Battle Scars Read Free Page B

hopped on the bed and began to nibble at the crumbs spread out over the sheets.
    “Yes problem. The Laundromat is up on Queen Street and I don’t have time to haul the bedspread up there right now.”
    His eyebrows rose. “Damn. I’d forgotten you don’t have a washer and dryer here.”
    “Remember more often.” I swept a handful of crumbs off the bed, annoying the cat, who had already started munching. “Good news is I’ve got some work. Bring in some cash.”
    A pained look flashed across his face and I regretted the phrasing. It’d been a month since he’d moved in, forsaking his rich family, and he’d insisted on paying half of everything. He’d begged an advance off his editor for a future article but it’d been barely enough to pay the utilities and phone bills, never mind getting groceries.
    Meanwhile I’d been dipping into my own savings to cover my recent unemployed status. We weren’t on the verge of losing the house but the private investigation business was either feast or famine.
    I really didn’t want to go toward the famine side.
    I tried to fix the damage. “Got paid in advance. Five hundred dollars.”
    Bran let out a low whistle. “That’ll keep us in cat kibble for a few days.” His forehead furrowed. “What’s the job?”
    “Finding a runaway girl.” I took another chip and dipped it in the jar before maneuvering the overloaded chip to my mouth. “And Jess has the other half of the equation. Boy and girl running off together to the big city. Romeo and Juliet with fur and fangs.”
    A pained look came over his face. I winced, remembering the story that had temporarily propelled him to journalistic stardom.
    Brandon had gone native, living the street life with a group of kids who took him in and showed him the seedy underside of Toronto. The article had detailed their struggles as they formed their own family with all the politics and emotions therein. Love, hate, life and death stories happening in a shadow world where being twenty was considered “old.”
    It’d been a hit, the story rocking the news feeds. So much so that Bran found himself becoming the focus of the attention, the brave rich author gone underground to get the story and so forth. Despite his best efforts to bring attention to the problems street kids suffered the news became all about him and not about the group and their trials and tribulations; the direct opposite of why he’d undertaken the task in the first place.
    Upset, Bran had returned to the streets to find his old family to try and explain what had happened, how his intentions had been twisted and warped into being all about him instead of presenting their stories.
    He’d found only two of the group—at the morgue, a pair of lovers who’d overdosed on heroin not long after Bran’s leaving. Even though he’d had nothing to do with the deaths it’d cut him deep, deep enough to push him away from legitimate journalism for a few years and sending him into self-imposed exile, bashing out crap for the tabloid Toronto Inquisitor .
    Until he’d been handed a story about a dead catwoman.
    As they say, the rest is history.
    I grabbed the half-empty bag and salsa jar off the bed and headed for the bathroom. “I’m hoping to find them near the bus station, curled up in a donut shop and scared shitless. Country kids don’t usually take to the streets that easily, so I’ve heard. Big difference between small town living and jumping into the big city, Felis or not.”
    “Might be right there. One can hope they run back home once they hit the streets. Usually the romantic ideal dies a fast death once you’re digging in a Dumpster for stale donuts and trying to figure out if the slimy green meat is edible.” The response came as I put the chips and dip in the sink and busied myself digging out the bottle of painkillers. The headache wasn’t bad, not yet.
    A phone call from Jess would make it worse.
    The pills went down with a swig of water and a lasting