“The radar?”

  “With the cops. They are onto them. I’m guessing shit may have gone downhill.”

  Brooke finished her drink and ordered another one. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

  “No. We all depend on each other, one way or another. Even though we are competition. If they go down, we have to shut down, for God knows how long, in order to stay out of suspicion.”

  “Oh.” Brooke met John’s eyes, and for some reason, she felt a flutter in her stomach.

  “You really look amazing,” he said and leant forward to whisper in her ear. “I hope you are not regretting anything.”

  A picture of Luca popped up in Brooke’s mind, but she brushed it off. “No, I mean, it was stupid, but I don’t regret it.”

  John smiled. “Good, I’m glad.”

  Raven let out an ear-deafening squeal as she saw John and jumped into his arms, nearly causing him to fall over in his chair.

  “So glad to see you!”

  “Raven,” John gave Brooke a funny look, making her giggle, “you look great!”

  Great, not amazing, Brooke thought, smirking at her own, pathetic jealousy.

  “You too, Mr Handsome! What do you think of Abby, gorgeous, huh? My work!”

  “Of course it is.” John slapped Raven’s butt as she turned around to leave.

  The music suddenly went almost quiet, and people moved to the sides of the dancefloor. Brooke felt nervous as she saw Ace stand there, in front of the door to the office.

  “Thank you all for coming,” he began, “I just have a couple of things to say, then you can go back to… doing whatever the fuck it was you were doing. So, the Arrows are, as we know, in a hot place, and it seems they’ll take in Zac for questioning. I want to see the cunt dead, as do we all, but what does it mean for us? It means we have to stay the fuck down, hide under the water, got it? Only small runs of distributions allowed, and no heists, no fucking messing about!”

  Brooke turned to John, who raised his eyebrows, as to say; ‘I told you.’

  “We’ll be staying low, from now on, until this shit is cleared up. If I hear someone is messing around, making fucking noise – I’ll find you and snap your neck myself.”

  Some people smiled at this, and some were biting their fingernails.

  “Anyway, you get the point. Let’s fucking party!” Ace raised a glass of martini, the rest of the club raised their glasses as well, and the music got turned back up.

  ***

  Brooke only stayed for an hour longer than John. Once he had left, she found there was no one she felt like chatting with. Raven was floating all over the place, and nearly every stranger walking up to her offered her coke. She got tired of saying, ‘no thank you.’

  It was dark outside, and the sky was clear. Brooke looked up at the many stars as she got ready to ride back home. There were no cars on the otherwise busy roads, and nobody walking home after a night out. The bars and clubs seemed to all close around two in the morning - now it was past three.

  She parked the bike outside the garage and took her helmet off. As she hung it on the handlebar, she heard a noise, a footstep? She turned around, but couldn’t see anything, or anyone. A lone car drove past Bell Avenue.

  As she decided to shrug it off and walk up to open the garage door, a pair of hands pulled her head backwards. Her mouth covered, Brooke tried to scream as she stumbled backwards. Her heart nearly jumped out of her chest.

  “Don’t make a sound,” a deep, male voice said.

  Pulling her arms behind her back and pushing her forwards, Brooke realised he was going to kidnap her. A black van came into view around the corner of the apartment block. Black van, she thought of Raven’s story, of how Richard has been shot, black van, it’s definitely the Arrows. She closed her eyes, trying to focus. Tears wanted out, but she held them back, focus, I can’t get into that van.

  She yanked her body from side to side, and for only a couple of seconds, the man loosened the grip of her arms. Brooke turned around and kneed him between his legs. The man let out a squeal as both his hands moved to his crotch. Brooke took this opportunity to run back to her bike. Breathing heavily, and adrenaline pumping through her veins, Brooke ripped the storage compartment open and grabbed the revolver.

  Just as the man was about to run after her, she cocked the gun. “Don’t move!”

  He stopped for a second. Wearing a black hoodie and dark jeans, the hood covering most of his face, Brooke couldn’t tell if he was even looking at her. After standing completely still for what felt like minutes, he surprised her by grabbing a gun from his back pocket. He had moved so fast; she must have blinked, missed the first sign of movement.

  Aiming back at Brooke, the man slowly walked towards her.

  “I will shoot!” Brooke felt her chest tighten up and sweat forming on her forehead. “Stop!”

  “Be quiet,” the man said as he raised a finger to his mouth. There was something about his voice; Brooke thought she recognized it, but she couldn’t quite place it.

  She shook her head. “Fucking stop!”

  “Okay.” He stopped. Gun still aimed at her. She tried to take a breath, tried to control her body as it began shaking, making her want to turn around and run.

