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people, the paths, the water. Amsterdam was a gray backdrop against the green glow of Vondelpark.

Chaste’s thoughts returned to the alley and the man’s cold mutters.

Ten thousand Euros. Midnight.

The money he offered was equivalent to four months of work. Chaste would be able to leave the city tomorrow. For the first time in a long awhile, she had something to look forward to. Her goal was within reach. Still, worry drowned elation and she found herself digging in her bag for a Virginia Slim. She lit the cigarette, feeling guilty about polluting the park, but at the same time knowing it would her last visit.

Lenny Borden’s pockmarked face sneered in her mind’s eye. He had been trouble from day one. She had only worked for him three times, but each appointment rode the coattails of a sex-starved mad scientist, as if she were his taboo lab rat. Their first encounter was harmless, a frank discussion in the back of a strip bar. Though disgusted, Chaste humored Lenny and earned her easy money. The second time they met at an abandoned cinema. While a home movie flickered on-screen, Lenny cuffed her and flogged her with his snakeskin belt. The third rendezvous he had offered twice the payment. She knew it would be abusive, maybe even degrading, but she had withstood the previous encounter and felt she had a higher tolerance for pain. Lenny had proved her wrong, had broken her, had treated her like the shit that stuck to the heels of his shoes. Since then, she felt filthy, no matter how often she showered. She felt like the worst person on earth. After all, who in their right mind let people do as they pleased with them for money? Too many people in Amsterdam. Yet she had crossed the line.

She dabbed her eyes, then took a long drag from the cigarette. She stared at the calm lake and wondered how Lenny and the man at Latte’s were connected. Lenny had obviously bragged about his conquest. She suspected his friend wanted a taste of the same rotten pleasure. A wicked thought made her grin. What if she doused herself in urine or garbage juice, something so vile it made the monster retract its claws? No. As tempting as it was, she needed the ten thousand Euros. She finished her cigarette and flicked it into the lake. By tomorrow afternoon, she would be on the first train leaving the Netherlands.

Chaste shivered on the sidewalk outside of Latte’s dark storefront. Her leather jacket felt like vinyl against the midnight chill. She glanced at her watch in the lamplight, antsy and nervous. She was eager to get the appointment done, but knew it was going to be difficult to earn the ten thousand Euros.

Two headlights rounded the street corner. Chaste broke into an arctic sweat and her teeth chattered. A shiny, black hearse pulled up to the curb. The driver remained inside, hidden behind the tinted windows. The death wagon merely idled in its noxious exhaust. Chaste shuffled her feet, approached the curb, and opened the passenger’s side door. Her client glared at her.

“The back,” he said, pointing a gloved finger. Chaste furrowed her brow. “You ride in the back.”

Chaste slammed the door. The guy was a basket case, possibly crazier than Lenny was. It was obvious he had no intentions of treating her with respect. No, he wanted her to ride in the back of a hearse. She walked to the rear of the wagon. She grabbed the backdoor handle and paused as second thoughts snapped at her like rattlesnakes. Was all of this really worth ten thousand Euros? Was she about to take an ominous ride to no return? She fended off her worries, sighed, and hardened her shell. She was going to be strong, stronger than she was with Lenny, and earn the ten thousand Euros while keeping her dignity and self-worth. She swung the door open and climbed inside.

The interior was stuffy and black velvet. Silky, black curtains dangled over the four tinted windows. The front seat was sectioned off with a leather wall like a limousine, but it lacked a sliding window for communication. Chaste huddled against a curtain in the darkness as the hearse moved forward, grateful that she was alone and without a dead companion.

Perhaps ten minutes passed when her ride slowed to a halt. It had felt like hours to Chaste as she sat in the shadows warding off her conscience. She heard the front door slam shut. She smoothed out her red mini-skirt and tugged down her V-necked halter. The backdoor opened and blinded her with white light. She squinted as she inched forward, sliding across the velvet on her behind.

“My home away from home,” her client said.

As her vision adapted, her surroundings took shape. The hearse was parked in the middle of a garage. The walls and ceiling were white and padded. Fluorescent lights dangled on chains above. When closed, as it was now, the garage door was a gleaming mirror.

“This way,” the man said.

Chaste followed him to the nearest padded wall. He opened a hidden door. A splintered staircase descended into darkness. The man led the way as Chaste trailed back a few steps. The corridor’s must tickled her nose and the creaking staircase sounded like a rake on glass.

