by Debra Dunbar
There was a soft knock on the door. I waved for Bea to stay seated and went to answer it. I hadn’t had time to repair the thing, so I’d leaned it against the opening, giving us little more than illusion of privacy and security.
Bishop was at the door with an absolutely huge dog that looked like some kind of Malamute, or German Shepherd-wolf hybrid. I’d assumed he’d be bringing a bloodhound, not Cujo on steroids, but I was in no position to be picky, so I invited them in and told them I just needed a few seconds to go change.
“I’d offer you something to drink, but…” I waved a hand at the trashed house.
He grunted a reply, and I went down the hallway to my room, not wanting to keep him waiting. Grabbing some clothes off the floor, I went into the girls’ room to check on Sadie as I dressed.
She was still sleeping, her brown hair spilling over the pillow and blankets. I put a hand to her head, thankful that she didn’t feel feverish. Bea had put a few more towels under her leg, elevating it. It looked clean, the bandages fresh.
I shimmied out of my tight leather garb, put on a pair of cargo pants, a tank top with my shoulder holster over it, and running shoes. Then I rechecked my pistol and slid it in the holster before slipping on a leather jacket. Then I dug around in the girls’ laundry basket, trying to find something that Nevarra would have worn recently that didn’t get washed last night.
Downstairs I found Bea sitting on a battered sofa, talking to Bishop. The dog looked simultaneously alert and bored. And pissed off, as if he had better things to do this evening than go track down a missing child. His head swiveled to watch me, and I shivered. The thing bared a row of sharp white teeth and stared at me with dispassionate yellow eyes. I’d seen police canines take down a guy before, but compared to Bishop’s dog they’d looked like Chihuahuas.
“You going to be okay?” I asked Bea. “We might be out all night.”
I hoped tonight was all it would take. If not, I’d check back in come dawn and give her an update before heading out again.
“I’ve got the pistols. We’ll be fine. You just go get Nevarra, and let me worry about taking care of Sadie.”
“I’m worried about you too.” I smiled and gave her a soft kiss on the one part of her face that didn’t look bruised.
“I’ll be fine.” She turned to Bishop. “Thank you again for helping us.”
I watched her head down the hallway, then handed Bishop Nevarra’s shirt. “She was wearing this yesterday. I figured you’d need something for your dog to use in tracking.”
Bishop took the shirt, then with an odd smile held it out to the dog. “Got it?”
The dog bared his teeth, and I swear I saw him roll his eyes.
“Tell me about her,” Bishop urged. “What’s she look like?”
“She turned fourteen two weeks ago. She’s five feet tall and I’d guess a bit under a hundred pounds. She’s slim, but wiry and strong. Her eyes are about the same color as mine. Her hair is darker with tight curls. I’d describe her skin tone as sort of medium mahogany brown. Her father was Dominican, I think she once told me, and her mom white. She’s got a little scar about half an inch long above her left eyebrow.”
I saw Nevarra in my mind, clear as if she were right in front of me. She’d been with Bea and me since she was six. Her parents had died in a car accident when she was four and she’d been removed from her aunt’s house two years later for neglect. She’d arrived here with an emotional well run dry and a heart full of fear and defensive anger, but Bea’s love was a balm that eventually soothed all wounds.
“How’s she going to take this whole thing?” Bishop gestured at the overturned furniture. “The attack on your house, the men taking her. What’s her likely response?”
I couldn’t help but smile. “She’s pissed as hell right now.”
Bishop smiled back. Heat flashed through me like an unexpected strike of lightning. It annoyed me. What the fuck was wrong with me? Now was not the time for sexy-time fantasies.
“Good. What do you think she’ll do?” he asked.
I took a deep breath, trying to keep my damned hormones under lock and key. “She’ll fight at first, then she’ll start plotting. Nevarra’s stronger than she looks, and she’s smart. If she couldn’t escape in the first hour, she’ll settle down and start observing her surroundings and her captors, looking for the best way to get out. She won’t take stupid chances unless she thinks there’s no other option.”
