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The traffic—more congested than the middle of the night when I came back from picking up Araceli—had me gritting my teeth and reluctantly applying the brakes. I had to make a concerted effort to slow down, because getting into an accident would not help the situation. Twice, I hit the redial button. Jillian sent me straight to voicemail both times. I screamed in frustration. Sadira’s agitation from this morning’s interview and my own intuition jacked up my fear levels.
Finally, I reached the neighborhood where I had dropped Ara off. Not having a clue where Jillian could be, I began a grid search, circling one block and then the next. Slowing, I turned onto a one-way street; the driver behind me honked, and I waved him around. He sped past, blaring his horn, but I didn’t care, because I’d spotted Jillian’s sedan ahead. Karma continued to work in my favor because an empty space opened two cars ahead of where she’d parked.
Standing on the sidewalk, I realized I didn’t know which way to go. On the side of the street where I’d parked, brick rowhouses that had seen better days lined the boulevard. The ugly brown brick had darkened to black in places from pollution, and chipped paint flecked off the row’s white and green metal awnings that were popular in the sixties. Ratty air conditioners hung out of upper windows, the one above my head listed crookedly, defying gravity. I skittered sideways, fearful it might drop to the sidewalk at any moment.
Across the street, a grizzled man in a lawn chair sat in the shade of an apartment complex’s roof overhang. The complex, too, had seen better days—graffitied walls, a broken street lamp, and general rundown condition revealed how little the landlord cared. The tenant rocked gently back and forth, humming to himself, and I considered asking him if he’d seen my sister, when she popped out of the alleyway between the two complexes.
“Jillian!” I hollered, and dodged my way across the two lanes of one-way traffic. The onlooker in the lawn chair yelled something at me, but I ignored his gap-toothed warning. Tires squealed and a horn blared at my thoughtless move.
“Rina, what are you doing here? Jiminy Crickets! You almost got mowed down!” Jillian snapped.
Stressed from my traffic-filled drive over and near miss crossing the street, I grabbed my sister’s hand and hissed, “It’s time to go.”
“Wait!” She tried to pull away. “I’ve got her name: Trudea. That’s the girl with the milkshake.”
“Fantastic. Let’s roll.” I tugged harder.
“Rina, no,” she retorted, standing firm. “Listen to me.”
Lawn chair guy had gone back to his humming and rocking, but those sharp eyes remained fixated on us. I took a beat and released my sister. “Okay, Jillian, why don’t you tell me what this is all about. Why this girl? What does she matter to you?”
“Rina,” she implored, her brows furrowed, “she’s in trouble.”
“How can you be sure?”
“A little boy told me. And before you open your mouth, you need to realize he’s a smart kid. Just because he’s young doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what’s going on around here.”
She was right. Kids often know exactly what’s going on and are usually more honest than grownups.
“She’s got a boyfriend who is bad news. She used to go to school regularly and get good grades, but this year she started staying out late, skipping class. The boy said she used to play with him in the afternoons before his mom got home, but now she tells him she is too tired, and to quit bothering her. He said he tried to help, but she told him to leave her alone. Rina—he described needle tracks on her arm.”
My face drew down the more my sister revealed. “Sounds like she got involved with a bad dude. Maybe a gang member?”
“Yes, I think so too.”
I glanced around at the low-income apartment buildings, then pointed. “You see that tag on the side of that building? It’s MS-13. We are standing in the middle of gangland. It’s not safe for either one of us to be here. Why are you taking this on?”
Jillian threw back her shoulders and put her hands on her hips. Her neon pink nails stood out against the dark slacks she wore. “I’m a teacher. It’s my job.”
“You’re not her teacher.”
“We’re trained to look for this type of thing and report it,” she said, justifying her position.
“So, report it!” My hand slashed through the air. “You have a name and a photo.”
“I—I want to talk to her first.”
I rubbed the beating pulse at my temple. “Okay, Jillian, what do you plan to do about it? Hm? She’s not going to give up drugs just because some stranger tells her to. You and I both know she needs to take that step herself. She has to want to take it. If she really is the girlfriend of a gang member, she’s certainly been threatened not to leave him. What’s your plan?”
