Snake Eyes, page 15
Rosa looked at Liau and back at me. “There ain’t nowhere else.”
Rosa’s cell blipped. She plucked it from her pocket. “Oh shit, it’s Billy.” She answered. “Billy, where the fuck have you been, man—” Her face fell. “Hey, it’s okay. Slow down. I can’t—Billy. Hey. What?” Her shining eyes flicked to me. “Listen,” she croaked, “we got your back. Okay? Where are you? Can you… Okay. The what? Wait… Billy—”
He’d either hung up or the connection had dropped. Rosa stared at the phone. “I er…” A tear fell, and she swiped it away. “Siobhan has Dav. Billy said he’s in a bad way. She wants the relic now or…”
If that vampire bitch touched him, I’d make damn sure she had a real unlucky accident. “Fuck.”
“Billy’s scared, Jaz. Like—he was rambling, crying, saying sorry. They’re in the hills. Some posh new development going up. He said the wreck was his fault.”
“Is Cate with them?”
“Didn’t say.”
Cate wasn’t answering her phone either, so she was either so pissed with me she’d blocked my number, or she was caught up in all this.
“All right, let’s roll out.”
“The cops?” Liau asked.
“If they follow, we split up and shake ’em, then meet in the hills. Keep your phones close. I’ll get the Gixxer–the relic.”
“You going to hand it over?” Rosa asked.
“If I have to, yeah. But let’s see what we’re dealin’ with first.”
The police predictably followed me out of the shop. I gave them the runaround in the minivan, and once I was out of their sight, the little van laid its rubber down and ran like a dream. It had been a while since I’d driven stick shift to outrun someone, but the van was forgiving and got me to my lockup in minutes. The Gixxer waited inside, just sitting there, all innocent-like.
I ran my hand over her body, sensing its low-level hum. A relic. Something of power that Siobhan would do anything to get her hands on. Black didn’t seem to care either way, or maybe Siobhan had already dealt with him?
Mounting the bike, I grabbed the helmet and dialed Black’s number, maybe for the last time. It rang off to his answer service. “Hey, asshole. I’ve got your relic right here. But your archnemesis has some of my crew, and if you want to restore your precious balance, you’d better get your head outta your Agent of Fate ass and help us, because if you think I’ll choose this bike over my people, you’re dead wrong.” I reeled off the address and told him to be there. He probably wouldn’t show, anyway.
Revving the bike, tickling the red line, I burbled her out of the lockup, abandoning the pink van, and accelerated hard. The relic behaved, purring between my legs like a kitten, threading through traffic like a knife through butter. A dream to ride, like the bike knew what I wanted from her before I did. No wonder Liam was so damn fast.
The sun was setting behind the Hollywood Hills as I rolled to a halt at the foot of a sweeping private road where an enormous billboard declared, SUNSET HEIGHTS ~ The house you want, the life you deserve!
Liau was leaning against his neon-bright racer. He nodded a greeting. Rosa draped an arm out her car’s window and flicked her fingers in a small wave. Liau strode over. I flipped up my helmet visor.
“Four houses on the right—ugly colonial set back from the rest,” he said.
“All right. Let’s do this.”
As they started their rides and the sounds of tuned engines alerted anyone within a few miles of our presence, I squeezed the dice in my pocket. “We’re coming for you, Dav.” My fingers nudged something cool and metallic.
Kari’s Zippo lighter. I wore the same jacket from when we’d torched the villas. Lucky. “Thanks, Kari.”
The road snaked up a hill, hairpin bends switch-backing on us, climbing us high over the twinkling city sprawled below. A chain-link fence had been shoved aside. We wove through and into what would one day be a luxury neighborhood with stunning views but was now a few naked timber frames and a whole lot of silent construction equipment.
The mock-colonial was wrapped in blue plastic sheets, but some had torn, revealing plywood beneath. It had been that way for a while too. The driveway was coated in dust. Parked out front, glossy metallic paint shimmering, was Cate’s Silvia and a plain Ford. That answered the question as to where Cate was.
Rolling the Gixxer by the Silvia and into the garage, I kicked out her stand and cut the engine. Now that the roar of our engines had died, chirping crickets filled disturbed quiet.
