I Never Thought I'd See You Again: A Novelists Inc. Anthology (4 page)

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.” the twenty-first centuryuma

“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 with a gang, but considering her mother was a lush, there weren’t a lot of options for a fifteen-year-old girl. 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 Cutler 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 messed 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.

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 asked 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’d 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 underage prostitutiony voin 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!

She crawled across the grimy floor as fast as she dared. Past two kids having sex. Past a group huddled for warmth. Past bodies that might have been dead, they were so motionless.

Because she’d spent time here in the past, she knew the building well. She knew that Kai would have a crew on the two main doors, front and back. But there was another door, accessible only through what had been Owen’s private room and Angel had to assume it was Kai’s now. It would just be Kai and whatever girl — or guy (she couldn’t figure out if he was gay or straight or bi) he chose for the night.

She crawled most of the way there. No one paid any attention to her. Unless they were Kai’s inner circle, they wouldn’t know or care who she was. She made it to Kai’s room, and pushed open the door.

He was alone. The tall, gaunt kid with black hair and white skin was sitting at his desk in a semi-dark glow. “Sorry,” he said simply.

The truth hit her hard. He’d sold her out. “They’re going to kill me,” she said.

“They pay well.”

She ran for the door. He jumped up, lithe and fast.

The door opened from the outside. Both she and Kai stared, surprised.

I’m dead.

She hesitated, just a moment, thinking that perhaps death was better than
this
, than a life that no one wanted her to live. Not her mother, not the deadbeat father who had walked away and ended up in prison, not the gang bangers or her so-called friends.

Except,
she
wanted to live.

She turned to run the other way, but the lone man in a black hoodie said in a low, rough voice, “Iliana!”

No one knew her real name. She hated it, never used it,
no one
knew it.

He grabbed her arm and half-dragged her out. She followed, partly because he had an iron grip and partly because he hadn’t shot her on sight, so he
might
not be with the Garcias.

And he knew her name.

Kai rushed them. “They’ll kill me, you fucker!”

Hoodie Guy hit Kai in his face. Kai went down holding his nose.

“Now, Angel,” he said and pulled her out the door. They ran along the back of the warehouse, a long, narrow passage between the building and cinderblock wall. They jumped over several homeless kids sleeping under the meager ledge of the roof">Should we choose a particular edvo, then found themselves in an old junkyard.

“My car is on the other side of the fence,” Hoodie said. “You get over first. My jacket is on top of the barbed wire. Do not run. You’re not going to survive without me.”

She nodded. He gave her a boost so she could reach the top of the wall. Coiled barbed wire was embedded over the top, but true to his word a jacket had been spread over this section. She scrambled over, hanging on the other side. She glanced down and pushed off, just barely clearing thorny bushes. Her ankle twisted, but didn’t break. She didn’t think. She limped away. She wanted to hide, the urge to run, to survive, driving her.

He landed silently on the pavement and grabbed her again. “Dammit, you need to trust me!”

“I don’t trust anyone.”

A gunshot rang out from the warehouse behind them. Hoodie Guy pulled her across the street and pushed her into the front seat of a beat-up black Charger.

He slid across the hood and got in the driver’s side. Less than five seconds later, they were speeding down the street.

Angel didn’t ask him any questions. She considered jumping from the car when he stopped, but he didn’t stop — he rolled through stop signs, taking only back roads, until he pulled into a narrow alley behind a closed bar on the seedy side of Burbank. “My place,” he said.

“No,” she said. “I’m not going to
your
place, you perv.”

She had no weapons, nothing to fight with but her fists, but she could run, and she could probably outrun the old man. He was at least thirty, maybe forty, and she could beat him. She grabbed the door handle, but he took her arm again and pushed down his hoodie.

“I’m here to save your ass.”

She had a million questions, but she asked only one. “Why?”

“I’m your father.”

Twenty minutes later, reality still hadn’t sunk in. Angel had said nothing to the guy in the hoodie,
her father
, but followed him into his small studio apartment above a bar that, though immaculate, smelled of stale beer. The bed was made, dishes washed, floors swept. The only décor was a red United States Marine Corp flag on the wall above his bed.

She believed him. He had no reason to lie. All she knew about her father was that his name was Jake Morrison, he’d just finished basic training in the Marines when he knocked up her mother, then he left. He’d never paid them a dime, and a few years ago, her mother told her he was in prison.
Great
. Former Rambo, ex-felon, living in a one-room pit above a bar —
he
was going to save her. Where was Jack Reacher when she needed him?

