by Debra Dunbar
Everything had been broken, shot, and smashed. The walls were full of bullet holes and places where the drywall had been bashed in and ripped out. The sofa and chairs were in pieces with stuffing ripped from the cushions. End tables were broken, all the artwork Bea had collected through the years from her foster kids had been knocked over, stepped on, and crushed. I made my way down the hall, zigzagging so I wouldn’t hit the parts in the floor that squeaked.
In the bathroom Aunt Bea was propped beside the tub. Both eyes were blackened, and blood stained her mouth and down the front of her shirt. One hand was very still on her lap. She slumped when she saw me, leaning her head gingerly back to rest against the wall.
“They’re gone,” she said in a pained whisper. “Thought you was them coming back.”
I pocketed my gun and dropped to my knees beside her, wincing as I saw the abrasions on her face.
“They were looking for you,” she said, her voice a bit stronger. “I lied and told them you haven’t lived here since you were eighteen, that I had no idea where you were, but they didn’t care. They wanted money. I told them where it was, but then they kept insisting it wasn’t enough. Said there should have been more money or cases of bullets.”
“Someone set me up,” I told her. “Where are the girls?”
“Told them to hide and stay safe. Was trying to get myself up to go check on them, tell them the coast was clear.”
“Stay here.” I went to pat her shoulder and decided that wouldn’t be a good idea. “I’ll get the girls and be right back to help you.”
I ran down the hall, heading straight for the kitchen only to stop and stare at the room in shock. The coffee can with our food money was empty and on the floor, the table knocked over on its side. What had me terrified, though, was that the intruders had shot up the cupboards.
With a steadying breath, I walked over to the under-sink cabinet.
“Sadie? It’s me, Eden.” Only silence answered me. I reached for the handle. “My favorite color is bacon. Sadie, please be okay. Please be okay.”
I opened the door and knelt down to peer inside, nearly passing out from relief when a pair of big brown eyes met mine. She was alive. And she had the Glock 17 pistol in her lap. Nevarra must have given it to her to defend herself if needed.
“It hurts Eden. It hurts.”
She started to cry. That’s when I noticed she was covered in blood. Oh, God. Had she been shot? It would have been a miracle if she hadn’t with all the bullets those assholes had fired into the cupboards. Reaching in, I smoothed the hair away from her face, seeing several cuts—no doubt from flying splinters of wood when they’d shot the cabinet she was hiding in.
“What hurts sweetie?”
“My arm,” she sobbed. “My leg.”
I looked at her arm, trying to gently peel the blood-soaked fabric from her shoulder.
“Can you move your arm?” It looked like a graze to me, but it was so dark under the sink I couldn’t really tell.
She nodded. “But it hurts.”
I was guessing that meant no broken or splintered bone, and the muscle wasn’t too damaged. Looking at her legs, I realized the majority of the blood was coming from her left calf. The smart girl had taken one of the rags from under the sink and tied it just above the wound. I didn’t think it was tight enough for a tourniquet, but at least she’d remembered the first aid techniques Bea had taught us.
“Do you think you can crawl out from under the sink?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I can’t. It hurts too much to move.”
I had to get her out of there and into the light so I could see her injuries better. Removing the pistol from her lap, I set it on the counter by the sink, then knelt down again.
“I’m sorry, sweetie.” Without any other warning I reached in and wrapped my arms around her chest, dragging her out onto the kitchen floor. Sadie screamed, the sound mingling with her choked sobs before she went limp against me.
I worked fast, yanking my pocket knife open and slicing through her shirt and pants. The shoulder wound was thankfully a graze, but the leg injury was an in-and-out bullet wound. I looked around for the cleanest rags I could find, soaked one in the bucket of water we’d poured last night and tried to clean both wounds as best as I could before packing the leg injury with some gauze from an ancient first aid kit and wrapping both wounds with bandages and rags.
That done, I went to find Nevarra. Sadie’s spot was always under the kitchen sink, but Nevarra liked to hide out back under the porch.
