Ada grabbed a Coke for herself from the fridges on the wall and made a sweeping motion at me with her hand.
‘All right, let’s shut this circus down. Fred, get the back door.’
‘I can’t just shut the shop.’ I winced as she picked up my keys from the counter and threw them a little too hard at me. ‘I’ve still got three hours on my shift.’
‘Forget your fucking shift, Neighbour.’ She started walking out. ‘We know where Dayly is. Let’s go get her.’
In the parking lot I tried to get into the front passenger seat, assuming Ada would want me riding up front with her so we could talk through what we’d just discovered. But Mike muscled in beside me, nodding to the back door.
‘You ride with Fred,’ he said.
I sat coldly in the back seat, trying not to look at Fred, who perched stiffly in the seat like a GI Joe doll in the rear of a plastic Jeep. His big, tattooed hands were on his thighs, flat, tense. From what I could see, Mike was sitting exactly the same way in front of me, looking at me now and then in his side mirror. I started getting a queasy sensation: the notion that, had I really protested about shutting the Pump’n’Jump or getting into the car with Ada and her crew, I would have been made to go against my will. At every stoplight I imagined myself trying to open the door and finding it locked. Feeling Fred’s hand on my shoulder, maybe his arm sweeping around my body, dragging me back into the car. Sneak’s words rang in my ears.
I got into a car with Ada Maverick and got out again, alive.
I chewed my nails as the city became the long, dark, sweeping freeway. Ada lit a cigarette and I watched its red burning tip rock back and forth on the steering wheel. Lit billboards appeared in the windscreen, gathering speed, whizzing by us. The road to San Chinto was becoming so familiar now it was as if I was heading home. Ada turned on the radio as we breezed past signs for Joshua Tree National Park. A talk show was playing.
‘. . . apparently refer to them as “swarm parties”, George.’
‘Swarm parties?’
‘Yes. Similar to flash mobs, which rose in popularity in the mid-2000s, swarm parties involve a large group of strangers suddenly assembling at a designated place to engage in a celebration.’
‘Right, so what we’re seeing here, Erica, is a swarm party in full effect right now at a residence in Woodland Hills. The news desk is hearing that upwards of a thousand people have descended on Esperance Drive, where a house seems to be at the centre of one of these so-called swarm parties. Residents are reporting loud music, motorbikes both in the house itself and in the street, and some kind of . . . drag rally happening out front. I’m told most of the house’s windows have been smashed and there are some belongings out on the lawn. Part of the garage has been burned down. No word of any arrests yet. This doesn’t sound like any party I’ve ever been to, Erica, I can tell you that much.’
‘Well, it’s not the party that matters, George, it’s the attendance. The aim is to get as many people to come along as possible so that the figures can be shared on social media. The damage, the mayhem, is a kind of scorecard. You don’t organise one of these things at your own house, that’s for sure.’
Long patches of black mountains looming over bare earth. I watched the city become farmland, the temperature in the car seeming to dip as we drove further from the city. I thought about Ada’s smile in the Pump’n’Jump. The rare sight of it, and the weird, satisfied quality it had.
Another voice sounded in my head. It was Jessica Sanchez this time.
She can smell money. That’s why she’s here.
‘We need to talk,’ I said eventually.
‘About what?’ Ada said.
‘About our plan,’ I told her. Fred was looking at me, his face unreadable in the dark. ‘Our priority is finding Dayly. Making sure she’s okay.’
‘Of course it is.’
‘We don’t know what else we’re walking into here,’ I said. ‘If the plumber, Ramirez, and Lemon and Dayly have set up what we think they’ve set up, then it’s possible she won’t even be there. When I saw her, she was running. She was scared. Something had gone wrong, and—’
‘I’ve got a plan, Neighbour,’ Ada said. ‘You don’t need to worry about it.’
I wrung my fingers. One of Fred’s hands had moved from his lap to the pocket of his jacket. I thought about my phone in my backpack, which was at my feet.
‘My plan is to find Dayly,’ I said. ‘And if there’s anything else going on . . . I mean. I don’t want anyone to get hurt. Or for us to, you know, to get involved in something that’s, uh . . .’
My words drained away. Fred was watching me from across the bench seat. Ada was watching me in the rear-view mirror. Mike was watching me in his side mirror. A vision flashed through my mind, of a cat in a car full of Dobermans. I eased breath through my teeth and tried to focus on the road ahead.