Hall of One

One

"You have the right to remain silent," a gruff voice sounded in Senna's ear as her belly was pressed firmly against the hood of an old police cruiser. "Anything you say can be held against you in a court of law.."

Senna's eyes rolled, followed by a heavy sigh as the broad-shouldered officer, Justin Arbor, pushed her, hands restrained in cuffs behind her, toward the back door of the vehicle. The red and blue of the lights blazing from the roof cast shadows over Arbor's barely amused features. She met his gaze as he helped her into the back seat, pushing the top of her head down and letting the door close between them. The simmering look in her eyes would have wilted any other man, but not him. They had performed this dance too many times for Arbor to do anything but smile.

Once he took up his usual spot in the driver's seat and buckled himself in, he pulled the cruiser off the gravel of the warehouse she'd just been caught running from. Senna glared back toward the open garage doors, waiting to see the faces of her friends looking after her, since they had escaped capture. Every entryway remained dark and empty.

"No Santiago today?" Senna questioned, wiggling her hands in the cuffs, hoping for some leeway. There was none, as she expected.

"I told him I could handle you myself," Arbor replied, his face angling toward her in the rear view mirror.

"'Handle' me? You can tell him he can handle this-"

"You can tell him yourself at the station," he interrupted, chuckling. "I'm sure he'd be interested to know just what you think he can handle."

Senna scrunched her nose in disgust. "Pigs," she muttered. Arbor just shook his head and began steering them south, toward the local police station.

Arbor drove the rest of the way in silence, the only sounds that of his radio beeping and unintelligible chatter from the dispatchers in the area. Senna rested her forehead against the cool surface of the window, marking her own reflection.

Her mascara had smudged around her brown eyes, enhancing the dark circles and red rims that seemed to be tattooed there lately. Her hair had nearly escaped her elastic tie, half of it draped down the side of her head. Her gray shirt was wrinkled and stained slightly around the neck line, a cigarette burn at her collar. The skin at her neck was covered in obscene purple splotches, courtesy of Matt- the local she was hooking up with when she was so rudely interrupted.

She closed her eyes, replaying the night in her head. Their whole group had pulled up to the warehouse, hoping to find a good spot to smoke and avoid nosy neighbors. Bianca and Charlie rented a small house together, but the scummy land lord lived two houses over. Nobody wanted to get busted.

All six of them - Bianca, Charlie, Dusty and Dylan, Matt, and Senna, had spent the better part of three hours sitting on dirty couch cushions and the rear bench seat of Matt's truck, passing a blunt and listening to shitty music on Dylan's busted phone speakers.

After about two hours, Matt's eyes had glazed over with the high, and his thigh had inched closer and closer to Senna's on the bench seat. She eventually found herself in his lap, his arousal clear underneath her. It hadn't taken long for them to slip away to another level of the abandoned building, where they tore at each other's clothes and sloppily hooked up against the grimy window.

Senna had sobered up the moment the flashing lights reflected on the concrete of the warehouse walls. She had shimmied into her jeans, throwing her shirt on, leaving her black bra discarded in the corner of the dark room. Clutching at her chest as she flew down the dank hall and into the stairwell, she heard shuffling and shouts of "Shit, shit, shit," and "Put it out!", followed by the sound of shattering glass. Someone, likely Dusty, had busted a window to toss the evidence out of. Idiot.