Snake Eyes, page 14
“Thank you.” I closed my hand around it.
After helping Dav grab the gas cans, we headed into the gloomy house’s garage.
“Why don’t you start splashing the gas around?” I suggested to Riley.
She gave me a dirty look, set her gas can down, and freed her sidearm. “I’ll clear the place first.”
“Not alone, you won’t.”
Dav sloshed some gas up the garage wall. “Be careful.”
The second we stepped inside the hall, dust dried my lips, and a metallic taste coated my tongue. The heat inside had doubled, sucking out all the air. Sweat prickled my skin. “Stay close. These things are fast.”
Rile was already ahead, sweeping her braced sidearm in a well-trained arc. A door banged somewhere, and we both jumped. A cooler breeze stirred the air, making the trash scrape across the floor. Something was different. The distinctive fetid smell had gone. The air smelled of dust and hot concrete, but nothing rotten.
An airplane thundered above, shaking dust from the ceiling. I kicked in the door leading to the room that had been filled with baobhan. Sunlight poured in, chasing the normal shadows away. Deep claw gouges and cracks crisscrossed the walls. Something wild and vicious had been here, but the room was just a room. No moving shadows, no monsters.
“Shit. We’re too late.”
“I’ll check upstairs,” Riley said, her footfalls making the steps creak.
She wouldn’t find anything.
“Dammit…” Returning to Dav, I shook my head. “There’s nothing here.”
“Nothing?”
“Let’s check the street.”
The baobhan weren’t in any of the abandoned houses, but evidence of their occupancy remained. Floors and walls were all scratched up, and the strange odor lingered in some darker, danker corners, but the houses were just abandoned shells.
“Nada.” I kicked a stone at the curb. “Maybe they moved on.”
Riley dumped her gas can beside a tuft of grass on the sidewalk. “But they want the bike—that’s what this is all about, right?”
“That’s why they showed up at Dav’s place.”
“They knew we’d come back,” Dav added. “We torch the houses anyway.”
“No.” Riley wiped the back of her hand across her forehead and pulled her collar away from her damp neck. “They’re not here. You still have the bike. Leave it.”
“Leave it?” That last word echoed through the empty lot like a gunshot.
I looked at Dav for support. He glowered at Riley, the weight of that stare like ten thousand pounds of badass. “Nobody fucks with my crew and walks away.”
Shaking her head, she took a step back and lifted her hands. “Willful arson, Carino?” Sunlight glinted over the badge at her hip. “I can’t be part of this.”
“Then go. Go keep the streets clear of ricers while we fight the real monsters.”
Her mouth twisted around all the shit she wanted to say, but she slunk off in her anonymous Ford.
“Screw her,” Dav grumbled beside me. “We don’t need no cops.”
I looked at the lighter in my hand, shining in the sunlight. K. A. It was time to fight back.
Dry as tinder, it didn’t take much for the houses to burn. The flames licked up their walls and devoured the roofs. From inside the minivan, we watched the row burn.
“It’s not over,” I told Dav. Some part of a burning house hissed and crumbled, puffing out black clouds, staining LA’s blue skies dark. This was my omen to those creatures. We were coming for them. “I’m going to fix it.” Make it right.
“Wrong.” Dav’s smile was contagious. “We’re gonna fix it.” He dropped the minivan’s clutch, locked in a low gear, and shot us away from the flames.
Chapter Nineteen
The lockup door slammed closed, sealing the GSX-R inside. I tapped in the code—a code only I knew. Nobody was getting to that bike without my say-so. Checking that the street was clear, I slipped back into my Mitsi. She purred her way back to Dav’s shop, nice and sedate, obeying all the laws like a model driver.
The limo was out on a job, leaving a gaping space on the shop floor. Dav had returned the pink minivan, but his GT-R wasn’t in its usual spot, and his apartment upstairs was empty. Dust still covered the couch and floor, and drops of blood had dried to horrible brown stains. I closed the door on that mess, not ready to deal with it on my own.
“Anyone home?” I called anyway.
