Chapter 14 Maya
FOURTEEN
MAYA
I curled up in my bed as I read through the multiple tabs I had open.
I’d lost myself down the rabbit hole of the Lost Boys M.C.
Every piece of information I could scour on the internet, I’d found.
Blog posts. Newspaper articles. Pictures.
Conspiracy sites. The works. I had them all open, and one by one I read through what each of them had to say.
Some of the articles boasted of the wonderful things this gang supposedly did for the community.
Charities. Outreach. The bar they opened.
Reviews for it. And as I continued to read, it painted me a lovely picture of what Notch was involved with.
Even though I knew that wasn’t his real name.
Whether that was a nickname or something else, I didn’t know. What I did know was that jumping through the links in all these blog posts led me to something else.
It led me to what my brother and father had been involved with.
For some reason, the conspiracy blogs thought my brother’s gang was somehow involved with The Lost Boys.
The more I read, the more memories jumped from the treasure trove of my mind and fell to the forefront.
So many things made sense. Nonsensical things my brother had said to me over the years.
Things I heard my father saying in passing when I was younger.
I was able to strip away folklore and get to the relative bottom of everything that had surrounded my life for years.
And it left me only one question I needed answered.
Was my father killed by the gang or by my brother?
My mind ripped me back to that night I got that phone call. My eyes fell closed as tears slipped down my face.
The last night I ever heard my father’s voice.
“Maya?”
“Daddy! Daddy, what’s wrong? I can hear it in your voice.”
“You have to get out of San Diego. It isn’t safe any longer,” he said.
“Why? What’s going on? I haven’t heard from you in months. Talk to me,” I said.
“Listen to me, just this once. I know your mother and I let you go. I know I said I’d never get into contact with you unless I had to. But you have to listen to me. San Diego isn’t safe any longer. You have to find another place to go.”
“But my shop is here. I just got it up and running. You’d love this place. It’s very ‘me,’ to use your phrasing.”
“Maya!”
“Well, what about Harry? Where is he going? I know you said you’d send him after you guys sent me. I could go to Harry if he’s settled somewhere,” I said.
“Just get out. Promise me.”
My eyes slowly opened, and I sighed. My father never did answer my question about Harry.
Where he was and what had happened to him.
The next phone call I got a few days later was an officer informing me that my parents had died.
A home invasion, they said. I’d been so stricken with grief I hadn’t even asked for the officer’s credentials.
Or how he knew my number. Or where they had gotten my name or my contact information.
The only answer I had, other than getting a hold on one of my father’s burner phones, was that Harry was feeding them that information.
The thought made me sick to my stomach.
I closed out the tabs on The Lost Boys and focused solely on the ones I had opened.
The gang was called “The Elusive,” and I knew I had the right one when I came across the name “Yung.” My father talked about who that person was a few times during my childhood.
When I snuck into his office just to be a little closer to him.
Harry mentioned that name once as well. When he spoke with my father one night when we were all still back in Tianjin.
I came across a part in the blog post I’d found titled “Initiation.”
And my stomach fell as I continued to read.
According to the article, most gang initiations required the new guys to kill someone.
Preferably, someone close to them. The closer the kill, the more prominent the position in the gang.
And if they could kill more than one person, it was a show of good faith to the new boss.
An act of trust and dedication, so to speak.
Reading the blog post made me physically ill.
But it all made sense. Why my parents died that night in their own home.
Why the officer told me it looked like they didn’t put up a fight.
Why I couldn’t get in touch with my brother after our parents had died.
Why he seemed to fall off the face of the map and pop up in San Diego wearing tailored suits and sporting expensive watches on his wrist.
“Oh, my god,” I whispered.
There was so much I had overlooked. So much I had let fall to the wayside in an attempt to move on. To forge a life for myself. But now, my brother’s icy comment about him tracking me down made all the sense in the world.
If he ever needed to prove his worth to whoever this Yung guy was again, I’d be his next target.
He’d kill me, just like he killed Mom and Dad.
I closed my laptop and tossed it to the end of the bed.
I slipped out from underneath the covers and paced around my small bedroom.
I ran my fingers through my hair, my entire body shaking with terror.
Tears trickled down my cheeks in small rivers for the first time in years.
And the only thing I could think about was Notch.
“I can’t let him kill that man,” I murmured.
I had to intervene somehow, but I didn’t know what to do.
How the hell did I intervene in something like this?
I didn’t have Notch’s number. He only knew how to contact me.
Fucking hell, I was an idiot when it came to stuff like this.