“I take payment up-front,” Chaste said, her quaver echoing off the plywood walls.

“Five thousand now, five thousand later,” her client replied. “Nonnegotiable.”

Chaste swallowed her retort, though it left a bad taste in her mouth. She was accustomed to the clients agreeing to her terms. At any other appointment, she would have walked away, but she needed this money.

The stairwell opened up into a large room with a rotted, hardwood floor and paneled walls. Bare bulbs flickered from the cobwebbed rafters. Wood coffins of various shapes and sizes were scattered about the dank room. Chaste’s gaze locked on a bottle of Pledge sitting on a coffin top. Her stomach fluttered and her heart beat like a drum roll. Dread washed over her like a cold shower.

“Back from the dead, Apple?”

The southern accent sickened Chaste’s gut. She looked up and saw Lenny Borden’s stubbly face grinning at her from across the room. He looked twice as filthy as when she last saw him. His charcoal hair was straggly and dangled against his smudged cheeks. His grin was black and yellow as a bumblebee and his clothes looked like tenth generation hand-me-downs.

Chaste shook her head and trembled, biting back the tears. “No. This is isn’t part of the deal.”

“Five thousand each,” her client said. “Nonnegotiable.”

“Not with him! That son of a bitch raped me!”

“You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t know that.” He traced Chaste’s jaw with his cold finger. She stepped back. “You work double time tonight. All or nothing. Walk away from either of us and you’ll be lying in one of these coffins.”

“C’mon, Apple,” Lenny said, grinning and moistening his lips. “I’ll even be a gentleman and let Wicker here work ya first.”

Wicker shot Lenny a hollow-tipped glare, then turned to Chaste, who hugged herself and rocked on her heels. “Shall we? Or would you prefer something in aluminum?”

“Five thousand,” Chaste said and held out her hand.

Wicker sneered. He reached inside his suit coat, withdrew a bound stack of Euros, and then slapped it in Chaste’s trembling hand.

“Be grateful your first five is spent with the undertaker rather than the grave digging rapist,” he said, chuckling.

Chaste stuffed the money stack in her coach bag. Her conscience prodded her. Once again, she blocked the reasoning thoughts. She had to do this. She was already five thousand closer to her dream. Soon it would all be over and she would be sipping a latte at Central Station. He brushed past Lenny and several coffins, then stopped to unlock a steel door. Chaste hesitated, waiting for Lenny to follow his friend, but he held his ground, undressing her with his beady eyes. She mustered her nerve and walked toward Wicker, skirting around Lenny. Lenny stepped behind her and pinched her ass.

“Is that apple pie hot for me yet, sugar?” he muttered.

Chaste ignored him and tailed Wicker through the open door. The early morning breeze nipped at her bare legs. They walked over a misty hillside of tall grass and entered the rusted gates of a treeless graveyard. Chaste took deep breaths, struggling to fend off the burrowing dread. Whatever the two psychos had in store for her, it was definitely bad. There was no turning back. She knew she could handle Wicker. It was Lenny she was worried about.

“Where are we doing this?” Chaste asked.

“Somewhere deeper than the trunk of a car,” Wicker replied.

He stopped. Chaste nearly ran into him.

“What the hell is this?” Wicker asked, turning to Lenny.

“What ya wanted, boss,” Lenny replied.

Chaste quivered from head to toe. They stood at the foot of a dark hole. An open wood coffin sat beside the grave’s obsidian tombstone. A few yards to the right of the hole was a similar wood coffin engraved with pentagrams. The top of it appeared to be bloodstained.

“I told you to dig a fresh grave,” Wicker said.

The faded facades and forlorn automobiles were the common ghosts of the dead city she had grown to loathe.

She reminded herself that she would have enough money saved up by the end of the month to relocate and start anew. She was tired of her lifestyle. She wanted to be happy and live somewhere peaceful, somewhere on the ocean where the air smelled clean. She wanted to walk barefoot on beaches where she did not have to worry about stepping in filth. It was unfortunate that it took a rape two weeks ago for her to open her eyes and smell the cannabis coffee. Regardless, her mind was set. She was leaving the sordid city for a better life.

She gazed across the street. The faded, clapboard Church of St. Peter had a crowd of well-dressed Christians mingling before Mass. Chaste struggled to block the memories, but they flowed freely like an open wound.