The place was quiet, everyone out working. Bumping the Mitsi into the shop, I popped her hood, rolled up my sleeves, flicked on some thumping music to chase away the ghosts, and started removing the block covers.
I was soon lost to the work, my head in all the Mitsi’s quirks, hands covered in grease. Fixing up cars wasn’t work, but more of an escape. And I sorely needed something else to think about, just until Dav got back.
“Hey, Jaz.” Cate appeared at my side, startling me out of the zone. She smiled carefully, then crossed the shop and turned the music down to a more sociable level.
I wiped my hands clean on a rag and leaned a hip against the Mitsi’s fender, watching Cate’s gaze dart over the Mitsi’s insides that were now on the car’s outsides.
Her assumptions made, she asked, “So, you back for good this time, huh?”
My hackles rose. She was pissed and protective of Dav and the crew. I knew that, but the way she slid her eyes over me made my skin itch. For the sake of the others, I couldn’t start anything, but that didn’t mean I had to swallow her shit. “Some advice…” Her gaze flicked to my face. “Don’t get between me and the crew and we’ll get along fine.”
Her plucked brows arched. “Wow. You think you’re pretty hot?”
“I’m not throwing down with you, so stop whatever this is.”
“For what it’s worth, I don’t want to see him hurt again.”
I let it slide. “Did you come here to throw shade at me?”
“Actually, no. I’m looking for Billy. Have you seen him?”
“He was around last night.” Although I hadn’t technically seen him; he’d just said goodnight right before Dav and I had gotten real personal all over his apartment.
“Huh.” She tucked her thumbs into her skinny jeans pockets and looked around the shop. “Maybe he went out with Dav.”
I shrugged. “Probably. The GT-R’s gone.”
“Do you think Billy’s been kinda… Never mind.” She waved her own comment away. “You’re so wrapped up in your own drama, you wouldn’t know.”
That little dig hurt. I always cared. “Kinda what?”
“Distracted, maybe. I dunno. He’s always got some girl drama happening. But he stopped texting me, which isn’t like him.”
Maybe I’d been wrong about Cate having her eye on Dav. Maybe she’d been interested in Billy all along. If that was the case, god help her. Billy was a player. Everyone knew it. The entire street scene knew it. If it wore heels and fluttered its lashes, he fucked it. I laughed lightly. “I wouldn’t get too into Billy.”
“What? No. It’s not like that.” She looked me hard in the eyes. “I don’t do guys.”
Oh. Well, shit. Fair enough. I hadn’t seen that coming. She really was just looking out for Dav. Man, I’d screwed up there.
Cate laughed at my silence and curled her lip. “You really don’t give a shit about them, do you? You only have eyes for Dav. Everyone else is just his baggage.”
I threw my dirty rag down and squared up to her. “You need to back the fuck off. These people are my life.”
She shoved me in the chest, rocking me back. “If you cared, you’d know what I’m talking about!”
As tempting as it was, I wasn’t about to get into a physical with an angry teen. I’d been in her shoes not so long ago, and then grown out of them. But one more shove like that and she’d have to scrape herself off the floor. “I have my own shit going on, which is a whole lot bigger than Billy not texting you. So maybe grow the fuck up, Cate.”
“I’ll find him myself. I don’t know why I even thought you’d help. You’re as selfish now as you’ve always been.” She swiveled on her heels and marched from the shop. Moments later, the Silvia’s turbo whistled, and Cate sped away.
By mid-afternoon, Dav hadn’t returned. Neither had Billy. Or Cate. I kept my head buried in the Mitsi, glancing up every time a car rumbled by outside. Rosa was back and detailing the limo, filling the shop with the smell of polish. The music thumped loud enough to bend the walls.
Three calls to Dav’s phone had gone unanswered. I didn’t want to be that girl who got needy right after the best sex she’d had in years, but I was also very aware that life wasn’t normal right now. If it hadn’t been the middle of the day, I’d have already been on the streets, cruising for any sightings of Dav’s GT-R.
Cate’s words still rang in my ears despite the music trying to drown them out. Maybe I hadn’t been paying much attention to the others because… vampires and the whole raising-my-sister-from-the-dead thing, but I should have.