  “Do you want to know where Luca is?”

  Brooke swallowed. “Of course I fucking do.”

  “Well, did your… friends, tell you that he is with us? Tied up? Locked up?”

  The shakes intensified, and the fear slowly got replaced by anger. “You fucking cunt.”

  “And here you are, drinking and having fun. All while he suffers.”

  “Who are you, and why are trying to kidnap me?”

  The man scoffed as he moved the gun from his left hand to the right. “Don’t you want to see him?”

  “I’m not fucking stupid. Why do you even care about me? You’re not punishing me, you’re punishing him.”

  “It’s more complicated than that.”

  Brooke ran out of patience, her arms started to get tired, and she couldn’t risk lowering her arms for one second. “I’ll kill you, get away from me!”

  Before the man could answer, laughter made them both look to the road. A couple, walking home.

  The man turned around and ran to his van. Once she was sure he wasn’t coming back, Brooke placed the gun back in the storage compartment and took a breath.

  With shaky hands, she pulled out her phone and called John.

  Chapter 9

  “And nobody was with him?” John walked around the main living room and checked every window.

  “No. It was just him.”

  “Doesn’t make any sense.”

  Brooke grabbed a blanket as she sat down on the couch. “Well, I wouldn’t be here now, if he wasn’t alone.”

  John sat down next to her. “Some nerve. Couldn’t have been a planned move, he must have just decided to get you on his own.”

  Brooke sighed as she looked into John’s eyes. “They have Luca. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He blinked. “You’re smart. I think you know.”

  “What? You didn’t tell me because you thought I would go there? Or what?”

  “Yeah, basically.”

  “You can’t see how this all looks to me?”

  “What?”

  “You, coming here, having a drink, having sex with me, all while Luca is being held captive? Jesus, John!” Brooke felt the anger tug at her chest. She rose from the couch and began biting her nails.

  “Look, I’m sorry. He put himself in that situation. I didn’t know the guy, and I had no reason to care.”

  “But you knew I care!”

  “I’m sorry,” John sighed, “we can’t go get him. Unless the boss tells us to, we can’t.”

  “Why is Luca so important to them? What did he do?”

  “Abby.”

  “Tell me!” Brooke grabbed the remote off the coffee table and threw it on the floor. “Fucking tell me!”

  John looked surprised like he didn’t suspect her getting upset. “You understand I’ll go against Lee’s orders if I tell you?”

  Brooke shook her head. “No. Let’s just say the random Arrow guy outside told me.”

  “Can I have a drink first?”

  “John!” Brooke moved towards him and leant forward, her face close to his. “I swear to God, I’ll fucking cut your dick off if you don’t tell me, right now!”

  His pupils were big, completely drowning any sense of emotion in his eyes. “He killed someone.”

  “Who?” Brooke straightened up and began biting her nails again.

  “A guy.” John rubbed his eyebrows as it seemed he was trying to remember. “An Arrow.”

  Brooke felt her patience fade. “What? That’s a good thing, so why haven’t you gone after him?”

  “Alright, you may want to sit down, I’ll tell you all I know.”

  “I’m fine standing, just get on with it.”

  “Luca was never working for Streetwalkers, he has been with the Arrows since he was a teen, as far as I know. He distributed things, either drugs or guns, I don’t know. Anyway, from what I have heard, he got told to kill one of us at Streetwalkers, and he refused.”

  John sighed. “He went with it, but when it was time to pull the trigger, I think he decided to kill his companion instead. To protect our guy, I guess.”

  Brooke was trying to picture Luca in her head. How he would have known he would never kill a man, but then got put into a position where he felt like he had no choice. “Who was he supposed to kill?”

  “A man named Jack, you haven’t met him. He runs a motorcycle club, on behalf of Streetwalkers. The clubs over there have constant beefs, bullets fly between them all the time.”

  “But why would he rather have his companion killed? I don’t get it.”

  “Fuck me.” John leant forward, resting his elbows on his lap, “I don’t know. We heard of a shooting, and since Luca didn’t plug Jack, we owed him, and his only request was for us to find you when you got to Whitestead.”

  “Okay.” Brooke took a deep breath, trying to gather her thoughts. “He must have known the guy, or cared for him in some way.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why haven’t they just killed Luca?”

  “Death is not always the best punishment.”

  Brooke thought of her almost getting kidnapped. “It’s me they want to kill, probably even in front of his eyes. Fucking cunts.”

  “And this is why you need to be careful.”

  “Can you stay here, at least for tonight?”