Liau and Rosa hung back beside their cars, ready to bolt or charge in, whichever was necessary.
“You guys stay out here,” I told them. “Hopefully, this’ll be over quick.”
The porch creaked under my shoes. I shoved open the door, and a gust of wind funneled down a wide hall and up a sweeping staircase. Plastic flapped somewhere upstairs, making a racket.
“Dav?” The huge house gobbled up my voice. Maybe I should have asked Liau to help me look, but we’d get separated, and I wanted them safe.
“Billy?”
A thump above.
Plastic covered the window holes, shreds flapping and rippling, shifting the fading light across the walls.
Taking the stairs, I caught the sweet smell of decay and stale air on the landing. The baobhan were here. “Billy?”
Another thump.
Heading down the hall, I checked each room until coming to the largest, the main bedroom. Billy sat in the far corner, hands and feet bound, a gag jammed between his teeth. His right eye had swollen shut. Old blood stained his white shirt. His good eye widened, and his mumbling started up.
“Shit…” I hurried behind him and untied the gag, slowly peeling it from between his lips. It hadn’t been tied tight and slipped off easily.
He trembled. “Jaz… oh fuck, they have Dav. I don’t know what they are,” he said. “It was stupid. Please—you have to believe me!”
“I do, Billy.” I worked at the loose nylon ropes around his wrists, picking them free. Whoever had tied them hadn’t bothered to tighten them, almost like they’d been in a hurry. He probably could have freed himself if he’d been thinking clearly. “It’s all right. Are you hurt?”
“Just my… just this.” He flicked a hand at his face. “The GT-R—Dav—Oh, shit, Dav. Have you found him? He was hurt real bad.” His lips wobbled. “Shit, Jaz. It was so bad—so bad. The wreck. I shouldn’t have said the things I did, and then—”
“Shh, Billy.” His ankle ties fell away as easily as the others. “Where is Dav? Where’s Cate?”
“Cate?” He blinked. “She’s here?”
“The Silvia is in the driveway.” I finally got the rope free and grabbed Billy’s hand, hauling him to his feet. “She was worried about you,” I said, trying to make him feel better, but his one good eye brimmed with tears. “We’ll find her. Can you walk okay?”
“I’m good… I can, yeah.” He staggered forward.
A door slammed somewhere downstairs, shaking the walls. After pressing a finger to my lips, I crept out into the hallway with Billy trailing close behind me.
“There are things here,” he whispered, his teeth chattering.
“Yeah, I know.”
His tremors rattled through him, shock setting in. “The blood… He’ll be okay, right? There was so much blood.”
“Yeah, he’ll be fine. He’s Dav.” He had to be alive. He had to be. Siobhan wanted to make a trade. That was the deal. She would make sure he lived, wouldn’t she? I swallowed the metallic taste of nerves and kept my feet moving and my hand on the dice in my pocket. Just in case.
Billy grabbed the banister but stumbled down the top step. “Did you bring the bike?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I helped him down, and when we finally got to the bottom, I steered him toward the door. “Liau and Rosa are outside. Get to them, okay? They’ll look after you.” Leaving him nodding and hobbling along, I ventured deeper down the hall. Blood splatters had dried on the dusty floor, leading a trail deeper into the dark house.
“Dav?” I called, but not too loudly, because now those creatures knew where I was, and I’d forgotten to bring a damn tire iron. The others wouldn’t have one either. Everything practical had been stripped from racing cars. The minivan had one. Dammit.
The blood trail ended in the middle of the back hall. Or maybe it was just too dark to see it. I swallowed, tasting rotting things on my tongue. Dav would be here… in their nest.
A blur came at me from the right, lunging out of a doorway. I grabbed it, at a loss without a weapon, and flung it against the opposite wall.
“Jaz!” Cate lifted her hands, defending herself. “I thought you were them!”
Her eyes were as wide as I’d ever seen them, and her face was ghostly pale in the shades of gray cloaking us. She didn’t look hurt. Just scared.
“Where’s Dav?”
“Basement, I think,” she whispered. “I’ve looked everywhere else.”