Turning the music down, I hung off one of the limo’s open doors and nodded at Rosa. She flicked off the vacuum, wiped her hair from her face, and beamed. “Wassup?”
“I had a run-in with Cate earlier.”
“Ah, don’t take it personally. She’s kinda prickly, but she’s all good.”
“It’s not that. I can handle shade. She was asking after Billy.”
Rosa’s eyes darted away. “Oh, right.”
“Is there something going on with him?”
“I dunno, maybe. He’s always been kinda flighty, and then right after… you know, you left, he got into a fight. Dav had to step in, like he does. Billy took it bad, and I think maybe… he might’ve got himself into some real trouble a few months back.”
Real trouble. Drugs. Gangs. Shit we didn’t touch. “Does Dav know?”
She gave me the half-cocked smile that said, “Of course Dav knows,” because Dav knew everything.
“Does Billy know Dav knows?”
“Nope.”
“Okay…” And Cate had said Billy and Dav had probably gone off somewhere, so maybe it was just normal life stuff and had nothing to do with supernatural creatures crawling out of another reality. I sighed hard.
“Oh… and er…” She grabbed my jacket from the limo’s back shelf and tossed it at me. I caught it, unfolded it, trying to recall where exactly I’d left it behind. Oh right, Dav had yanked it off. Heat crawled onto my face. “Found that in the shop this morning.” Grinning, she asked, “Have fun last night?”
“Er… yeah. We did.”
She winked, and I returned to the Mitsi, checking my phone again. No calls.
“Hey, Jaz…” Rosa called.
“Hmm?”
“It’s good, having you back.”
Yeah… unless my bad luck had followed me. I tried to muster a smile for her and barely managed it. If anything happened to these people, I’d never forgive myself, and maybe Cate was included in that too. Because she was crew.
“Shit.” Snatching up the pink minivan’s keys, I hollered for Rosa to call me if Dav returned, then reversed the van out of the shop. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was just Billy’s drama. And if it was, I’d look like an idiot tracking them all down, but if it wasn’t, I needed to be there for them. Now.
My cell rang as I threaded the van through traffic toward Lakewood, displaying an unknown number.
“Hey.”
“Jazmine. It’s Riley. Aviation Boulevard. There’s been an accident—” The connection died.
I dropped my phone, demanded everything from the minivan’s 500hp, and ran a red.
Chapter Twenty
Aviation Boulevard is a four-mile-long, dead-straight strip of wide asphalt adjacent to LAX, lined on one side by residential houses and on the other by shiny airport commercial blocks. At night, without the traffic, it’s a drag racer’s dream. But during the day, clogged with airport traffic, it’s just another LA bottleneck.
By the time I arrived, traffic had already begun to back up. The colored lights of ambulances flashed up ahead. I bumped the minivan onto the curb and abandoned it, running full tilt toward the crowd. The smell of spilled gasoline baked on asphalt filled the air. No, no… Blips from the fire department squad trucks interrupted the grumble of their engines.
“Let me through…” I plowed into the crowd, fighting my way through. Lazy tendrils of black smoke spiraled into LA’s pristine blue sky.
“Stay back.” Some uniform cop tried to block my path, but it was already too late. I’d seen what he was keeping the crowd away from.
Resting on its roof, bent wheels in the air, the car was a mangled can of twisted metal. Glass sparkled on the road. Great gouges had been torn from the asphalt, all pointing toward the GT-R. Dav, no!
“Hey, stop!”
I broke from the crowd and bolted toward the front driver’s door. It hung open, bent and broken.
“Jaz.”
Flame suppressant foam sloshed under my shoes. I staggered closer. Blood. Was it blood on the road or gasoline? Oh god. My heart thudded in my ears like muffled drums.
“Jaz.”
Dav’s car.
But no driver. Was that good? Was he okay?
Where was Dav? I scanned the people, their faces blank. All strangers. “Dav?”
“Jaz… hey.” Riley appeared in front of me, blocking my view. “He’s not here.”
“What?”
“Carino isn’t here. By the time the EMTs arrived, he’d fled.”
