I got home to find that Aunt Bea had made her way into the kitchen and was boiling water over the little camp stove I’d picked up a few months back. The woman’s face was swollen, but she’d cleaned herself up and had a makeshift sling holding her splinted arm. Her clothes were filthy and blood splattered, but I’m sure that was at the bottom of her list of priorities right now.
“How is Sadie?” I asked her.
“Sleeping. I re-dressed that wound on her shoulder, but her leg…”
“I know.” I sat down and pulled off my boots, inspecting blistered feet unused to wearing heels. “I’ll find something to sell for more antibiotics and first aid supplies. And maybe pain pills, although they’re hard to find.”
Bea sat down across from me, swaying a bit in her seat.
“You okay?” I asked her.
“Lost a lot of blood. My heart pills mean I don’t clot so quick. Bled like a stuck pig all over the hallway.” She sent me a wan smile. “I’ll be fine. My biggest worries right now are keeping Sadie’s leg from getting infected and finding Nevarra.”
Mine too.
“Someone will be here in a few minutes to help look for Nevarra. He’s got a reputation for finding people.” That wasn’t all he had a reputation for, but Aunt Bea didn’t need to know that.
She sent me a sharp glance. “I’m not happy that you went out to meet him dressed like you’re walking Western Avenue.”
I didn’t blush at Bea’s mention of one of LA’s many prostitution spots because she wasn’t far from the truth. Bea had never been a prude, but she’d raised us to not be so quick to think to use our bodies as commerce. But desperate times…
Not that Bishop had seemed more than mildly interested in my body.
“Marissa from down the street has a cousin who works at the hospital. Tomorrow I’ll go down and see if she can ask around for a nurse or a doctor who would make a house call. Maybe they’ll take trade or payments.”
Hospital staff were swamped. The chances that a nurse or doctor would make a house call, even if a co-worker asked them, was slim, but it was worth a try. There was only so much Bea and I could do with a bottle of antibiotics and basic first aid supplies. Hell, I didn’t even know if the medicine I’d gotten from Bags was the right stuff to counteract an infection from a gunshot wound.
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.