Bishop’s expression softened. “I’m glad. That means there’s a chance you’ll find her alive at the end of all this.”
All my fears came rushing back, and I forced them aside. Now wasn’t the time to indulge in them either.
“I can show you where she was hiding when they found her, if that’ll help,” I said.
He nodded and stood. “It might help.”
“Do you have any sisters? Or brothers?” I asked as I led him through the kitchen. The dog paused where Sadie had been hiding, eyeing the bullet holes in the cabinets and giving them a quick sniff.
“I haven’t seen my family in a very long time. We’re estranged.” He said the last with an expression that told me this wasn’t a topic he was going to elaborate on further.
“Sometimes you have to ditch the family you were born with and make your own,” I told him, thinking of Sadie and Nevarra. “Sometimes there’s no family to even ditch.”
That had been me. Two women had found an infant in a church parking lot at two in the morning, naked and screaming my head off. I’d entered the custody of the county of Los Angeles, and remained there, my parentage a complete mystery. There were blanks where my documentation should have listed my mother and father. I’d spent most of my childhood thinking that was an ideal situation, that having no family meant there were less people in your life who were in a position to hurt you when you were most vulnerable.
I used to fear a family’s love was a temporary, conditional thing that would build me up with hope only to utterly destroy me when that love shifted to hate or worse, apathy. Now I lived with the fear that someone might take my family away from me. I loved. And I limited my love to a very small group who I would give my life to protect.
But there was no way I’d reveal this to some guy I’d just met—to a very hot guy who was absolutely not my type.
Find Nevarra. Pay this guy what I ended up owing him. Figure out a way to make enough money to get Nevarra, Sadie, and Bea the hell out of here and to somewhere safe. That’s all I needed to be thinking about right now.
We went out the back door and down the steps.
“This is where she was hiding,” I said.
Bishop nodded, stuffing Nevarra’s shirt in the waistband of his pants where it dangled beside his hip. Without any prompting, the dog squeezed itself into the space under the stairs, sniffing all around. Bishop knelt down, examining the hiding area carefully, brushing a finger over a spot of dried blood and lifting it to his nose.
I frowned because blood smells like blood. Maybe he had some magic in him that he didn’t want to admit to? Hell, I didn’t admit to my own magic. Most people didn’t want to be thought a crazy freak, and until two years ago no one even believed magic was real. It could be he was like me with only a few odd skills that didn’t do much good.
I hadn’t thought about Bishop having magic. There were mages in the city, but not in this section of the Valley. Their services cost way more than I could have paid even as of yesterday. No, he couldn’t be a mage or he’d be in living in some swanky penthouse or gated house in the hills, not running a dive bar full of racist customers.
“Come on,” Bishop growled.
I figured he was talking to the dog, but just in case I followed him as well. We went through the metal gate, along the side of the house, and out to the street. I thought it was odd that Bishop was leading and not the dog, but what the hell did I know about scent tracking beyond a few cop shows I’d watched on TV years ago?
The dog sniffed around. Bishop
scowled at the asphalt.
I stood in absolute silence, not wanting to disturb their mojo, and trying very hard not to get in the way. The man looked up, off into the distance toward the mountains, then back at the dog. Their eyes met, and Bishop nodded.
“They loaded her into a vehicle. I’m thinking it might be quicker to track from the truck since they probably took her more than a few miles.”
A vision filled my brain—a vision of Nevarra struggling as men roughed her up and stuck her in a van, all of them laughing and thinking of what kind of money they’d make selling her. My pragmatic mind tried to reassure me that they wouldn’t hurt her too bad, that they wouldn’t rape her. Her value would drop to a fraction of what they’d get for a young uninjured virgin, and money would be more important than sex, even if a few of them liked their partners on the young side.
I’d find her no matter how long it took, and I’d fucking kill anyone who laid a hand on her, but I wanted to get to her tonight, before she had to go through life trying to wash those kinds of memories out of her mind.