“Well,” Jillian mused while she chewed her lip, “maybe I’ll be that catalyst to help her. Maybe she just needs someone to give her a hand.”
I shook my head. “I think your best bet would be to go to the authorities or the school system and tell them what you know.”
“I plan to, but—” Concern and confusion washed over Jillian’s face. She didn’t speak, but through our sister connection, she might as well have.
“You’re thinking about Sadira?”
“That’s right. I want to ask her about Sadira. I’ve got to know what her connection is to this.”
“You think Sadira’s involved with this girl and her boyfriend? How? Drugs?”
“Maybe. No. I don’t know.” My sister waffled, chewing a neon nail.
My brows rose in disbelief. “You can’t tell me Sadira is an MS-13 gang member. That’s a stretch.”
She looked away. “She’s into something. You’ve got to admit, Sadira being threatened—after I started asking questions—is just a little too coincidental.”
My sister wasn’t wrong. Something was going on here. How Sadira played a role, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. “I get it. I understand why you want to help this girl. I just think you’re going about it in an unsafe manner. There’s got to be a better way.”
“Let me tell you a little story. Two years ago” —Jillian held up a pair of fingers— “a Washington Post journalist came to our school for career day. She spoke to a couple of my classes. Afterward, we struck up a conversation. Something she said has stuck with me ever since: 'If you’re not receiving death threats, you’re not doing your job.’”
I rolled my eyes so hard, I believe I saw my frontal cortex. “You’re hardly an investigative journalist, Jilly.”
She crossed her arms and shot me a mutinous glare.
My phone rang, startling the both of us. “It’s Jessica. I never called her back after seeing Sadira this morning. She’s going to want an update.”
“You should tell her.”
“It’s not that easy. I don’t know what to tell her about my meeting with Sadira without revealing all the crap you did yesterday. Moreover, today’s exploit can’t be explained without yesterday’s.”
Struck by the reality of my statement, my sister pinched her lower lip in thought. “You might be right.”
The ringing stopped and Jessica’s call went to voicemail. I breathed a sigh of relief and assessed my sister. She seemed dug in like a tick, trying to find this Trudea girl. I figured I’d humor her and give her fifteen more minutes before pulling the plug on this research project. “Have you figured out where milkshake girl lives?”
“In that apartment complex.” She indicated the big building to our right.
Music blared from one of the homes across the street, and an argument, whether on TV or real life I wasn’t sure, raged somewhere above us. Three elementary-aged schoolkids ran out of a rowhouse with green shutters. A woman’s voice hollered something in Spanish, and the tallest of the three turned back to close the front door, before catching up to his younger siblings. The three of them went as far as the corner where the older two began a game of keep-away with a basketball. Occasionally, pedestrians ambled along the sidewalks. Traffic ebbed and flowed down the street in spurts dependent on the light two blocks down. Lawn chair man had lost interest in our conversation and returned his attention to the street activity.
“Have you talked to neighborhood watch over there?” I asked softly, tilting my head toward lawn chair man.
Jillian frowned. “That guy might as well be ‘hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.’ I’m sure he knew exactly who I was talking about. He didn’t even glance at my phone, just shook his head, hummed louder, and swatted at an invisibly fly.”
His attention shifted back to us and his withered gaze met mine. I smiled disarmingly and his eyes narrowed. “Maybe we could try again. Excuse me!” I waved at him.
I couldn’t have taken two steps before he rose and said clearly, “Time for Hot Bench.” Quicker than a frog snapping up a meal, with agility that belied his age, the man folded his chair and entered the apartment complex’s vestibule.
“See what I mean?” Jillian stated.
“Yes. Exactly what I told you would happen. These folks see us as outsiders.” The blaring music ceased, and my last words were spoken too loudly in the sudden quiet. I glanced around. The boys on the corner with the basketball had disappeared, and the sidewalks were devoid of pedestrians. My Spidey senses went on alert.
The unsettling stillness was broken when a middle-aged black woman wearing blue scrubs exited a rowhouse directly across the street from where we stood; the screen door slapped shut behind her. Spotting us, she leveled a hard stare our way, then glanced up and down the street. “You’d best be moving on,” she called to us before getting into a beat-up green Toyota, circa the ’90s; the engine sputtered to life and the muffler rattled noisily as she pulled away from the curb.
