36 Hours (3 page)

There was pounding on her door. At first she thought cops, but then she realized they weren’t announcing themselves, they were trying to break down her door.

She ran to her mother’s room and opened her nightstand drawer. There wasn’t much money, a few ones and coins, but she stuffed it all in her pocket before climbing out the window. There was no ledge. Why was it always easier to climb up than go down? She hung off the sill until her toes found the top of the Dumpster, then she dropped.

A shout at her back didn’t slow her down. She didn’t want to be dead. Wasn’t that pathetic? She had no life to speak of, but the idea of being killed, of being just wiped off the face of the earth, terrified her.

Her side hurt and felt warm. She hoped the face cloth would soak up any blood. She thought she’d taped it on tight enough. She ran on, cutting through the courtyards of every apartment building on the block, until she reached the corner.

To the right was Reseda Boulevard, to the left was a neighborhood. A bus stop was across the street, and
thank God
, a bus was approaching. There were several people waiting for the bus in the drizzle of spit that came down from the sky. Safety in numbers? Not if someone had a semi-automatic gun or three. Gangbangers like Raul Garcia and his crew didn’t give a shit about collateral damage.

She waited until the bus was closer before she ran across the street. The bus slammed on his brakes. She swung inside.

“Girl, you’re going to get yourself killed,” the driver said. “I should kick you off.”

Angel bit back a sarcastic remark, because the driver
would
kick her off, and she didn’t want to be on the street. Not now.

“I’m sorry,” she said meekly and put her coins in the box.

“Watch yourself,” he said. Angel nodded and shuffled to the back of the bus. She glanced out the window. Though the light in the bus made it difficult to see anything outside, she could have sworn she saw a shadow running down the street toward her.

Go, go, go!

No amount of talking to herself was going to get the bus driver to move any faster, so she quickly slouched in a seat.

The bus lurched forward. She found a position to sit that didn’t pull at her wound and where she could also see everyone who got on the bus. They were heading south, toward West Hollywood, and it was only a few stops before she’d have to get off to make her way over to the warehouse.

She counted the money she’d taken from her mother’s drawer. A five, three ones, and about three dollars in change. She wouldn’t be able to buy her way into hiding. And she wasn’t going to spread her legs for it, either. She might be able to sneak in, but that would be tricky, too. If Marisa was already there, that would help, but could Marisa have hidden out at the warehouse for this long? Angel doubted it. Not with the Garcias looking to kill her. They had too many kids working for them, and it only took one to turn.

If she could just find a place to hide until dawn, she’d be okay. She could ride the bus around until midnight, but then would have to get off. Daylight afforded more options.

As she considered her limited choices, her thoughts went back to the group home. The shooters had been hiding in the van, they must have known who she was and what time she’d get there. If the cops were part of it, they wouldn’t have gotten themselves shot, right? What did that mean? Who else knew she was going to be at that specific group home tonight?

The information was probably in her police file, which different people could access—social workers, cops, lawyers. Just about anyone, right? If there was someone on the inside who was selling her out to the Garcias, there was no one she could trust. Not the cops, not the D.A.’s office, and no one on the street.

You’re in deep shit, A. How are you going to get out of this mess?

Chapter Four

Someone had been following Angel since she got off the bus.

He was in a car, she couldn’t see his face, and it looked like only one person. Which meant, probably not the G-5 gang or the cops.

Still, she wasn’t going to stop and ask him what the hell he was doing trailing her. Probably some perv who thought he could pay her twenty bucks to suck his dick.
Not.

She turned down a street not much wider than an alley. Everything was shut down for the night—this was an industrial area. Half the businesses were closed permanently and boarded up. The other half were simply gated and locked, their owners coming back tomorrow or Monday. Lots of repair places and auto body shops and businesses that served the Van Nuys Airport and whatnot.

