by Hope Stone
“You don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know? First you lie to us about going to the concert with your sister, and then you LOSE HER?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened, honestly.”
Maria was looking at me empathetically. “I’m sorry, Paige.”
“Come on, Russell. Hand me my purse. We’re going to the police to sort this out.”
My dad stood up and was looking around for my mother’s Louis Vuitton bag.
“Mom. The police aren’t going to do anything. She’s sixteen and is late coming home from a concert.”
“Like hell they won’t,” she said.
“Look. Why don’t we go upstairs to my apartment and let Maria get some sleep? We’ll wait a little while and if we don’t hear anything by morning, I’ll drive us to the police station.”
My mother looked at my dad, and he said, “She’s making sense, Rosemary. They won’t do anything until at least the morning.”
Maria went to the fridge and got the bag of food I’d bought earlier at Southgate. For a moment I remembered the attack, but I put it out of my mind as fast as possible. “Thank you so much for everything, Maria.”
“Of course, amiga. Keep me posted, okay?”
I hugged her and ushered my parents out her front door. “My place is up here.”
I opened the door and held it for my parents to go in first. It was strange to go inside and see everything as if I were seeing it for the first time through their eyes. When I’d left the apartment earlier this evening, I was just running out for a few minutes to get some snacks for the girls. Now, it was 2:00 am, I’d been accosted in a parking lot, Bailey had gone missing, and my parents were standing in my living room.
The apartment was really bare. Just a leather couch I’d gotten from the thrift store, along with a coffee table that I’d found by a dumpster outside of Tiny’s. I was using inverted milk crates as end tables, which I thought was a very clever idea until I saw my mother staring at them.
“Are these my lamps?” she said.
“No, those are the ones I got at the Hendersons’ garage sale last year and was storing in our garage.”
“Ah. I thought they looked familiar.”
“So are you going to give us the grand tour?” my dad said, trying to break the tension.
Grateful for the diversion, I said, “Well, what you see is what you get. This is the living room and that is the kitchen. In there is the bathroom.” I walked about ten steps to my doorway. “And this is my bedroom.”
Noting the papers and notebook on my bed, my dad said, “Still doing homework?”
“Actually, it was research.” I paused for a moment trying to decide if I was going to talk to my dad about the business idea now or not. On the one hand, we were all really worried about Bailey. But there was nothing any of us could do now but wait, and maybe it would get our minds off of it. So I grabbed the notebook and papers and went back out to the living room. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about it.”
“Me? You wanted to talk to me?”
“Is this my 2017 Caymus Cabernet?” my mother said, holding up the bottle I’d snagged from her wine cellar. “That you’re drinking out of a...Wonder Woman cup?”
Damn. I wasn’t exactly expecting company. “Oh, yeah. I’ve been meaning to thank you for that.”
“Thank me?” She looked confused.
“Yeah. For the housewarming gift.”
“I didn’t give you a…”
“Anyway, come over here and sit down. You can have a glass of the wine if you’d like, Mom.”
Both of my parents came to sit on the couch. I hadn’t had a chance to prepare what I was going to say to them, but I was pretty excited about the idea I’d come up with.
“Mom. Dad. I have a business proposition I’d like to run by you.”
From the looks on their faces I wondered if maybe I should wait. But I really didn’t want to.
The idea was still fresh in my mind, and unless I wanted to sit there and be on the receiving end of my mother’s judgment all night long, I should get them thinking of something else. Let her judge the business idea instead of my personal life.
“Before we get started, can I ask you a question?” my mother asked.
“Sure.”
“What’s that bruise on your neck? It looks like a handprint.”
My hand instinctively flew up to my neck and I raced to the bathroom. Sure enough, looking back at me through the cloudy mirror was a handprint. From that asshole in the parking lot. I had a mark on my neck from where he had his disgusting hands on me.
The panic and fear that I’d been holding back came rushing out. That experience had been traumatic enough. What if Bailey and Lily were being held captive right now?
I started to hyperventilate and cry.
“Paige? Are you okay?” My dad came into the bathroom. “What’s the matter, honey?” I didn’t want to tell them what had happened to me, because it would just add credibility to their feeling that I wasn’t safe living here and couldn’t handle myself.
On the other hand, I was standing in my bathroom with a big purple handprint on my neck hyperventilating and crying.
I grabbed some toilet paper and blew my nose. How was I going to get out of this?
Finally I decided that it was time to stop lying to them about stuff. No more covering for Bailey. No more shielding them from the truth about me and my life. I was a grown woman and I didn’t have to be worried that my mommy and daddy would be mad at me.
“Come on in here, Dad.”
He followed me to where Mom was sitting. “What I am about to say actually relates to the business idea I had. I just didn’t realize that I was going to have such personal experience with it.”
My mom looked worried but sat there quietly.
“I was attacked in the parking lot of the grocery store tonight.”
“What?” My dad looked horrified. “What happened?”
I was about to tell them the story when my mom’s face went pale and she said, “Oh no. Not you, too.”