“Great.” Of course he’d be in the basement, the darkest room in the house, underground.
I plucked my phone from my pocket and swiped up for the flashlight.
New notification blinked on the screen. Text from: Det Riley.
I couldn’t deal with her bullshit right now. My finger hovered over the notification, a flick away from clearing it.
“What is it?” Cate leaned in.
I looked up. Her face loomed, lit by the light from my phone. “Why didn’t you answer my calls?”
“My battery died. I was kinda busy…”
I tapped the notification. New text: Det Riley.
Other racer ID’d. Blue Silvia. On your crew? Call me.
Cate had been the other racer? But that didn’t make any sense. Why had Cate been chasing Dav? She could have killed them. Adrenaline and anger landed like a blow to the chest, and instead of shaking it off, I drove the heat through my veins, grabbed Cate by the throat, and slammed her against the wall. “He could have died!”
She scrabbled and writhed in my grip, trying to pry open my fingers. Her mouth gaped, guppying open and closed. “Why were you chasing them, Cate!”
I eased off only so she could answer.
She spluttered, coughed, and wheezed, “Wasn’t… me.”
“Blue Silvia. You were chasing him.”
Furiously shaking her head, she looked up through tears. “Billy.”
“Yeah, Billy was there. Tell me what the fuck you were doing—”
Her eyes blew wide. “Billy!”
“Right here, babe.”
I whirled at the sound of Billy’s voice. His bright smile shone in the dark, then he swung a plank of wood like a bat, and the world went dark.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I blinked awake and stared at gray walls, wondering why my limbs had turned into useless iron rods. Shoes scuffed back and forth on the dusty floor. A dull ache throbbed down my neck. Squinting around the pain, I watched those shoes and looked up. Billy paced back and forth, hand stroking his jaw as he muttered, “She said she’d fix things…”
Thoughts spun and whirled, muffled by the pain. Reaching behind my neck, my nails snagged into matted hair, and the smell of blood beat out the smell of dust and decay.
Then I saw the chair. And Dav tied to it. His chin rested on his chest. In the dark, the right side of his face was black from blood. His clothes too.
“Dav…” Wedging my hand under me, I levered myself forward.
“Stay down, Jaz.”
The blow to my ribs flipped me onto my back and left me gasping for air. Tears squeezed from my eyes, blurring the sight of Billy crouched beside me.
“She said she’d fix it.”
“We can… get out,” I croaked. God, everything hurt. “Dav will… help you.”
Billy shook his head, abruptly stood, and backed off. “Nah. Couldn’t tell Dav. She’s gonna fix it. She’s gonna make it right. He doesn’t have to know.”
His muttering sounded all too familiar. Whatever Billy had done, whatever guilt he carried, Siobhan had found it, the same as she’d found it with me and Dav. And she’d promised him something he couldn’t refuse.
“Billy, it’s all right.”
“Shut up, Jaz.”
“Take Dav. We’ll leave…” Clutching my side where a new pain radiated every time I breathed, I propped myself on an elbow. “Whatever she told you is a lie.”
He looked at me like I’d slapped him. “She just wants the bike, then everything will be okay again. Everything will be the same.” He bolted up some stairs and was gone with the slam of a door.
“Dav.” Getting my knees under me, I gingerly got to my feet and staggered to Dav’s side. “Hey, c’mon, Carino…” The gash in his forehead was the source of all the blood, but it had crusted over. That had to be good, right?
A groan bubbled out of him. He winced, his eyes rolled, his head lifted, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “Hey, Jaz. You look like shit.”
I snorted and attacked the ropes tying his wrists behind him. “You haven’t looked in a mirror lately?”
A grunt. If he was making jokes, he’d be okay.
“What the fuck happened, Dav?”
“Stupid shit.” He licked his lips. “Billy pissed off the wrong people. Got in deep… too deep to ask for help. Siobhan got to him—like the bitch does.”
The damn rope wasn’t giving. Billy’s had fallen away so easily because he’d tied them himself. But he wasn’t thinking. This wasn’t him. I dug my nails in and tugged at the ends, slowly working them loose. Siobhan would be close, if she wasn’t here already, and her wretched sisters wouldn’t be far away. “Siobhan’s making her promises.”