He stared at her across the small table. Neither of them spoke. Angel could play that game too. She just stared back, drinking the bitter black coffee he’d placed in front of her.

Jake was all underage prostitutiony vo muscle and hard edges. He looked mean, like he could kill someone without blinking. He had a scar on his neck and another on his forehead. His hair was short, but not buzzed, and she didn’t see herself in him. Not one little bit. Except . . . maybe his green eyes. She had green eyes, which had often been the bane of her existence because she wasn’t pure Mexican. Where she lived, that mattered. Maybe other places it didn’t, but she only knew what she knew.

“What are you into?” he finally asked.

“I won,” she said.

He gave her an odd look.

“You talked first.”

“This isn’t a fucking game, Angel.”

“It’s all a game, then you die.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“You tell me. Why do you care what happens to me now? How did you know where I was? You talk, maybe I’ll talk.”

“You’re in so deep, without me you’d be dead.”

“I was already on my way out of that place. I heard them come in.”

“I
saw
them go in. Five in, one driver. Five thugs for one little girl. They want you dead.”

She rolled her eyes. “
I know.
”

“Why?”

Angel got up and her side tightened. She tried to ignore it as she paced the small apartment. Four steps to the door. Four steps back to the table. “How can you live like this?” Not that her place was any better. She’d rather have this small, clean closet than the pigsty her mother had.

He didn’t respond. She wanted to ask him why he was a deadbeat, why he didn’t want her, why he’d waited until a gang was trying to kill her before he showed his face.

She’d only seen him once before, but it was so long ago she didn’t remember what he looked like, other than he’d been in fatigues. She’d been five. Her mother had taken her to a park. At first, Angel had been excited, until Gina pointed and said:

“That’s your deadbeat father, Angel. Get a good look.”

She’d been terrified. He’d stared at her blankly, but he’d looked at her mom with such anger Angel thought he would kill her. She’d played at the park while they talked. She could see them arguing. Her mother argued, her father listened. She could still see the image, and the tightness in her chest that no one wanted her, not her mother, not her father, not anyone.

“I need a bathroom,” she said. Her voice cracked. She was not going to cry, dammit. Not now, not ever.

He pointed to a door. She opened it. No windows. Great. Not that she would escape. Yet.

She took off the UCLA sweatshirt and lifted up her T-shirt. The towel was dark with blood. “Shit,” she muttered.

The door opened.

“Hey!” she said.

“I thought you were h read the letterd fasurt.” He grabbed some things from the organized medicine cabinet and gently pushed her toward his bed. “Lie down.”

“I’m
fine
,” she said.

“If you don’t want to go to the hospital and have the doctor report a gunshot wound to the police, you’d damn well better shut up and lie down.”

He lifted up her shirt part of the way. “Roll on your good side.” She complied. “This is going to hurt,” he said then unceremoniously pulled off the duct tape and the towel came with it.

“
Ow
, shit!” She squeezed her eyes shut as tears sprung forth.

“You need stitches.”

“I don’t need anything,” she said.

“I can fix this, but it’s going to hurt and you have to stay still.”

“Whatever.”

He opened up the first aid kit. Angel closed her eyes. He cleaned the area, which stung but didn’t kill her. But as soon as he stuck the needle in, her hands curled around the pillow and the tears leaked from her eyes.

“Don’t. Move.”

Her jaw locked shut and she squeezed the pillow until her hands were numb. Nausea crept into her throat, but she refused to get sick in front of this man. She didn’t want anything from him. Nothing. She didn’t even want to be here.

But she had no place to go.

He taped gauze over the area, which continued to throb.

“Are you okay?” he asked quietly.

“What do you think?” she wanted her voice to be bitchy, but it came out whiny and childlike.

He got up and Angel willed her body to relax. “Here.” He handed her a T-shirt. “It’s clean.”

She took it without comment and went back to the bathroom. She took off her torn, stained shirt and put it in the small hamper in the corner. The act felt strange, as if she was going to come back and find her shirt washed and folded. She shook off the sensation as she washed her face with hot water and lots of soap. Her hands, her arms, her neck, every place she could reach above her waist. She found a comb and pulled it through her thick, matted hair as best she could. She always kept a couple elastic bands around her wrist; she took one and pulled her hair back.