CHAPTER 1

The subway car rumbled through the night, shaking Bo awake when it bounced her head off the dark, dirty window. Startled, she glanced around without turning her head and checked her immediate surroundings for any threats.

No cops, no thugs, no creeps, she thought. All clear.

Bo exhaled, though it did nothing to ease the tension in her shoulders. She tried to eke a little more warmth from her black leather jacket by pulling it tighter around her chest, but the cold, late January air somehow managed to reach inside the train. Her clothes weren't helping her any. A skirt this short wasn't designed to keep her warm, but tonight comfort wasn't her highest priority.

Bo was tired, irritable and hungry in more ways than one. It was after midnight and she hadn't eaten anything since yesterday afternoon. She hadn't fed in almost three weeks. That was a personal worst, and the last time she'd waited this long, things had gotten messy. She was in no hurry to repeat that fuckup, but right now her body ached with painful cramps that seized her muscles without warning. This time, she might not have a choice.

She started to sweat despite the cold, and pulled the jacket tighter still.

It had been a long day, and would be a long night. She'd worked a late shift at the hotel bar where she'd been working for nearly a week for daily cash. The bar manager didn't seem creepy or like he'd try to hustle her for sex on the side - not that she'd mind - but instead had hired her under the table to cut his costs.

Other than his questionable business practices, the manager seemed upstanding. Just tonight he'd helped Bo kick out some leech of a man who'd tried to drug Bo with a dosed cocktail. Bo had then asked to take off a little early, claiming she didn't feel well. It had been the truth. She hadn't felt well at all, but mostly, she'd wanted to escape before the cops he'd called arrived.

She didn't want to end up on the cops' radar.

Another cramp hit her in the midsection, and Bo clenched her body until it passed. They were getting worse, and she took several quick breaths, trying to ease her muscles and stave off the hunger a little longer. She took another look around the car, sizing up the other riders, but knew they weren't an option. There were a dozen people on the train, and though most of them appeared to be riding alone, she couldn't take the chance.

She was too out in the open, and someone would see.

Bo closed her eyes again, and willed the train to travel faster.

The subway car was empty of everyone but Bo by the time it reached the end of the line. She kept her head down to hide her face from the train's surveillance cameras as she left the car, and walked the length of the dirty, graffiti-covered platform. A quick climb up a flight of urine-stained stairs took her toward the sparse lights of the warehouse district.

She could have driven here and arrived hours sooner, but her car would have been memorable in this neighborhood and she needed to keep a low profile. Tonight, she needed to be another face in the crowd.

Not that she'd even been successful at blending in with the crowd.

The more modern and active warehouses near the train morphed into older buildings with fewer lights, and then abandoned buildings with no lights at all. Pale moonlight lit the center of the street, but the chipped, filthy sidewalks were completely covered and dark. A couple blocks ahead, she could make out the quickly moving forms of street dogs, and she hoped their paths didn't cross. This part of the city was so empty and abandoned, knee-high weeds grew in the middle of the street. Old industrial train tracks had been worn down to the same level as the nearby asphalt, and the only sounds besides Bo's quiet, rapid steps were the distant wails of trains.

Half a block ahead on her side of the street, a bulky shadow passed through the moonlight then back into the dark. As Bo walked closer, the shadow resolved itself into the shape of a large man in a thick winter coat and skullcap, his face clouded by the steam of his own breath until it cleared. Bo knew the exact moment that he saw her, because he gave her a malevolent smile as he sized her up, and she knew he was the kind of man who harbored nothing but bad intentions.

Bo supposed she could have been worried. After all, she was a young woman walking alone in a bad part of town late at night, wearing little to hide her assets from the elements. She wasn't worried, though - not even a little bit.

She was relieved he was alone.

Her heart beat thumped in her ears. Bo felt her nipples tighten with something other than the cold, and the muscles of her thighs twitched in anticipation of a hard fuck that would take the edge off her hunger. The cramps in her belly eased for the first time in hours.

Twenty minutes later, she hid his smiling dead body behind a dumpster in a dark alley already piled high with long deserted trash. She figured it would be days - weeks maybe - before someone noticed the smell enough to find him.

By then, she'd be long gone.

TBC. Feedback encouraged! I'm going for dark and angsty here, and want to know if I'm hitting my mark. ~VB517 ( virginiablk517)