“He called me up, said to go for a drive. Pulled a gun and demanded the bike.”
“Shit.”
“I drove in circles, tryin’ to talk him down. Then Cate was in the mirrors. Her showing up spooked Billy. I floored it, tryin’ to scare Billy into handing over the gun or we’d wreck.” He swallowed hard. “You saw the GT-R?”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t go as I planned. After that it’s just bits of memories—Billy ranting about promises and making shit right. It all started adding up then.”
“We’ll get him back.”
The ropes finally fell away. Dav gritted his teeth, brought his arms around, rubbed his wrists, then freed his left ankle. I got his right free and hauled him to his feet.
He swayed, then waved off my help and staggered to the stairs. “I’m good. Just… lost a lotta blood.”
“Liau and Rosa are outside. Shit—I sent Billy out to them.” What if he’d hurt them too? “Cate is somewhere—” I owed her an apology, if we got out of this.
Dav kicked at the basement door. The frame split, and the door swung open. A wall of hissing darkness and howling noise rushed in. Dav ducked, dragging me down to a crouch. “Go.” He shoved me forward, beneath the endless stream of hissing dark.
The hisses stirred into a frenzy overhead, but they weren’t attacking, just… waiting.
We ran, bouncing off the walls down the hall. The front door loomed, the outside so damn close.
Billy stepped into the hallway from a side room, gun up and aimed at Dav’s head.
Dav jolted to a stop, the gun inches from his forehead. “Billy…”
“Give me the bike, Jaz.” Billy’s voice sounded flat, but the wildness in his eyes, the way he twitched, the sweat glistening on his face—he was beyond scared.
I lifted my hands and stepped forward. “In the garage.”
“You gotta give it to me. I can’t steal it. Those are the rules.” Madness sparkled in his eyes. He sobbed a little blob of laughter, then his face crumpled, his strength unraveling. His gun hand trembled, finger poised on the trigger. “I’m so sorry, Dav. I fell in deep.”
“I know.” Dav stared back. “It’s not over. Let me help you.”
“Billy…” Another step. “I’ll take you to the bike, okay. We’ll hand it over, and everything will be right, like you want it to be.”
His mouth turned down. Tears and sweat made his face glisten. “I never wanted to hurt anyone.”
My heart ached. Hadn’t I said the same thing for years? “Billy,” I said firmly. Behind us, inside the house, the baobhan hissed and howled, stirring up a storm of their own making. Siobhan was close. “The garage. Let’s go. Just you an’ me. Let Dav go, okay? He’s bleeding. He needs help. Let him go outside, and you an’ me, we’ll fix this, yeah? It’ll be okay.”
Billy swung the gun to me. “Let’s go.”
“Jaz…” Dav warned. Of course he’d be a pain in the ass and pull some heroic stunt because that was how he was built. But that wasn’t happening. This was my mess. I was making it right. No way was I losing him again.
“Go, Dav. Billy and I are fine. Aren’t we, Billy?”
“Yeah, yeah sure, Jaz. We’re fine,” Billy said robotically.
A car approached outside, its engine noise building. Maybe Siobhan, maybe some random passerby. Nothing out there mattered.
I nodded for Dav to go, and with Billy now pointing the gun at me, Dav wouldn’t try anything stupid. He narrowed his eyes on me, pissed that I’d forced his hand. Sometimes, the people who saved us needed saving right back. I let him see my small smile and hoped it wouldn’t be the last.
Then he was gone, the twilight outside the door swallowing his silhouette.
“Okay, Billy. Let’s go get the bike, eh?”
He jerked the gun, gesturing for me to follow the hall.
I dropped a hand into my pocket and stroked my dice, then blinked into the sight to get a look at my own streams of luck. I didn’t have much and neither did Billy, which maybe explained our life choices of late.
“She got to me too, you know,” I said.
“Hands up.”
“I won’t try anything.” Opening the garage door revealed the Gixxer sitting on its stand. Twin headlight beams from outside cast the bike in a bright, garish light and threw long shadows up the wall. The lights blinded any sight of the crew and Dav. I could only hope they were all okay.