I was so closed off from the world, trying to hide myself and make a way for myself, that I didn’t even consider the idea that I’d be a threat to anyone who came into contact with me.
“No more being stupid,” I whispered.
I drew in a few deep breaths. I let my mind settle itself as my back fell against the wall.
I could do this. I could help Notch out.
I didn’t know why I wanted to help him out, but all I knew was I couldn’t let my brother take another life out of this world.
Most certainly, not mine. I walked into my bathroom and splashed some cold water in my face.
I washed away the evidence of my tears and looked in the mirror, my face dripping with the cool liquid.
“No more killing,” I said to myself.
I grabbed a towel and wiped my face off.
And as I centered myself, ideas slowly revealed themselves to me.
Contacting my brother. Trying to reach out somehow.
Getting him alone and trying to talk sense into him.
No, that wouldn’t work. The Harry I knew died the day he killed my parents.
The day he covered it up to give his soul over to this gang.
They owned him now. They and this “Yung” character had whatever was left of my brother.
Which meant I had to play this from Notch’s side.
“I could set something up,” I said softly.
I tilted my head back and looked up at the ceiling, clearing my mind.
When I was younger, my mother used to make Harry and me meditate.
She always told me that clearing my mind worked best to center the body.
Align the spine. Set the soul right. My brother hated the stuff.
He’d always been a chaotic personality. But me?
I enjoyed the stillness. The silence. The monotony of it.
I did my best work amidst the silence.
Slowly, it came to me. As I controlled my breathing and focused on my heart rate, a plan emerged.
I could feed my brother false information about The Lost Boys and hope Notch—or whatever his name was—would be understanding enough to help me put a stop to this.
Peacefully. Without any bloodshed, violence, or killing in the process.
It was a rudimentary plan. One that still required me to get in touch with Notch when I didn’t know how.
I didn’t even know if a plan like this was possible.
I didn’t know if Notch would ever be back in my studio again.
To finish up the tattoo on his arm, sure.
But he could just as easily go to another studio with that same design and have them finish it up.
Some people did that—paid a great deal of money for a nice outline and then went to a cheaper tattoo artist to finish it off.
Notch didn’t strike me as a man who was stupid, but he did strike me as a man who fended only for himself.
And he ran out of here pretty quickly the last time I tried to get information out of him.
The only line of communication I had was with my brother. I had his cell phone number, though I never called it. I hadn’t in the year he’d been in San Diego. But I couldn’t sit by and do nothing. Maybe if I acted like I had information for Harry, I could turn and warn Notch.
That still required me figuring out how to get to him, though.
The shootout.
My eyes widened as my head tilted back up onto my shoulder.
The shootout. The first time Notch and I ever talked.
I recalled the conversation in my mind. The shootout that had happened at that building off Highway One.
The police said it was gang related. Notch said he saved someone out there.
But, if he was part of The Lost Boys and not an EMT, then that meant his crew was one of the gangs.
Did that mean the other gang was my brother’s? The Elusive?
It would be very easy to find that place, the building where the shootout happened. Maybe that would lead me to Notch somehow. Someone would spot me and snatch me up. Or word would get back to Notch and he’d come storming back into my shop.
It was worth a shot.
I walked out of the bathroom and scooped up my cell phone.
I opened up my laptop and pulled up a fresh internet search and typed in everything I could recall pertaining to the shootout.
As I dialed my brother’s number, I pulled up a local newspaper article that had several pieces done on the shootout, complete with a picture of the building that looked out toward the ocean.
And there, in the corner of the picture, was the sign for an intersection.
“Gotcha,” I whispered.
“Maya?” my brother asked.
“Harry, hey. Listen, I really need to talk to you,” I said.
“Maya, what’s wrong? Are you all right?”
“I know it’s probably not my place, but I want you to be safe, okay?”
“What do you mean? Maya, if you’re in troub—”
“You mentioned something about a lost boy or whatever on your phone call over dinner, right?” I asked.
He paused. “Maya, this doesn’t concern—”
“I have some information you might want. I think the lost boy you’re referring to is actually a motorcycle gang.”
“How do you know that?”
“Please, Harry. Just—I don’t want you to get in trouble. I don’t want to lose my brother too. Just, please. Please, can we meet up and talk?”
“Of course. Yes. We certainly can. When is good for you?” he asked.
I saved the picture onto my computer and sent it to myself in an email. That picture would be my guide to this building. And maybe, just maybe, the right person would see me there. Or there would be information in the building to lead me to Notch.
Either way, this had to work.
Otherwise, it would get me killed.