The car didn’t follow her, but she suspected he’d try and catch up with her on the other side. She slid through a walkway—barely wide enough for a person to pass, a place she wouldn’t normally walk through day or night, except that she was being followed. Fortunately, the drizzle had turned to rain and kept everyone in. Unfortunately, she was now cold and wet. It was a mile walk to the abandoned warehouse where she might—and that was a big
might
—be able to find a roof for the night.

Once she was confident she’d lost the creep, she headed east on Sherman Way until she crossed under the 405, turned north, and tried to blend into the shadows as she cut through residential streets.

An unlocked car in front of a dark house tempted her—there was a sweatshirt on the front seat. She was freezing. She quietly opened the door and grabbed the sweatshirt, closing it with a barely audible click. She slipped it on—it was several sizes too big, but it was warmer than nothing. She hugged herself and walked faster. Looking down, she saw that it was a UCLA sweatshirt. She would have killed to go to UCLA, but at this rate, she wouldn’t be able to afford community college. And if she got herself killed, then
any
college was out of the question.

She felt bad about stealing the sweatshirt, but she’d done worse, and she was freezing. It didn’t help that she also had a hole in her side.

Don’t be such a wimp.

In all the years she’d lived in some of the worst areas of the Valley, she’d never been shot
at
let alone
shot.
It made her unusually depressed.

Her trek through the east side of Valley seemed to take her forever, but finally she passed Saticoy and was entering another business and industrial area. This place was far worse than the place she’d lost whoever was following her. People loitered under the eaves of boarded up buildings. Most of them were harmless—the older homeless, the mental cases, the ones who might yell at her but didn’t know what they were saying or even who they were talking to. But as she got closer to her destination, the homeless dried up and she saw her peers—runaways, gangbangers, thugs, and misfits. She focused on the building where she’d once been given sanctuary when her mother’s then-boyfriend tried to get in her pants, but sanctuary was never guaranteed.

It really depended on who was in and who was out.

“Hey,
Chica,
you’re in the wrong neighborhood.”

Two girls stepped out from between buildings, across the street from where Angel wanted to go.

“I’m looking for Owen.”

They glanced at each other. They were both street kids, one white, one half-Hispanic. By the distrustful look in their stoned eyes, Angel suspected they were hookers.

“Owen ain’t here anymore.”

Angel tried not to let her disappointment show.

“Who’s in charge?”

“You think we’d tell ya?”

Angel had to hazard a guess—otherwise she’d be here arguing, fighting, or running.

“Pete.”

The white girl snorted. “Yeah, right. Like we said,
Owen
ain’t here. Think his little minion butt boy would hang around?”

If Owen and Pete had left or been runoff, that meant Kai was in charge, and Kai was bad news.

“Fine,” Angel said. “Tell Kai congrats on the victory and that Angel would like to see him.”

Bingo. White girl stayed to watch her while the darker girl scampered across the street.

The girl leaned over. “There’s no room at the inn, bitch. You’d better run while you can.”

“It’s raining. I just want one night.”

“No one is going to want to share their bed with you.”

“I don’t share with anyone.”

She laughed. “Oh,
chica,
you might as well leave. You don’t play, you don’t stay.”

Kai and Owen had a turf battle on this block. Not gang warfare, because when it was them against the gangs, they teamed up. But when it was about rules and favors and risks, they fought bitterly, and once Kai had pushed Owen off the roof and he broke his arm. It could have been worse. Kai left after that; Angel was sorry he’d returned. He could be nice and friendly one minute, then could stab you in the back the next.

Five minutes later, the girl came back. She looked a lot younger than Angel first thought. Thirteen? Maybe fourteen, tops.

“Kai said come on in.”

All three of them were surprised.

Chapter Five

Jake sat in his car down the street from the aluminum building that had once stored auto parts –at first legit, then later stolen parts, until it was shut down by the police and boarded up his last year on the force. That was four years ago, and it looked like it had been taken over by squatters. He could see them in the shadows, if he sat still long enough. He was patient; he had to be. There were times in Afghanistan where his life depended on how still he could be.