I turned back to Jillian, who looked disconcerted by the woman’s warning, and whispered urgently, “She’s right. They probably think we’re cops, or narcs. We don’t belong and it’s as obvious as the nose on your face. I’ve got a bad feeling.”
Jillian, perhaps finally realizing there might be danger, nodded. “Yeah, okay. It’s time to go.”
She tucked her phone into her back pocket, and we approached the street. The rumble of an accelerating high-end SUV skidding around the opposite corner had us jumping back on the sidewalk. The speeding car screeched to a stop. My heart dropped to my stomach as two men wearing dark hoodies, low-hanging jeans, and skeleton bandanas around their nose and mouths jumped out of the vehicle and headed straight for us.
A third man came around the front of the car, and I yelled, “Run, Jilly!”
Pivoting, I took off. My flats pounded against the concrete as my eyes searched for anyone who could help. I got halfway down the block before Jillian let out a muffled scream. Stopping short, I went to turn back, but was swiftly blinded by a dark hood thrown over my head. It smelled of fear and body odor, and the prickly material scratched at my cheeks. A strong arm wrapped across my chest. I couldn’t breathe, and panic coursed through my veins. Luckily, adrenaline poured in with the panic, and abruptly my head cleared. The training kicked in. My opponent was bulky like Joshua, but shorter than me. As if Jin spoke to me via mental telepathy, I knew exactly what to do. I elbowed him in the gut, then reaching back, I grabbed a handful my opponent’s hoodie, and part of an ear. Digging in with my nails and pulling with all my might, I dropped down to one knee, tucked my head, and he sailed over my right shoulder, landing with a grunt and hard thump on the concrete. Thankfully, I’d been able to take my attacker off guard. I also suspected he was not as well-trained as my J-squared buddies.
I ripped the bag off and drew in the warm, pollen-infused spring air. My assailant remained on the ground in front of me, bandana torn off. The landing must have knocked the wind out of him, for I recognized the silent fish-out-of-water gasping motion. His hood had fallen back, revealing a strange tattoo design on his cheek, and his dark eyes were wide with shock. A vicious snake tattoo around his neck flexed with the movements of his jaw. Jillian screeched, and I turned away from the breathless goon at my feet.
They’d covered her head with an army-green ski mask, only they must have put it on backward because I couldn’t see any of her face. Two hooded men carried my thrashing sister as if wrestling an angry alligator. She got a foot loose and kicked the shorter assailant in the gut. He grunted and let out a string of Spanish invectives before recapturing her ankle in a cruel grip that made my sister let out a pained whimper.
They were too close to the SUV.
I rose to my feet, but it felt as if I was running upstream through a swift river. “Jillian! NO! LET HER GO! JILLIAN!” My voice came out in a high-pitched screech of terror.
To my horror, they tossed her into the SUV’s back-cargo compartment. The one who she’d kicked climbed in with her. The other thug hopped into the back seat, and the car started to roll away before he closed the door. My sister grabbed at the knit mask on her head. The truck swerved. The thug who’d climbed in the back with her threw a wild punch and she went still.
“Jilly?” Her name escaped my lips as a broken whisper, and I stumbled to a halt.
My own assailant sprinted past me after the retreating SUV, galvanizing me into action.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” I gave chase, but my cute little ballet flats couldn’t keep up with the fleet-footed Hispanic in sneakers.
The SUV slowed enough to allow him to jump into the cargo bay, and my fingers missed his shoe by inches. The driver gunned the engine as I continued to stumble after them. I’ll never forget the smug look on the criminal’s face, holding up his middle finger as the back liftgate slowly descended. Then the vehicle peeled around the corner, out of sight. The entire incident happened over the course of a few moments.
“JILLIAN! JILLIAN!” My screaming was so high-pitched, it jangled in my head.
A horn beeped. A driver in a low-slung, dark sports car swerved so close, a whoosh of breeze dislodged my hair as he passed and sped around the same corner as the SUV. Another car screeched to a stop on my right, and a middle-aged, balding man in khakis jumped out, phone in hand. “Are you okay? Did you get a plate? I saw it from a few blocks back but didn’t get a plate. It looked like a Chevy Tahoe. Was it a Tahoe?”