Chapter 8
Bishop’s truck reminded me a lot of his bar. It was a bench-seat Chevy from the ’70s that looked like it had been restored at one point and allowed to deteriorate ever since. The back right fender had a dent in it the size of a bowling ball, and a long gouge down the side was rust red amid the primer gray and faded sky blue. The dog hopped into the bed with an impressive vertical leap, and I opened the passenger side door, surprised that it didn’t even squeak.
The truck roared to life and Bishop eased it down the road, both windows open as well as the rear one that separated the cab from the bed. I glanced back to see the dog with his front feet on top of the wheel fender, nose to the sky. Bishop stared straight ahead, that scowl still on his face.
I didn’t say a thing, but I couldn’t help but fidget, wishing he’d say something, or that the dog would bark. Anything. I just wanted reassurance that we were still following some sort of scent trail.
Without any discernable direction from the dog, Bishop took a few turns, and merged onto the highway heading south.
“You’re young,” Bishop commented out of the blue.
“Twenty-two.” I’ll admit my tone was a bit defensive. In my mind, that wasn’t young. He didn’t look much older.
He chuckled. “You in college?”
I’d taken a few courses after high school, but my heart hadn’t been in it. School wasn’t my thing. I hadn’t known what was my thing back then. I still didn’t. The demons coming had ignited something in me—the need to protect my family, to keep us all safe and get us the hell out of here before we ended up like that tractor trailer on the side of the freeway. Before that I’d just been wandering around unsure what I was supposed to do with my life. Once my family was safe, I’d probably go back to the same. Nothing else sparked a fire in me. Nothing. Right now my family needed me. When they didn’t, I wasn’t sure what I’d do.
“Yeah. I was pre-med at USC,” I told him.
He snorted.
“How about you? What were you all doing before everything went to shit?” I asked.
“Working for a bunch of assholes.”
“Huh. Owning a racist bar is clearly a big improvement over that.” I didn’t know why I wanted to poke at this guy, especially when I needed him right now. I eyed him out of my peripheral vision, hoping my big mouth wasn’t about to get me dumped on the curb, but Bishop didn’t look angry. He seemed amused by my comment.
“We’re only a racist bar on Thursdays.” He glanced over at me, then back to the road. “Sorry King came after you. His pack…they’re dicks, but they’ve become even bigger dicks since he took over.”
“Why don’t you tell them no and kick them out?”
Wasn’t that the point of owning your own place? You didn’t have to put up with anyone’s shit?
“If they weren’t hanging out at my place, they’d just be somewhere else.” Bishop wrinkled his nose in disgust. “That pack’s got a few bad apples. They’re not all like that.”
Like King, the two women, and Wiry Beard, he meant.
“If people tolerate the bad apples, that makes them one too.” I was lumping him into that category as well, hoping he wouldn’t realize that and shove me out of the car. I really needed to shut up. Nevarra had been kidnapped, and if I had to put up with some guy excusing racist assholes in his bar, then I needed to do it.
Bishop shrugged. “It’s not my job to clean up their mess. They’re not my problem.”
“They are when someone comes into your bar, gets insulted, then gets fucking attacked,” I shot back. “The guy jumped me, and those two bimbos joined in. I get the feeling half the bar was seconds from piling on me when your manager-woman stepped in.”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “King crossed a line. I’ll make sure he doesn’t do it again.”
“Maybe you should put a sign up out front that Thursdays are only for racist slime, just to warn people.” Maybe I should just shut my fucking mouth before it got me in trouble.
Bishop sucked in a breath, relaxing a fraction as he let it out. “I’ll take care of it.”
I rolled my eyes, thinking his idea of taking care of it wouldn’t change a thing. He’d said it wasn’t his problem, and I got the idea he meant it. Bishop clearly didn’t like to be bothered—by dustups in his bar, by women with no money pleading for help.