Chaste. Do you know why I gave you that name? Because life is plain and simple in this complicated world. Ignore the bad and focus on the good. Can you do that for me?

Her mother’s words felt hollow now. At nine years old she nodded her head in obedience; at thirty-five years old she knew that life was complicated in a simplistic world. In her early twenties, a friend of the family had divulged the truth concerning her mother. All her life she thought her mother had died in a church fire. Instead, her mother had been burned to death and dumped in a churchyard, then slated as the fifth victim of the Call Girl Killer.

She was uncertain as to how she stumbled into the stranglehold of prostitution. Had her mother’s murder aroused a sliver of vengeance? Had depression depreciated her self-worth? Was it the thought of being loved and adored for five minutes that made the job appealing? Chaste knew deep down that it was all those aspects bottled up into one hell of a lifelong hangover.

She paused at the newspaper-strewn gutter as the tram rumbled by. Haggard faces stared hollowly out smudged windows outlined in graffiti. More lost souls on their morning commute to dead-end jobs. Chaste watched them disappear into the smog. Blinded by her mind’s eye, she

saw herself leaving Central Station on a passenger train. She blinked, startled by the shrill blurt of a siren. A police car sped past, trailing the tram.

Chaste sighed, glanced both ways, and then crossed the street, pausing on a manhole for a pair of cyclists. Her gaze latched onto Latte’s. The newly painted coffeehouse glinted like an emerald in the morning sunlight. The double-paned windows, decorated with steaming cup decals, sparkled beneath candy-striped awnings. The thick aroma of coffee wafted forth, luring customers to its swept sidewalk like a dogcatcher with a T-bone.

Chaste entered the shop. A third of the round tables were occupied, many of the customers squinting at the Metro or staring at the mocha wallpaper. Chaste joined the end of the line. Two women waited ahead of her. Both were bleach blondes in matching navy blue suits and pumps. They were dressed too nice for the district they were in, spoke too intelligently to be working girls. Chaste guessed they were businesswomen, probably staying at the hotel down the street.

She looked down at her boots. The familiar twinge of guilt gnawed at her. It seemed so easy to hold a decent job. The yearning to be respected and praised for her work was greater than sexual desire, which had left her veins long ago like puberty. She swallowed her regrets and held her head up high. By the end of the month she would change her ways. She would be a new person with a new life and a past buried deeper than the earth’s core.

“Miss Givens?”

Chaste froze, though the line shortened. She looked out of the corner of her eye, but merely saw a black blur. She looked straight ahead and noticed the line had advanced. She stepped forward, ignoring the man behind her, hoping he would think he had been mistaken.

“Miss Givens?”

Sweat formed on Chaste’s penciled brow. The man recognized her. She prayed he was not a client, not on her day off, not where everyone would look at her like a whore. She bit her lip and turned. The man was definitely not one of her clients, not even a one-night stand. She was not one of those girls that lied on her back drunk off her ass or stoned out of her mind. She worked sober and had a photographic memory. She had never met this man.

He raised his black beetle brows and stroked his bony chin. He stood at least six inches taller and was dressed in a starched, black suit. He was clean-cut and smelled like Pledge. He looked her up and down as if she were a sculpture.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a weak smile. “Do I know you?”

“My friend does,” he replied. His voice was cold and matter-of-fact.

“Tell your friend I said hi.”

Chaste turned and approached the glass counter. She ordered a large latte, then dug into her coach bag for Euros. The pungency of Pledge engulfed her as she felt the man’s hot breath on her ear.

“My friend is Mr. Borden.”

Chaste stiffened as shards of recollections pierced her heart. The brass knuckles cracking her rib. Her body being picked up and tossed into a trunk. The stuffy darkness. The claustrophobia. Her mouth gagged as Lenny Borden tore off her skirt and had his way with her. The thump, thump, thump. The rainwater gushing from the gutter into her face. The nausea in her retracting gut, feeling like a whore – used, abused, and unpaid.

“Miss?”

Chaste snapped out of her trance, handed over the Euros, and then grabbed her steaming, Styrofoam cup. She brushed past the man and hurried for the door. Coffee splashed on the sidewalk as she barged outside. Shivers racked her body. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She walked briskly up the street, trying to shake the feeling of claustrophobia. She needed to catch her breath, stop somewhere private before sobs shook her. Vondelpark was a few blocks. She focused on the weathered bench, the one that shivered alone on the knoll awaiting her warm body, and pushed herself forward.