“I don’t…” I touched my forehead, trying to stop the world from spinning.
“He ran from the scene.” Her gaze hooked into mine. “Do you know where he is?”
He was okay? He’d run? My heart thumped harder.
“Jaz. Focus. He’s probably hurt. Are you hearing me? Look at me…”
I swallowed the burn at the back of my throat and looked into her eyes.
“Where is he, Jaz?”
“I…” My eyes trawled past her shoulder, back to the GT-R. No car should ever have its undercarriage in the air, its gasoline spilled all over the road like blood. The GT-R was Dav’s baby. What had he been doing out here? There was no way he’d race in thick traffic. God, I was going to throw up.
“Get your ass over here.” Riley’s steady hand on my arm led me away from the car, away from the crowd, and when she opened her cruiser’s fropnt door, I dropped inside like my limbs were dead weights. She climbed into the driver’s seat beside me and shut the door, sealing the noise and smells outside.
“Hey?” she said. Her voice was soft, her face friendly. “Jaz… this is important. Nobody walks away from a wreck like that unhurt. There’s blood on the windshield and on the seat. And unless you can tell me Carino wasn’t driving and he’s at home, we need to find him. Do you understand?”
Dav was missing. I swallowed. “This doesn’t make any sense. He wouldn’t do this.”
“Clearly, he did.”
“No… you don’t get it. He doesn’t risk lives.”
“You know as well as I do, racers sometimes settle grudges on the fly. He met another car at the lights. They threw down off the cuff—”
“Another car?” Anger fizzled away the numbness left over from shock.
“Yes. Witnesses report he was racing, Jaz.”
“No way.” Not without me. “He wouldn’t. What other car?”
“We don’t know yet. Conflicting statements. But we do know Carino lost control, hit a wall, spun out, and flipped. Rolled five times. It’s damn lucky nobody else was seriously hurt.”
Lucky.
A fluttering laugh slipped free. He hadn’t been racing. I knew that. Dav didn’t do crazy shit. For all his macho bullshit, he was too smart to make such a rookie mistake. Cate had said he was with Billy. And now Cate was missing too. Whatever this was, Riley thought it looked like a race gone wrong because that’s what she wanted.
“Jaz… where is he?”
“I don’t know. He’s not at the shop. The last time I saw him was this morning, with you.”
She peered at me, trying to peel back any lies. “He’ll show up. You know that, right? We’re watching the shop.”
I’d almost forgotten whose side she was on. Once the dust settled, the ADD would go over the GT-R with a fine-toothed comb and book Dav for every illegal mod and whichever laws he’d broken here. She was itching to bring him in and give herself a nice little gold star on her career sheet. Maybe a pay raise. If Dav went down, the crew would fall apart. Riley and I were on opposite sides. Detective Riley was not my friend. That thought balanced me like nothing else had. I swallowed, breathed out, and grounded myself in the moment. “Are we done here, Detective?”
“You don’t have to go down with him, Archer.”
Fuck her. I flung open the door and walked away from the scene, back to the waiting minivan. Dialing Rosa, I told her the details and my suspicions. Dav hadn’t been racing, but someone had been chasing him.
Maybe by the time I got back to the shop, he’d be there, but probably not. He knew the cops were watching the shop. We had to find him. And fast.
Chapter Twenty-One
The questions came fast and hard. I told them everything. All of it. My luck, the creatures, Siobhan, the AWOL magician, Riley. Every damn thing, right up until stashing the GSX-R away and Cate’s questions.
Liau looked one twitch away from punching a wall, and Rosa had a cool, murderous calm about her that made me glad I was on her side.
“He’s alive,” I repeated, because the more I said it, the more it had to be real.
“You think this might be Billy’s doing?” Rosa asked, wincing. She didn’t want to believe it.
“I don’t know. Maybe whatever is going on with him isn’t connected to my shit, but it doesn’t matter. We have to help them.”
“And the five-O are outside,” Liau said coolly.
I’d seen the Ford parked across the street and eyeballed the two cops inside. “Which means Dav won’t come near this place until the heat’s off, and he won’t go to the ER. Where else can he go?”