He watched Angel go into the building with two other girls. She’d found a sweatshirt along the way. He’d lost her for so long he’d feared he wouldn’t pick up her trail again. After following her on the bus, he tracked her down Sherman until he lost her in an industrial area. Smart girl.

He hadn’t wanted to spook her. He didn’t know how to approach her and say he would protect her. What he really wanted to know was what the hell was going on.

He called Cutler.

“Word?”

“Nothing, Jake.”

“You’ve had three hours.”

“I don’t know much.”

“Not much is more than nothing.”

“All I got is that she was picked up this morning on a bench warrant, taken to Sylmar, then two detectives picked her up at seven thirty to take her to a group home in Reseda.”

“Why are cops doing corrections work?”

“Hell if I know.”

It had been a rhetorical question. Jake said, “What’s the warrant?”

“Material witness.”

“That makes no sense.”

“That’s all I got. You know how hard it is to get information from anyone on a Saturday night? It’s nearly midnight.”

“I need more. Is she in trouble? Locked up kind of trouble?”

“No.”

“I thought you didn’t know.”

“I don’t—but the warrant wasn’t an arrest warrant. It was a pick-up and detain.”

“Judge?”

“Polson. New.”

“ADA?”

“Larson.”

“Who’s that?”

“Hot chick, going places. She handles gang and drug prosecutions.”

Jake’s mind ran through all possible scenarios. Angel could have gotten deep into something rotten and agreed to turn state’s evidence--no wonder her gang was after her. He hadn’t heard she’d joined up in a gang, but considering her mother was a lush, there weren’t a lot of options for a fifteen-year-old girl raised in the ghetto of L.A. Or, she could have hooked up with the wrong boy. Jake had seen that more times than he could count when he’d been on the force.

His hands tightened around the phone. This was as much his fault as hers.

“Get more,” he told Culter before hanging up.

Angel was safe in the warehouse, or as safe as possible considering. But he didn’t like it. The cop shooting, then showing up at her apartment, they knew how to find her. Would they know to come here? Where were these gangbangers getting their information? Who had Angel gotten mixed up with?

He sat in his beat-up, black Dodge Charger. Six years in the Marines had honed his ability to sleep and still sense the world around him, critical on the battlefield, and helpful on police stakeouts and hunting down fugitives for Cutler.

So he slept, and listened.

Chapter Six

Angel couldn’t sleep.

It was sometime between two and three in the morning—she was guessing—and the rain beat down on the tin roof of the abandoned warehouse. It smelled like burnt metal and wet dog. The wet dog smell probably came from the other homeless and runaway teens who were sleeping under the roof.

Kai had been surprisingly hospitable. He’d remembered her from Owen, and didn’t seem to hold any grudges that she’d been friendly with his enemy. While Angel understood street kid hierarchy on one level, she didn’t always understand the political bullshit. All she’d said to Kai was that she had no place to go and if she could crash until dawn. She admitted she had nothing to give, but she’d be willing to go out on a scavenger hunt with his crew tomorrow. (Read: shoplifting.)

He said she could stay, no strings, that he wasn’t going to let anyone sleep out on the street in the rain. He’d asked who she was running from, and she said, “It’s complicated.”

He wouldn’t like a rat anymore than the guys trying to kill her. The cops were anathema to the street kids, and that she was helping the system would make her part of the problem.

But even with Kai’s hospitality, Angel was suspicious. It had been too easy. But she was tired and in pain and just needed a couple hours rest. She’d sneak out early.

She might have dozed off, she didn’t know, but it was an odd half-existence, hearing everything around her while being completely still. And maybe because of that weirdness she heard the footsteps crossing the long, narrow building. Several footsteps. The flash of a light, casting shadows on walls better left dark.

It might just be Kai or Kai’s people. But Angel couldn’t take the chance. She’d been here for a few hours—plenty of time for the Garcias to track her down. How had they done it?

Don’t think, run!