Of Tinder dates and Uber drivers (complete)

Chapter 2

Lisa's coffee was nearly cold. She winced as she sipped it, knowing that there wasn't a Starbucks open for miles and wondering whether she was brave enough to try the nearby diner. The night had been quiet so far. For the first hour, she'd been doing paperwork against the steering wheel, occasionally knocking against the horn until she had to drive to another street before the locals could come after her for disturbing them. When she'd finished with her bail bondsperson work, she sat back and waited for the rides to come in. It was Thursday and that was normally when the weekend started as far as New York City was concerned. Her phone was silent, though, and the streets were deserted. It was just starting to rain.

She sighed and leaned her head back, wondering whether it was time to give up and go home. She lived in a tiny studio in Brooklyn, but she never liked being there very much - her neighbors on one side played house music late into the night no matter what day it was, and she strongly suspected the two men on her other side were running a meth lab. The thumping and shouting from every one of her surrounding walls didn't help with her lifelong insomnia, so staying out on the roads was a much better option. Making an extra 50 bucks a night was well worth it when the other option was lying in bed, wide awake, staring up at the ceiling and wondering whether it would be an overreaction to call the police or not.

Her phoned buzzed, and she leaped to look at it. There was a ride request nearby: a man called Mark who already looked drunk and insufferable in his profile picture. Still, she clicked 'accept' and headed over, collecting the middle-aged businessman from outside a house that she already knew was something akin to a brothel.

"Midtown?" she asked as he clambered in. He nodded, adjusting his shirt and belt buckle. She shuddered, thinking about the poor woman inside that house who had just had to tolerate him for an hour, and drove him over the bridge into the city.

By the time they parked again, Mark was happily chatting about his work as a stockbroker and how life couldn't be better for him. Lisa was willing to go along with it so she'd get a good tip, but she couldn't help but notice that he had a tan line where his wedding ring normally went.

"Late dinner?" she asked as they pulled up outside a restaurant. He nodded.

"Wife," he said, like that was the only name she deserved. Lisa forced a smile.

"Have a good one. Don't get up to anything too crazy."

He threw her the kind of smile that made her skin crawl, and then thankfully swaggered off into the building. Lisa shuddered and cracked the window, waiting for the icy wind to blow the scent of him away.

She waited there for a moment. There were plenty of people around and eventually someone had to need a ride - if she could park up without a cop or meter maid noticing her, she'd be out of there in five minutes. But then she glanced up at the restaurant directly next to the one Mark had just walked into and frowned. There was something familiar about the woman standing outside it.

She was wearing a short black dress and painfully high heels, and the coat she had on on top didn't look particularly warm. Her hair was waist-length and dark enough to be called black, and there was something so intoxicatingly interesting about the bubble pout of her lips. She was standing with a man and was wearing body language that screamed please don't touch me, I'm giving you the brush-off. The man, though, didn't seem to have noticed. He was leaning toward her and grinning too widely, and even when she staggered backward, he seemed to take that as an invitation to move closer.

The very second Lisa realized where she recognized her from, she shifted the car back into gear and began to move it forward. Once she was in line with them, she cranked down the window and leaned as far across the car as her seatbelt would allow.