“Nevarra it’s me, Eden. There’s a penguin in the backyard.” I called out her safe-phrase from the top of the steps. Nevarra had given Sadie the gun, but there was no guarantee that the girl didn’t have some sort of weapon. I didn’t want to end up with a knife shoved into my foot from between the stair risers.
I didn’t hear a response, but I went ahead and made my way down the stairs. The backyard wasn’t trashed like the house was, and I didn’t see any bullet holes. The back gate swung open, and that did give me pause. Had Nevarra fled when she’d heard the shots? No, I couldn’t see her ever running and leaving Bea and Sadie to face the intruders alone.
Nevarra wasn’t under the stairs, but one of her shoes was as well as a torn piece of her top. There was blood on the jagged edge of the skirtboard. Fear and rage tore through me, because I knew exactly what had happened. They hadn’t found Sadie. She’d been shot by stray bullets, but they’d never realized she was under the sink. They hadn’t found Sadie, but they’d found Nevarra.
And she’d fought like the scrappy wildcat she was, making them drag her out by her top as she gripped the wood skirtboard and hooked her feet around whatever she could grip. But in the end they’d taken her.
I sat down on the bottom step and let the fear wash over me. Sadie was shot and suffering from blood loss. Nevarra was gone and facing horrors I didn’t even want to think of. Aunt Bea had been beaten and most likely had a concussion as well as a broken arm or dislocated shoulder. They’d taken all our money, and what I had in my pocket wouldn’t be enough for ransom or doctors, let alone both. I barely had enough money for our weekly food budget. And Nevarra…
I got to my feet. This was no time for panic. First I needed to take Sadie to her bed, make Bea comfortable on Nevarra’s bed, get them water, clean bandages, whatever was left in that first aid kit, and the bottle of antibiotics.
I needed help. The clock was already ticking on my chance to find Nevarra before she was sold. There weren’t many places a person could turn to in New Hell for help. The police, at least the ones who weren’t on the take, were overwhelmed. I didn’t have any money to pay any of the militias. Bags was already in enough trouble as it was.
Sadie was stirring when I came back into the kitchen, her face softening with relief when she saw me.
“What happened?” I asked as I knelt and checked her bandages. It hadn’t been more than a few minutes, but already blood was seeping through the gauze on her calf.
“Two trucks with men pulled up fast and stopped in front of the house.” She took a shallow breath, fixing her brown eyes on mine. “Aunt Bea shouted for us to hide, and we ran, just like we’d practiced. Nevarra gave me the gun and told me not to be afraid, to shoot whoever opened the cabinet door. I’d hardly heard the back door shut when there was all this crashing and yelling from the front. I heard Aunt Bea, but couldn’t make out what she was saying. The men were loud, but I stayed very quiet and had the gun ready. I was going to shoot them, Eden. I know I’m not brave like you and Nevarra, but I was going to shoot them.”
I smoothed her hair, still curly from last night’s scrunchies. “You’re very brave, Peanut. Very brave.”
“There was shooting and the men laughing.” Her lips trembled. “They were in the kitchen and shooting. I closed my eyes tight because of the splinters, and it felt like being burned with a million cigarettes, but I didn’t scream, Eden. I didn’t make a sound.”
“So brave,” I
murmured, choking back a mix of sorrow and fury—fury that my little sister had been hurt as well as fury that she knew what being burned with a cigarette felt like. She was only here right now because she’d kept quiet, even after being shot. I wasn’t sure whether the intruders would have just killed her if they’d found her under the sink, or if they’d have hauled her, injured, away to be patched up and sold.
Nevarra…
“I’m going to carry you to your bedroom,” I told Sadie. “I’ll try really hard not to hurt you, okay?”
She nodded, then looked back at me with fear in her gaze. “Where is Aunt Bea? Where is Nevarra?”
“Aunt Bea is upstairs. She’s hurt, but she’ll be okay. Nevarra… Nevarra ran when the shooting started. She’s at Marissa’s house,” I lied.
Sadie nodded again. I knew how much pain she was in because she’d swallowed that lie without question. Nevarra would never have run. It would have been hard for her to stay under the porch, hiding and remaining silent while intruders shot up her house. I remembered the torn piece of her shirt under the porch, the lost shoe, the blood. No, Nevarra would never have run.
