13. Danny
Danny
My brain was buzzing as I gasped for air. Jess lay on top of me, also breathless. As her lips touched my collarbone, I slid my hand down her back.
“You good?”
“I was more than good the last two times,” she giggled. “Trust me. I’m fantastic.”
I let out a laugh, wrapping my arms around her. I pressed a kiss on her forehead, letting out a content sigh. She shifted slightly so she could see my face.
“This is the most fun I’ve ever had in the back seat of a car,” she murmured.
“The fun doesn’t have to stop,” I pointed out.
Her fingers trailed across my chest. “As good as that sounds, at some point Robby and the rest of his crew will be showing up,” she reminded me. “And I’m pretty sure my car isn’t fixed yet.”
“Yeah, I think we might have gotten a bit distracted,” I admitted as I leaned in for a kiss. Which led to another kiss. Jess let out a small moan as she rolled on top of me.
“What about the repair?” I asked, letting out a chuckle.
Her lips found my jawline and then made their way to my ear. “I’m not done distracting you yet.”
Eventually the car did get repaired, though there were several happy distractions getting to that point.
I locked up the garage feeling better about everything.
The trailer was solid. Jess and I seemed like a sure thing.
As I went to get into her car, it felt like everything was finally going my way.
Inside the car, Jess pointed at my phone which had ended up on the floor of the back seat. “I don’t know who it is, but your phone keeps ringing with that Fiona Apple song,” she informed me. “Plus, you seem to be getting a lot of texts.”
A chill ran down my spine. I had no idea why, so I pushed it aside. “It’s Paige,” I said, hearing the tension in my voice. “She’s calling to roast me about being at the garage with you so late.”
The phone buzzed, and the lyrics to “Criminal” drifted up to me. I reached around the seat to grab it and answered the call. “Hey, Paige. We’re on our way back.”
“Faye is gone!”
For a second, I stopped breathing. “What?”
I could hear the panic in her voice. My shoulders and neck seized with tension. “I was talking to Alfie and went to show her a rough cut of the trailer, and she snuck out! She’s not in the room! She’s not in the suite! She’s turned off the location on her phone!”
“What’s going on?” Jess asked.
I tried to answer, but Paige kept shouting in my ear.
“She went to that effing party!” Paige shouted. “I know it!”
“What party?” I asked.
“Some of her online friends are at MVFC and they went to some event tonight. I told her she couldn’t go because the party was twenty-one and older,” Paige said, spazzing out. I could picture her spiraling around our hotel suite, kicking furniture over.
“Do you know which one?” I asked.
“I don’t know! There’s like half a dozen of them tonight!” Paige shouted at me, her voice going from panicked to hysterical. “She’s fourteen, Danny! She knows better than this!”
“Okay, calm down. We’ll find her,” I promised.
Jess made a face. “Oooh. You should not tell her to calm down.”
“DO NOT TELL ME TO CALM DOWN, DANNY!”
“Okay, don’t yell at me!” I protested.
“YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE I CAN YELL AT RIGHT NOW!”
I looked over at Jess, who furiously tapped away at her phone. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’M FREAKING OUT, DANNY!”
“Not you, Paige! Give me a second,” I pulled the phone away to look at Jess.
Jess glanced at me before returning her full attention to her phone. “Judging by this side of the conversation and the shouting going on, I’m assuming Faye snuck out to go to one of the con parties and wasn’t supposed to.”
“Excellent summation,” I agreed.
“Hang on, I might have something.”
I put my phone to my ear. “Jess has a lead on where she is,” I informed Paige.
“I SWEAR TO GOD IF SHE GETS KIDNAPPED BY SOME A-HOLE WHO LOOKS LIKE VIGGO MORTENSEN I’LL-”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and put it on mute. “Please tell me you have something,” I pleaded. “Paige is losing her mind.”
“That’s understandable,” Jess said calmly. “I know some of my subscribers were having a get together at one of the parties tonight and… Yep. There she is.”
She held up her phone for me to see. “Fayed2Black. She’s going to the Primary party. I’m not sure how she’s getting in because it’s twenty-one and over.”
The panic in me began to subside and I turned my phone off mute. “We know where she is, Paige.”
“IS IT AT THE BOTTOM OF A DITCH WITH NO KIDNEYS?!”
“We’ll get her and bring her back to the hotel.” I glanced over at Jess, who nodded in agreement.
“IF YOU ARE NOT BACK IN AN HOUR, THIS HOTEL ROOM WILL LOOK LIKE A SEVENTIES ROCK BAND RANSACKED IT IN A DRUG INDUCED FRENZY!”
