Girl Jacked by Christopher Greyson

door. Their heads moved as one as they watched him walk toward the front. They seemed to sense he was a cop and the distrust was palpable.
    “Hey, Boss.” A tall guy at the counter called out.
    Jack stopped and waited. He looked to the far wall and the thick red velvet curtain that covered the entrance to the back rooms, on each side of the opening stood an Italian statue of a female gladiator.
    “Jack?” A woman called his name from behind the curtain and then she yanked it aside. Standing there was a woman in her late-twenties. Leather pants and a black tank top revealed a toned canvas covered in tattoos. Marisa Vitagliano was the owner, artist, and bouncer of Vitagliano’s tattoo parlor. She was tall for a woman at 5’10, and she had broad shoulders. Jack exhaled. She was drop dead gorgeous.
    She was dangerous and his being here was more so. She was the type of girl that his mother had given him the heads up about. The kind that he should steer clear of. Jack couldn’t. He was like a little kid with fire. Even though you told him it was dangerous, the blaze was so pretty he had to touch it.
    They stood staring at each other. It had been almost five months since he last saw her and he had forced himself to stay away. Marisa had no idea how many times he had driven by her apartment or started to dial the phone and then hung-up. He didn’t want to be here but he had to come. He needed Marisa’s help to look for Michelle.
    “Hey, angel.”
    She didn’t return his smile, but he noticed that her eyes widened.
    “Why are you here?” She didn’t move, and her words were emotionless. He looked again at the statues and realized why she picked them; they could have been her sisters.
    “I need a favor.”
    “Another one?” She lowered her chin and raised an eyebrow.
    She kept score .
    He caught her quick sidelong glance to the audience in the room.
    This was her house. I hurt her. Showing up here, unannounced was wrong.
    “I need your help… please?” He gave the slightest bow. He learned that in an interrogation class. Humble yourself and don’t puff yourself up. Begging went against his instincts, but it did work. After a moment, she stepped to the side and gestured for him to come behind the curtain.
    The backrooms consisted of a red-carpeted hallway that ran straight down to a door with four other rooms along the side. There were no doors on the side rooms, and as Jack walked back, he saw two people getting tattoos.
    One was a man in his twenties getting the last visible spot of his skin left covered with a large skull with torches for eyes. In the other, a young teenage girl was getting a tattoo on her back, just above her bum. Tears rolled down her cheeks, but her face was set and she squeezed her boyfriend’s hand as the word ‘TOMMY’S” neared completion.
    How long is it going to be before she’s crying at a doctor’s office asking how to have the tattoo removed?
    He looked back at Marisa and she was holding the door open at the end of the hallway. Tight leather pants, two inch tall high heels and an even tighter black tank top that seemed vacuum sealed to her busty frame yet Jack was making observations of everything but her.
    The look on her face begged the question that seemed to haunt her, ‘why?’ Their eyes met, and she shook her head with a knowing smile.
    Jack stopped and stared at her. What could I say? Sorry? Marisa was not a vain girl, but she was hyper-observant. Maybe it was the artist in her. That was the thing that brought them together. Jack grinned whenever he thought of meeting her.
     
    Just after he had arrived in Darrington, he was at a bar and was on a bit of a bender. She was sitting three seats down, and a steady stream of guys were hitting on her. She had ignored all of them with a cold indifference. But Jack never looked at her because he couldn’t take his eyes off what she was drawing. He had watched mesmerized as she sketched the most detailed picture of a smiling girl