. “Sure. Yeah. I’ve got beat up a few times. Once real bad, spent some time in the hospital. And you know, I’ve been stiffed out of the money after servicing a trick.”
“The streets can be rough.”