Thirty-Eight
THIRTY-EIGHT
Zalen
THE BARTENDER AT THE pool hall—a different one from this morning— had been eyeing me warily for the last fifteen minutes. Possibly, it was because I was twitchier than a meth addict, my foot jiggling nervously against the bar stool as I tapped my fingers on the counter.
Mouse was late.
I had a terrible suspicion that he wouldn’t be coming at all.
Whether that was because he’d run off to buy drugs or booze with my three hundred dollars and passed out in an alley somewhere, or because he’d asked the wrong questions of the wrong people, remained an open question.
“Get you another drink?” the bartender asked curtly, shooting a significant glance at my half-finished Mountain Dew.
“No thanks, I’m good,” I told him.
He continued to stare at me, deliberately wiping a glass with a stained dishcloth. “You the one that gave Mouse cash this morning?”
My jaw tensed. Apparently, that little interaction had been interesting enough to warrant gossip when the shift changed.
“Why do you ask?” I said.
The man snorted, putting down the still-greasy glass and picking up a different one for the same treatment. “So, that’s a yes, then. You know you won’t see him again for days, right? Longer if he thinks you’re hanging out here waiting to beat ’im up.”
My heart tripped as the prospect of losing my only conceivable lead began to sink in.
“ Fuck ,” I cursed under my breath, frustration seething in my chest without an outlet.
The bartender shrugged. “Coulda told you that before you threw away your money.”
The sense of having wandered into a dead end paralyzed me. What the hell was I going to do now ?
“I’ll stick around until close, if it’s all the same to you,” I said.
“It’s your time to waste,” the man said carelessly. He opened another bottle of Mountain Dew and poured it into the greasy glass, sliding it pointedly next to my current drink. “I’ll just add this to your tab, then.”
I stared at the pair of drinks stupidly, my brain choosing that exact moment to remind me that I’d had, like, two hours of sleep today, total. Hard on the heels of that realization, it started tossing up flashbacks of Julie and Jake, lying on slabs in the morgue after I hadn’t been there to save them. Blood drained from my face, vertigo tugging at my balance as I clutched the edge of the bar.
Seriously, what the fuck was I supposed to do ?
My phone pinged. The dark part of my subconscious helpfully suggested that it might be Emiel, texting to say that something terrible had happened to Mia despite his best efforts. My hand shook as I dragged it from my pocket and unlocked the screen.
Tony , the notification said. I blinked in confusion a few times and tapped it, the full message popping up in a text window.
Talked to a few of my homies back in the hood tonight, it read. They say SSG is holding some civvies in a warehouse over on the east side. Be careful Z—don’t do nothing stupid OK?
Below the message was a street address.
I stared at it for several seconds before my higher brain functions kicked in, trying to breathe and not having a lot of luck.
Thank you, Tony , I managed to type back.
Slapping enough money on the bar to cover the drinks, I headed out the door at an unsteady jog, exhaustion and adrenaline warring for dominance inside me.
By the time I reached my SUV, adrenaline had won out. My head pounded painfully, but it was clear. At least, I thought it was. I slammed the door closed and started the engine, copy-pasting the warehouse address into Maps. The Bluetooth connected, directions popping up on my dashboard console. Estimated time of arrival, eighteen minutes.
Carefully double-checking for oncoming traffic, I pulled onto the road and made it there in twelve.
The area around the warehouse was the sort of abandoned industrial hellscape that was all too common near the river. In fact, it wasn’t miles away from where Byron and I had dragged Emiel out of the cage fights.
There was no traffic. I turned off my headlights, not wanting to draw more attention than I needed to—grateful for alpha eyesight on the cloudy, moonless night. Unsurprisingly, the navigation app was a bit hazy on the exact location of the building... probably because the roads and driveways in the area had become more of a fading memory than a going concern.
The tires crunched on disintegrating concrete that looked more like gravel at this point, grass and weeds sprouting in a rough patchwork. Not wanting to get too close and alert anyone who might be stationed as a lookout, I parked behind a crumbling brick wall and examined the aerial map view to get my bearings.
The large rectangle marked as the correct address was about two city blocks away. My first instinct was to sneak up and try to determine if anyone was inside before I acted, but I rejected that. At this point, I needed help to get here fast. Nothing else mattered.
If Tony’s friends ended up being wrong about the place, a charge of filing a false emergency report was going to be the absolute least of my problems.
Again, the phantom memory of my mate bond with Julie snapping as she was gunned down by a gang made my vision waver. I blinked it away and dialed emergency services.
It rang for a worryingly long time before an operator picked up.
“ Nine-one-one, what is your emergency? ” came the crisp female voice on the other end of the line.
I took a couple of fast, deep breaths, channeling the day’s suppressed panic into acting ability I wouldn’t normally have had.
“I’m on West Missouri Street, near the embankment below Packer’s Avenue!” I said, pitching my voice high and breathless. “We were kidnapped! I barely got out with my life! There are gunshots coming from inside—people are screaming!”
A faint pause, punctuated by the sound of clacking keys. “ All right. Please stay calm, sir. Are you safely under cover?”
“I don’t know!” I said. “It’s an abandoned warehouse—I ran around the corner! Please, it sounds like people are dying in there!”
I let her extract my name and the address of the warehouse, trying to balance efficiency in getting her the information with playing up my supposed hysteria.
“They’re part of a gang!” I finished. “SSG, I think they said? And the guy who seemed to be in charge called himself Blake Berlusconi. Please hurry!”
“ I’m dispatching police units as we speak ,” said the operator, still with perfect composure. “ Please stay on the line and remain under cover. ”
Ignoring the second part of that advice, I got out of the SUV and started toward the warehouse, keeping close to the walls of buildings and doing my best to move quietly.
“How soon will they get here?” I whispered, no longer yelling now that I was out in the open.
“ Estimated time of arrival is eight minutes. Please remain safe and don’t draw attention to yourself ,” replied my disembodied guardian angel, with what was probably excellent advice.
Eight minutes. Please, god, let me have been fast enough .
I skirted around one abandoned building and edged along the side of another, calling up my mental map of the area. I didn’t like how quiet everything seemed, not knowing what I’d do if this all ended up being a false alarm.
It was only when I reached the edge of the building I was using for cover, peering out at the overgrown parking lot separating it from my target, that I saw the parked cars. Three of them, including one ostentatious black Cadillac Escalade that had no business being in this kind of area.
Hope and dread warred in my stomach at the evidence that Tony’s contacts had been right. My kidnapped packmates were here; I could feel it.
In the distance, approaching sirens wailed.