Author's Preface
How the hell does he know her?
Sevan slipped out of the sleeping condo in perfect silence, then swiped the key card at the elevator. There was a “B” button—presumably for the basement. Sevan pressed it, then waited while the elevator descended.
Nevada. There was no other time in Lacey’s life that she could’ve gotten to know someone neither Sevan nor Rick had even met.
Then these two had somehow stayed in touch for twelve years without anyone knowing about it?
No. Impossible. Meika had already been famous by age eight. Lacey had been in a foster home, going to public school. They would’ve been in different worlds, even if they had somehow been in the same town.
The only other possibility was that they had met here in LA, in the last two months. And Meika was withholding critical information about where and when he saw her.
Pressing a button on the key fob lit up a sleek white BMW sports car. Sevan wasn’t sure what kind of vehicle he had been expecting when he was handed a key fob with BMW’s logo on it, but something in him had been hoping for anything but the 100k+ vehicle he was currently looking at.
And if I scratch this thing? If I smudge this thing? I will be dead.
The driver’s side door opened up like a bird’s wing. And for six seconds after watching the door lift on its own after he merely pulled the handle, Sevan wondered if he would rather call a rideshare.
Red leather seats. No back seat. Sevan tested the driver’s seat, then cautiously slipped onto the polished leather. The center console screen woke up on its own—flashed the BMW logo in an animated display, then loaded a “Hello, Theo” screen.
Who the hell is Theo? Sevan reached out and touched the screen. It changed to a menu. Maps, music, settings…
Settings.
Sevan touched the “Users” item, and two names loaded.
Is this car even Meika’s?
Farren and Theo. There wasn’t a third name on the list.
This car seemed too expensive for a bodyguard to own. Maybe Meika had set up his user account under the name “Theo” for some reason. Why a car even needed a user account, Sevan wasn’t sure. He sat back in the driver’s seat, pulled out his phone, and opened the Uber app.
While available rides loaded, Sevan reached over the center console and opened the glove compartment on the passenger side. Registration. The car was in Meikhyel Callisto’s name. Insurance under State Farm. And—condoms.
Sevan raised his eyebrows at the small box tucked into the far edge of the cubby, then shut the compartment and looked down at his phone. There was an Uber five minutes out. He touched the option, then entered a random Figueroa Street address.
A confirmation code popped up on his screen. Sevan got out of the car. He pulled the driver’s side wing—door—down and watched as it finished shutting itself.
* * * *
“Have you seen this person?”
They were like ghosts, shadows. Inhuman, unreal—the people who dotted the flashing lights of Figueroa Street. The Blade.
Clubs and street art landmarked every length of the road, breaking up the chain-link fences and poorly kept buildings in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.
“Hey, Cutie.” A woman’s voice. A short skirt, a revealing top. And she melted away like a shadow.
They were wary of him, even the ones who were willing to look at the picture on his phone.
“No, Babe. Never seen that one in my life.”
“Haven’t seen her. She’s cute, though.”
It was good. Good no one knew her. It meant there was a chance she wasn’t here and never had been.
“Is that your girlfriend?” a tall woman with a man’s voice asked after she looked at the picture on Sevan’s phone.
“No, she’s my sister.” Mexican rap was pouring out of a nearby parked car, and it was hard to hear.
“Oh.” The tall woman tsked. “Poor thing. I haven’t seen her. Honey, as a friendly face in an unfriendly part of town, I’m going to let you know that you should head home, now, okay? You’ve been noticed, you’ve been noted, and now it’s time you not be here.” The woman’s murderously long nails made a gesture to the silhouettes of strangers lingering several yards away.
Sevan glanced at them. “Okay, yeah.” He slipped his phone away.
“I’m so sorry, honey. I hope you find your sister.” And then the tall woman clacked away in her high-heeled boots.
Sevan took out his phone again and pulled up the Uber app. The nearest ride was fifteen minutes away. He entered the address of Meika’s building, then darked the screen on the confirmation code. He started toward the corner of the block.
Two shadows stepped suddenly out of a perpendicular alleyway. Sevan froze in his tracks, nearly colliding with the two on the narrow sidewalk.
And they were so entangled with each other, they didn’t immediately notice him.
Sevan’s presence seemed to startle one of the two silhouettes, and the taller figure abruptly lost his grip on the shorter one, then started swiftly away down the sidewalk, wiping his lips.
There was an annoyed scoff from the shorter figure—also a man. “Can’t you fucking watch where you’re walking?”
Can’t YOU? “My bad,” Sevan murmured. He started to side-step the stranger. But the man—boy—grabbed his sleeve suddenly.
“Hey, you’re that bitch looking for that other bitch.”
Sevan’s brow dipped.
“That Asian chick,” the boy elaborated with an annoyed scoff.
Sevan pressed his hands into his pockets and watched the half of the boy’s face that wasn’t blacked out by the shadow of the building they were standing beside. “Do you know where she is?”