Ryder
I’d had enough of driving this car and really wanted to be on my bike. Now that Paige was safely home, my mind was focused on finding Lily and Bailey. I had to force the terrible thoughts from my mind about what could be happening to them. Best case scenario was that the girls had gone off to meet up with Scorpion and they were having some relatively harmless fun.
Worst case scenario was…well…worse.
As much as I wanted to drop off the car and get my bike, I needed to have a vehicle that could also fit Bailey if I found them. Lily was used to being on the back of the bike.
So, instead of going home, I went to the Blue Dog. I wanted to talk to Hawk and see what he knew about the explosion and see if he’d heard anything about the girls.
When I pulled up to the parking lot of the Blue Dog, I was shocked at the number of bikes there. Pretty much everyone from Outlaw Souls seemed to be here. It was well after last call, so I wondered what was going on.
I locked the car and went in. The place was filled with smoke and the only folks here were Outlaw Souls and Connie the bartender. She was off-duty and drinking from a bottle of Jack.
“Hey Ryder,” she said as I walked in.
“Shut the fuckin’ door,” someone said. “We don’t want no cops seeing we’re here.”
Like the four hundred bikes parked in front wouldn’t give it away? Frankly, North La Playa police had more on their minds than busting us for drinking after the bar was closed.
I pushed my way to the back room where Hawk and Chalupa and Swole were.
“Where have you been, man? We’ve been here for hours,” Swole said.
“Just as we thought, Las Balas thinks we blew up their warehouse,” Hawk said. “We went and pulled everything out of ours and moved it to a different location.”
Chalupa laughed. “They will never find it now.”
“Where did we put it?” I asked. We didn’t have a
lot of shit, so it wouldn’t be too hard to find a hiding place for the fifty or so crates of guns, ammo, and drugs we’d been keeping in the Public Storage locker.
“It ain’t right, man,” Swole said. “Not cool.”
Now my curiosity was up. “Where is it?”
Chalupa was still grinning. “At the cemetery.”
“The cemetery?”
“Yeah. In one of those mausoleum things.”
“How the hell did we…” I shook my head. “Never mind. I have an emergency I’m dealing with and I need your help.”
“What’s the emergency?”
“Lily and her friend disappeared from the concert. If they ever made it there in the first place. They weren’t at the meetup place after all the shit went down at the convention center.”
“Tell me what happened. From the beginning,” Hawk said.
So I did. When I got to the end, he shook his head. “It makes no sense. No one is going to create a huge diversion at the convention center just to grab two teenage girls. Even if Las Balas did think we blew up their warehouse, there would be no reason to do that.”
“Honestly, I’m less concerned with why and more concerned with where they hell they could be.”
I needed to talk to that shit Scorpion, but couldn’t get close to the warehouse because of all the cops. Where else could he be at this time of night? If he was with Lily, where would they be?
I had an idea. “I have something I need to do. You put some calls out, okay, Hawk?”
“You got it.”
Twenty minutes later, I was parking the VW in a very empty parking structure near the Point. It was a long shot, and it was almost 3:00 am, but it was the only place I could think of that they might be.
The parking structure was well lit, even for this time of night, and the full moon illuminated the street once I walked out. I could hear seals barking from the ocean, and the normally busy tourist attraction was deserted.
There was no way they’d be here. Even still, it was worth a look. I ran across the street to the Ferris Wheel. It was next to closed food carts and stores with security gates up. “Lily?” I called. “Lily!”
My voice was lost in the slight mist coming off the ocean and I could still smell a slight bit of burning rubber from the warehouse fire.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move. “Who’s there?”
It was a slight flash from over near one of the buildings and so I instinctively reached down to touch the gun inside my jacket pocket. “Who’s there?” I asked again, more loudly.
I got close enough to see that it wasn’t Lily, or any other female for that matter. It was a tall skinny guy wearing dark clothes. He was walking toward me, but his body language wasn’t threatening.
“It’s me. Scorpion.” He’d been sitting on a bench next to the entrance to the Ferris Wheel.
“Where’s Lily?” I demanded. “Where the fuck is my sister?”
“I don’t know! I’ve been sitting here for two hours waiting for her. We were supposed to meet up here at one.”
I wasn’t even mad that Lily was planning on sneaking out of Paige’s place to meet Scorpion. I was getting legitimately worried about the girls. This was not an instance of a couple of irresponsible teenagers coming home late from a concert.
“I’ve been texting her all night but they haven’t been going through. I didn’t know what else to do so I’ve just been sitting here.”
“So you don’t know anything about where they could be?”
“No! After the fire, the patches had a meeting but since I’m still prospecting I wasn’t included, so I took off and came here.”
Dammit. He was my one solid lead.
I turned to head back to the car. “Okay, thanks.”
“Ryder?” Scorpion’s hands were stuffed into his jeans pocket.
“Yeah?”
“Can I…” He cleared his throat. “Can I help you find her?”