I wished she had.
I scooped Sadie up in my arms and carefully carried her through the front room and down the hall. Bea was standing outside the girls’ bedroom door, her left arm stabilized with what looked to be paint stirrers and toilet paper. Her face contorted when she saw Sadie.
“Oh, my baby! My baby!”
Once more I forced back tears, just as upset over Bea’s anguish as I was about Sadie’s injuries and Nevarra’s kidnapping.
“I’m okay, Aunt Bea.” Sadie managed a smile. “I didn’t make a sound. Even when I got shot, I didn’t make a sound.”
“You were so brave, baby.” Bea pointed to the bedroom. “Eden’s going to lay you down in your bed, and you’re going to rest. I’ll take care of you. Just like when you had the flu last year, honey. Aunt Bea is gonna make it all right.”
Those words warmed me even though they were meant for Sadie. I remembered coming here at thirteen, angry and scared and not trusting anyone. Aunt Bea had made everything all right.
And now it was my turn to make everything all right.
I gently put Sadie in her bed, propping her leg up on a few folded towels and checking her bandages. The bottle of antibiotics went on the bedside table. Once she’d drifted off to sleep, I followed Bea into the hallway, quietly shutting the bedroom door.
Bea burst into soft sobs. “Nevarra? Oh God, Eden. Is she dead? Did they shoot her?”
This time it was me who pulled Bea close and rubbed her back reassuringly. “She’s alive. They didn’t shoot her, but they took her.”
Bea shuddered. “That means we can find her. We can find her and bring her back home.”
I waited for Bea’s sobs to lessen, and then I pulled back from her. “Tell me what happened. You’re the only one who got a look at these guys.”
The tax collectors didn’t usually enforce their own laws. They used mercenaries. It wasn’t the tax collectors who’d be interested in Nevarra or the price she’d fetch on the market, although some of the demons who ran that office might be. No, Nevarra had been a little extra payment to the men who’d been paid to come here, break legs, and collect. I needed to know who they were and track them down before they sold my sister.
“Eight men.” Bea frowned in concentration. “They had on vests like some kind of SWAT team. Two had rifles and the rest had pistols.”
It made sense. If they’d thought I’d kept seventeen cases of bullets, then they might have been worried they’d be walking into a serious firefight. And instead they’d encountered Bea, who hadn’t even been armed.
“They broke down the door, yelled at me to get down on the ground, then did a quick search of the house. Then they pulled me up on my feet and asked where the money was. I gave them the food money in the coffee can first, hoping that would be enough.” Bea’s lips twisted up in bitter amusement. “I should have known that eight men with weapons wouldn’t be satisfied with that. They smacked me around until I told them where our stash was.” Bea hesitated at this point, her eyes filling with tears once more. “Oh, Eden. They took it all. That was our money to get out of here, and they took it all.”
“It’s okay,” I reassured her. “We’ll get more money. This is just a delay. That’s all.”
But my heart sank. Two years it had taken us to save all that up. And now all we had to our names was what Bags had given me today.
“Then they kept insisting that you had more,” Bea continued. “They twisted my arm so hard I think they may have broken it. They kept hitting me. I told them that you had hiding spots outside the house, and that must have been where you kept the other bullets or cash, because they weren’t here.” Bea reached out to touch my cheek. “You need to hide. They’ll be looking for you, trying to find that money or those bullets.”
That was pretty low on my priority list. Eventually I’d need to track down that bitch of a cop, set things right with the tax collectors, get my license reinstated. But all of that had to wait until after I’d found Nevarra.
“They were different races,” Bea went on. “Dressed in camo with the flak jackets, but no helmets.”
Idiots. Smart enough to put on a vest, but too arrogant to protect their heads. Maybe there wasn’t much in their skulls to protect. I had a good idea who they might be. Well-funded. Organized. A mixture of races. SWAT equipment and not bothering with helmets. All that ruled out a good number of the gangs and militias.
“Tattoos?” I asked. “Hairstyles? Beards or clean-shaven?”