But he was right. If I ever needed to go back to Suerte, I’d avoid Thursdays. King and all the racists in the world weren’t my problem either. That wasn’t my battle to fight—not when I had so many other battles facing me right now.
“Look, there’s always going to be bad apples. They come and they go. There’s no sense wasting time on them.” He glanced over at me. “King’s pack has been coming to Suerte on Thursdays for a long time. You’re right. I need to do something about him, but assholes like him are always gonna be around. Take out one, and two more will show up.”
And letting racist assholes insult and attack potential patrons in your bar was okay because something-something and “you’ll never get rid of them all so why bother”? What a load of bullshit. Plus the botany metaphors were annoying me. Deciding this argument wasn’t going to go anywhere, I sat back and kept my mouth shut.
“You hurt?” Bishop grumbled after ten minutes or so.
“Huh?”
“Hurt. Did King hurt you?”
Oh. For some reason I’d thought he had been talking about my emotions, as if he’d hurt my feelings. “No. I’m fine.”
I was, and that was a fucking miracle. Being hauled around by my hair hadn’t seemed to have caused any lasting injury to my scalp, and although a few of those kicks landed, I didn’t even feel bruised. It had been a while since I’d been in a physical fight, but I clearly hadn’t lost any of my skills.
We both fell silent, and an hour later Bishop turned off the freeway into Hawthorne. My stomach churned. This was Disciples territory, and it seemed pretty far for the Fixers to have hauled Nevarra. Had the dog lost the scent somewhere? Was Bishop not as good as everyone said?
Pulling the truck over to the side of the road, Bishop put it in park, grabbed the keys, and got out. I followed his lead, trailing along behind him and the dog as they turned down an alley and came to a stop in front of an old abandoned Costco.
Here? Why didn’t he say anything? The silence was killing me.
“Bea said the one had a screwdriver tattooed on his bicep,” I whispered. Bishop looked back at me in surprise, as if he’d forgotten I was with them. “Are you sure we’re in the right place?”
“Yeah.”
This guy needed to say more than “yeah.”
“Is she in there?” I prodded.
Was anyone in there? The place was dark. No vehicles were nearby. The whole area was like a ghost town.
“I don’t know.” Bishop glanced down and met the dog’s eyes. “I’m sending Bob to check.”
What a shi
tty name for a dog. I looked after the animal in some sympathy as it trotted over to the building, vanishing smoothly into the shadows. “He looks more like a Spike, or an Ajax.”
Bishop snorted. “He’d be flattered to hear that. Spike. Shit, we’d never hear the end of it if I told him.”
I waved a hand in the general area where the huge dog had disappeared. “He’s really tough-looking. Bob just doesn’t sound right.”
“Well, that’s his name.” Bishop grinned. It made him look even more like a stereotypical California surfer dude. “Maybe I’ll start calling him Tiny, just to piss him off.”
There was clearly something weird going on here. I didn’t have a lot of personal experience with dogs, but it seemed more and more like Bob wasn’t a normal dog. And maybe Bishop wasn’t a normal human.
Not my business. If they helped me find Nevarra, they could be fucking flying alien monkeys for all I cared.
We both turned to stare at the building for a while, waiting for Bob to return with his report.
“It’s spelled,” Bishop abruptly told me.
“Huh?”
“Magic. A spell to avoid detection of something or someone. That’s why we lost the trail.”
“That’s good, right?” I began to get excited. “Nevarra’s scent trail ends here, and doesn’t go anywhere else, so she’s got to be inside.”
“Maybe. The same magic that is shielding the building could have been used to get her out of the building and somewhere else without leaving a trail. Vehicles can be spelled. I’ve also seen amulets that are designed to shield a person.”
“So it’s magic that hides someone’s scent?”
“Scent as well as other forms of detection.” Bishop gestured at the building. “From the outside we can’t tell if there’s anyone inside because the building is spelled. It’s effective against Bob’s nose, technology such as scanning for heat signatures, a location spell.”