This was no business for a Las Balas prospect to be involved in. I started to shake my head no, but he added, “Please? I just can’t… I mean, I need to do something.” He wiped his face with both hands. “I love her. What if…I…”
“Fine. You can come along with me. But you need to keep your fucking mouth shut with anything you see or hear. Do you understand me?” This was probably a huge mistake, but my instincts were telling me that having him with me was better than leaving him to his own devices.
“Thank you, Ryder. I won’t be in the way. I promise.”
I shook my head and headed to the car with a tall, gangly, worried young man in tow.
We were driving up Berry Avenue and I was prepping Scorpion for what we were doing. “We’re headed to the Blue Dog Saloon in North La Playa. I’d recommend taking off that fucking jacket and keeping your mouth shut. The brothers are not gonna be too happy if they find out who you are.” I reached down and handed him a baseball cap. “Wear this and keep your head down.”
“Scott,” he said, as we passed by Swole’s gym.
“What?”
“That’s my name. Scott. Scorpion was just my nickname in high school.”
“Did you graduate?”
“Yeah. I went to Fillmore. Was gonna go to LPCC but my ma got sick.”
I didn’t have time to ask more, so I just said, “There it is. Remember. Keep shut and let me do the talking.” The more I thought about it, the more I was regretting bringing him along.
The place was still pretty packed despite the fact that it was almost 4:00 am. Hawk was gone, and of course Padre wasn’t there. Neither was Yoda, but Chalupa saw us as soon as we walked in.
“Hey man, did you find…” He stopped dead in his tracks as soon as he saw Scorpion. He looked back and forth between us questioningly and then asked, “Any luck finding them?”
I shook my head and said “Nope. Where’s Hawk?”
“I think he went over to Frog Park to talk to some guys. See if they heard anything.”
I nodded and made my way to the back of the room and Scorpion kept his head down and followed us.
He did not go unnoticed, but no one bothered him because it was clear he was with me. I motioned for him to take the seat next to me, with our backs against the wall.
“So, Scott,” I started. “Now would be a good time to tell me anything you know that might help me find my sister.”
“Well. The only thing I know is that there was some talk about finding out who torched the warehouse and getting even.”
“Okay. No surprise there. What else?”
“Not much. A couple of guys were running out to Baker to make a delivery for El Diablo tonight.”
“What kind of delivery?”
He shook his head. “They don’t tell me that kind of stuff.”
My mind started to tickle with an idea, but it wasn’t formed well enough to understand it yet. Before I got a chance to ask more, Hawk walked in and made a beeline for my table. “Ryder. I found out something that might help us find Lily.”
Paige
As soon as she said, “Oh no, not you,” my mom got up off the couch and ran into the bathroom and locked the door.
“What the hell?” I said, totally shocked. “What did she mean ‘Not you too?’”
He shook his head and said, “First, what happened to you? Did you see a doctor?”
“No, it didn’t get that far.” I then told my dad the whole story. “It was terrifying.”
He gave me a hug and said, “I know.”
I looked at the bathroom door and said, “What’s wrong with Mom?”
Dad just stood up and went to the bathroom door and knocked on it softly. “Rosemary? Honey?”
There was silence on the other side of the door as I sat there thinking this might be the weirdest night of my whole life. I half expected to wake up and discover that it had all been one really bizarre dream.
“Rosemary. I think it’s time you told Paige what happened.”
At first I didn’t ge
t it, but then it dawned on me like a kick in the gut. “Oh no, not you too.” My mother had been attacked.
After what felt like an eternity, I heard the bathroom door unlock and the door opened. My mom came out and her eyes and nose were red from crying. I couldn’t ever remember seeing my mother cry—not even when her own mother died.
“I think I will have that glass of wine.”
I got up and poured her some of the wine into a plastic Starbucks cup. Her hands were shaking as she took it. “Thank you.”
“Let me just say that I never wanted to tell you this. I’m not even sure I should be doing it now. But with your sister missing and… what happened to you… I don’t know. It just seems like the right thing to do.”
I didn’t say a thing, but I waited.
“About seventeen years ago, your father was at the clinic and you were at school. The doorbell rang. I never answered the door, not even back then, but I could see a bouquet of flowers and I thought it might be from your dad. He and I…we were…well. I just thought he might be apologizing for something.”
The affair, probably.
“As soon as I opened the door, the man pushed his way in and, well.” She looked away.
“Jesus, no. Please tell me he didn’t—” I couldn’t even say it.
“We called the police and they got the guy based on DNA evidence,” my dad interjected.
“The whole thing was humiliating and degrading,” my mom said. “There was a trial and I had to testify and everything.”
“Where was I?” My mind was scanning back to when I was about 8 years old.
“You spent a lot of time with your Aunt Linda that summer. Remember?”
Oh my God, I remembered.
“Then, if that weren’t bad enough, about six weeks later I found out I was pregnant.”
“What? This makes no sense.” How awful! I had no idea my mother had gone through any of this. “What happened to the bab…”
Then it clicked. The timing of everything. “Bailey. Bailey is that baby.”
They both nodded. “We never wanted to tell her. But, God forbid something should happen to her tonight, you should know. There have been too many secrets in this family.” She put her face in her hands and started crying.