Bea thought for a moment. “Some had long hair, some short. Same with beards. One of them had a tattoo on his neck. It looked like…a screwdriver? No, that couldn’t be right. Nobody’s gonna get a screwdriver tattoo.”
“Fixers,” I told her. “They’re a loosely affiliated mercenary group. Some of them think it’s hysterical to get tool tattoos—hammers, screwdrivers, and stuff. I’ve seen one of them with a very intricate tattoo of a circular saw.”
Fixers had no limits when it came to what they’d do for a buck. Any job, as long as the pay was good. They were dicks, and because they weren’t an organized group like a gang or a militia, they didn’t have a certain place they congregated or met to do business. All job offers were sent out via group text. They might not have a leader, but somebody by the name of Bolt coordinated the jobs and dealt as their accountant—keeping track of who did what and what clients owed what. They may not have a Fixers’ clubhouse, but people were creatures of habit, and members did have favored places to assemble.
It would take me fucking forever to track these eight down by visiting every bar, burger joint, or strip club in the city. I needed to move fast before Nevarra was sold and vanished into the seedy underworld of pedophilia.
I needed help. There was one name that had been whispered around the streets for as long as I’d been alive as someone who could find people and things, who could get stuff done, who could solve problems for the right price. He might be able to help me—or he might laugh in my face and throw me out on the sidewalk.
Either way, I had to try.
“I’m going to go see someone who might help me track down Nevarra,” I told Bea. “Are you feeling okay enough to take care of Sadie while I’m gone?”
She nodded. “I can take care of her. I’m not hurt that bad.”
I glanced down at her arm, but didn’t have the luxury of calling her on that fib. I needed to find Nevarra before it was too late, then I’d worry about Bea and Sadie’s injuries.
Bea went back into the girls’ bedroom, leaving the door open. I went into the cubbyhole-sized space that had been my old bedroom and started digging through the closet, searching way in the back for clothes I hadn’t had a reason to wear over the last two years.
Bishop was the guy’s name. That’s all I knew beyond the fact that he owned some scary-ass bar out northeast of Sunland-Tujunga, right at the ba
se of the San Gabriel Mountains. I didn’t know if Bishop was his first name, his last name, or some weird title, although I doubted the guy who’d been described to me was all that religious. Bishop was supposedly as scary as his bar. He allegedly got shit done, found things that couldn’t be found, killed everyone who looked at him funny. Bags had told me there had been a story going around when he was young that Bishop had walked through a hail of bullets in some urban warfare, grabbed the gang leader by the neck, and popped his head off like a champagne cork. The dude had been riddled with holes, but walked away like he didn’t have a scratch on him.
Clearly that was a tale that had been blown way out of proportion, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Even if this Bishop was only half the badass of his legend, he was still my best bet to finding Nevarra quickly.
I held up a leather bustier and pursed my lips in thought. Bags wasn’t any spring chicken. If Bishop had been around when he was a kid, then the guy was probably using a walker by now. Unless Bishop was some sort of title? Maybe the old guy’s kid had taken over? Either way, men appreciated a sexy woman—unless Bishop was gay.
Shit. I hoped he wasn’t gay.
I didn’t have any money beyond what we needed for food, so I’d need to approach this guy with a different sort of currency. And hope he wasn’t gay.
Guessing that any man with a scary bar would probably find leather sexy, I shimmied into black leather pants and poured myself into the bustier, lacing it up so that my boobs were on full display. Then I dug through my top dresser drawer, hoping that wand of mascara hadn’t completely dried out.
It hadn’t. And I’d managed to find some lipstick buried in the back as well, with just enough to scrape on some color. I eyed myself in the mirror, thankful that my complexion was a clear gold, and that the mascara was enough to accentuate the curve of my eyes. As for the rest of my curves, the leather did the trick.
I walked out of the bedroom and saw Bea waiting for me in the girls’ bedroom doorway, a disapproving pucker to her mouth. I couldn’t help but grin, my mind going back to those dates I’d had back in high school where Bea had insisted I change clothes and wipe off half the makeup I’d had on before she allowed me to leave.