“There’s a bag of Snickers stashed under my bed. Eat one and then at least give me ninety minutes.” I hung up before she could puncture my ear drum with her voice.
Jess wasted no time and put the car in gear. The streets were quiet this late in the evening, so at least we didn’t have traffic to deal with. She reached over and gave my knee a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her. Faye seems pretty balanced for a kid her age. She’s going to be fine.”
I let out a long breath, trying to ease my tension levels. “Let’s hope so. If she is fine, my biggest worry will be keeping Paige from killing her.”
“Well, if she does, she apparently knows the ditch to dump her in after we get her kidneys on the black market,” she joked.
I didn’t laugh.
“Sorry. My humor gets inappropriate when I’m tense.”
“It’s okay. I’d probably laugh if it wasn’t Faye,” I replied.
“This is what kids do at her age,” Jess said, trying to calm me down. “I’m sure you and Paige did the same thing.”
“We did,” I said, tightly.
“See? And you guys came out all right.”
“Except when Paige went out one night and found out she was pregnant a few weeks later,” I deadpanned.
Jess let out a hiss of embarrassment. “Yeah, I’m not helping, am I?”
I let out a long breath and rolled my shoulders, trying to release some of the tension. “You are helping. More than you know. If this was any other kid, I’d be cracking jokes with you right now.”
“She’s going to be all right,” she assured me. “The people she is hanging with are fairly nerdy. Not the hard partying type.”
From the corner of her eye, I saw her bite her lip. She was holding something back. “You’re telling me that just to make me feel better, aren’t you?”
She grimaced, feeling caught. “Whatever is going to keep your head from popping off your shoulders right now, I’m saying it.”
I groaned. “What kind of party did she go to?”
Jess’s lips formed a tight line. Something in my gut twisted. I knew I didn’t want to know the answer.
“Jess?”
She winced. “The Devil’s Disco.”
I blinked in confusion. “Devil’s Disco?”
Jess sighed. “It’s from that show on Primary. Where the devil left hell, became a police consultant and fights crime. Basically, uh, he indulges himself every chance he can. The Devil’s Disco is modeled after the club on the show and it is... um. Very adult.”
I sat in silence letting that information stew in my stomach.
Jess glanced at me. “That didn’t help, did it?”
“Could we drive faster, please?” I requested, with as much politeness as I could muster.
She punched the accelerator with her foot, pushing us past the speed limit. For whatever reason, it eased the tension in me, and I could almost start to breathe again.
The Primary party was in full swing. The line was out the door, and bouncers were dressed as demons guarding the entrance.
Jess dropped me off and went to find parking.
I checked the line for Faye. It was not as easy as I hoped it would be.
Everyone was in cosplay and I was out of my element.
I looked like some thirty-one-year-old creep in a grease-stained T-shirt, with mussed-up hair.
Everyone there probably thought I was losing my mind.
At the front of the line, the two large men in demon costumes, whose biceps were bigger than my head, stared me down.
“So. I know this sounds crazy, but my niece is inside there, and I need to bring her home,” I pleaded. “Have you seen her? She’s just short of five feet with dyed black hair and red highlights.”
They said nothing. The only response was a slow narrowing of eyes, scowls gradually taking shape.
I smiled weakly at them. “I don’t suppose you know who I am?”
I hated doing that. I’ve always hated doing that. I cringed as I said the words aloud.
They gave each other a sidelong glance before resuming their death stares at me. “We know who you are,” the one on the right growled. “You’re the one who didn’t read the books.”
At that moment, I wished they had punched me in the face instead of saying that.
“It’s okay, Jeremy! He’s with me.”
The stone-faced men broke out into smiles.
“Your majesty!” they called out.
Jessica walked past me. I realized she had changed back into her cosplay or at least the parts that hadn’t fallen apart.
The wig was gone and her red hair tumbled down her back in messy waves.
The brocade had been left open revealing a partially unbuttoned shirt and tank top underneath.
The skirt was rolled down at the top with the thigh slits now raised to dangerous heights.
If I hadn’t been out of my mind with worry, I would have had other ideas.
She gave each man a hug and a peck on the cheek. “Guys, I know you got a line, but he’s not lying. His niece is in there and she’s a minor. Fourteen.”
The eyes that had been glaring at me before now went wide. “Sorry, man,” the one called Jeremy said, opening up the gate to Hell for us. “Usually, we have better control on who gets in, but it gets messy when there are costumes involved. Need help finding her?”
“I know you do your best, Jeremy,” Jess said, giving him a pat on his enormous arm. “We’ll take care of her. Thanks for letting us in. Hey, have you two started the book for this month?”