The boy’s lips twisted. “What’s in it for me?”
“I guess that depends on what’s in it for me,” Sevan answered.
“Two hundred bucks, and I’ll tell you.” The boy’s head tilted, revealing a little more of his face out of the shadow. Teens. Maybe early twenties. He looked like a high school kid.
“You know where she is?” Sevan asked again, his voice remaining deadpan.
The boy shrugged.
“Doesn’t sound like it,” Sevan decided. He turned and started walking away.
The boy’s hands seized him from behind with unexpected force. Sevan’s back hit the wall of the building, body flooding with paralyzing adrenaline in a feeling far too familiar. His eyes shot upward, two seconds of his mind fully hallucinating Hane’s face in front of his.
His brain reconnected with reality, and he saw the shorter shape of the boy staring up at him.
Sevan cast off the boy’s grip with a flick of his arms.
“I have something else you’ll want,” the boy offered quickly.
Sevan glanced back at him, wiping his arm across his shirt where the boy’s sweat had gotten on him. “I don’t think so.”
“She was staying with me,” the boy said boldly. “I don’t know where she went, but the bitch left all her shit at my place. Two hundred bucks, and her shit’s yours.”
“What was her name?” Sevan asked dryly.
The boy shrugged. “I don’t fucking know. She never said.” He beckoned at Sevan. “I’ll show you her shit. It’s her, I swear. The one you were showing everyone on your phone.”
The boy led the way back down the alley into plunging darkness, Sevan following at a safe two yards. They came out into a fire-lit settlement tucked down a dead road. Sevan followed cautiously as the boy stepped through the mingling figures of the encampment to a green and gray tent.
Summer insects were singing loudly from the shrubbery growing at the far edges of the camp. The boy unzipped the tent and ducked inside. Moments later, he reemerged with a duffel bag.
A familiar duffel bag.
Sevan’s heart started pounding in his chest. He leaned down as the boy dropped the duffel on the ground, touched the familiar blue diamond pattern along the side, then pulled the center zipper open. Clothing. A familiar T-shirt with a smiling sun on it. Sevan pulled the next thing out, and his fingers froze on it. Soft, small, pink—a child’s teddy bear. Brand new with the tags on it.
“Alright, that’s enough.” The boy decided. “You can go through the rest of it when I have my two hundred.”
Sevan set the teddy bear on top of the duffel and slowly straightened. “How do I know you didn’t steal this?”
The boy shrugged again—exaggerated, obnoxious. “Dude, I don’t have time to argue with you. I have business to get to. Do you want her shit or not?”
Sevan’s eyes scanned the surrounding settlement, pulse beginning to throb in his neck. He could hear it in his ears as he scanned the other tents, the makeshift homes, the lingering figures, flickering firelight.
Why, Lacey? Why leave Rick, leave home, leave me—for this?
“Come on, man. Where’s my money?”
Sevan looked back at the boy. “I don’t have that kind of cash on me.”
“What do I look like, a peasant from the Dark Ages? Venmo me.”
Sevan glanced down at the duffel. Released a sigh. Then pulled out his phone. “When was the last time you saw her?”
The boy shrugged. “Two days ago.”
“She didn’t tell you where she was going?”
“No, dude. Like I said, she never even told me her name.”
“Why were you letting her stay with you?”
“’Cause.” The boy shrugged. “Rent.”
Sevan’s eyes fixed the boy for a long moment, fingers frozen on his phone.
The boy shrugged again. “Look, dude, the best I can offer is I saw her with some geezer shortly before she left.”
“Some geezer?”
“Yeah.” Another shrug. “Some old man. Old as hell. In a shiny-ass Farrari. I thought he was just a trick, but maybe he turned out to be more than that.” The boy shrugged again. “She came back once after I saw her with him, but only for a few minutes. She’d spent the night someplace else, dunno where. Then she left and abandoned all her shit.”
“What did the old man look like?”
“I dunno, dude, like an old man. Old. White hair. White dude.”
What the hell, Lacey? She was turning tricks. Was she turning tricks? Was that what this meant? Sevan cast another glance around the encampment, then turned back to the boy. “I’m paying you fifty bucks for this duffel, tops.”
“What the hell, man? Hell, no. I said two hundred. Are you deaf?”
Sevan made a small, light gesture. “Keep it, then, if it’s worth more than fifty to you.”
There was a small silence.
“Fifty,” Sevan repeated. “What’s your Venmo?”
The duffel weighed heavily on Sevan’s shoulder as he stood on the curb and waited for the Uber. His fingers fidgeted silently with the pink teddy bear. He lifted its little arms, posed them in the yellow-and-black of the sidewalk, then lowered them. He flipped the tag. Ages 3+. “God, Lacey.” He sighed.
“We both know what she’s out there lookin’ for,” Rick had said.