  John smiled. “I wasn’t going anywhere. I’ll sleep here on the couch.”

  ***

  John didn’t just stay the night. He stayed for an entire week, only leaving when they needed food, alcohol or cigarettes. Staying low, under the water, as Ace had said, really meant locking yourself inside. Lee didn’t call; nobody came around. The tension between Brooke and John slowly eased, but she still had trouble accepting his actions, while he knew about Luca. She blamed herself, too, although she questioned Luca’s actions as well, his decisions.

  Since there wasn’t much to do in the apartment, Brooke spent a lot of the time laying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Her thoughts wandered to when she and Luca were together. They had been dating for about a month before they decided to buy the trailer home. Luca lived with his brother, in an absolute shithole, as his brother always had people over drinking, smoking weed, and probably crack. Brooke stayed with a colleague, a friend. Since they always had different shifts at the bar, they barely saw each other. It was a cheap, one-bedroom apartment.

  Once they bought the trailer home, everything had felt like it was falling into place. Her life, their future. Luca had always had secrets, he often left home in the middle of the night, only to arrive back in the early morning. They argued about it, and Luca’s excuse was always placed on his brother. He needed help with something; he couldn’t get home, he needed to kick someone out of the house, anything. Since Brooke didn’t want to break what they had over a dysfunctional sibling relationship, she stopped asking after a few months.

  Now she wished she hadn’t. She wished she had done whatever she could to find out what he was doing; that he was working for the Arrows. Although he wasn’t a stranger to meagre bar fights every now and then, Brooke couldn’t imagine him taking someone’s life.

  Thinking back now, she wondered how much money he really would have had. A few times he had shown up with an expensive pair of earrings, or a necklace; he always said she shouldn’t worry about how he got it, and she never did. He was an excellent liar, and it was easy to just look into his eyes and forget about the details.

  Did he ever think about just leaving with her? When all the shit went down with the motorcycle guy, Jack. Couldn’t he just ask Streetwalkers for help to run away, to disappear, with Brooke by his side? Wouldn’t that have been a better choice, than this?

  Of course, nobody was there to answer her questions, and she could feel her brain getting fried, little by little. After each day that went by, a piece of her mind left as well. It was easier to shut down, to not think about anything. She and John spent a couple of nights staring at the TV, watching worthless shows, while drinking vodka straight out of the bottle. She passed out on the couch, and John covered her up with a blanket before he laid down on the other end.

  No matter how wasted, or high, John had been; the fresh aroma of coffee was what woke her up every morning. He always got up and made two cups, and laid out some bread on the counter, for her to prepare when she was ready. He never ate breakfast, in fact, he barely seemed to eat much at all.

  The cleaner; a tall, white-haired lady, came over a couple of times. She watered the plants, vacuumed, and did the dishes. Brooke was thankful she wasn’t the chatty type. She did her work and left.

  On the seventh night, while Brooke was playing stupid, pointless games on her phone, John yelled out from the couch.

  “Abby, come here!”

  She jogged up the stairs and placed herself next to him on the couch. The news was on.

  “They’ve finally got him in for questioning.”

  Brooke looked at the picture, which was placed in the top right corner of the screen, while a woman was talking. It was a picture of an older man, fat face and dark, greasy hair.

  “That’s Zac?”

  “Yeah. They’ve got him.”

  “So that means, they are done?”

  “No.” John turned down the volume, as the story changed. “This shit can take months. Court, enough evidence, witnesses. They’ve been trying to get him in for years.”

  “Could they find Luca?”

  John folded his arms across his chest as he leant back. “Doubt it. They have many bases, and the cops can’t just break in without a warrant.”

  Brooke nodded as she tried to meet John’s eye. “But we can.”

  “What?”

  “Just hear me out,” she took a breath, “if the cops are on them, and they’ve got Zac. Isn’t this the best chance we would ever get to get Luca? Nobody would see it coming.”

  “You are forgetting about us, the syndicate.”

  “Well, don’t you think Ace has enough to worry about?”

  John smiled as he ran his hand through the stub of his beard. “You’re fucking crazy.”

  “Maybe. But I think you owe me that much.”

  “I do not!”

  Brooke reached out and touched John’s hand. “Please. I’m begging you. Help me get him out. You may not know him, but he’s a good person. He doesn’t deserve this.”

  John shook his head. “He could already be dead. In fact, that wouldn’t surprise me one bit.”

  “Please.”

  “We will get disowned, I’ll lose my ranking, I’ll lose everything.”

  Brooke bit her lip. “Wouldn’t you anyway? If Ace has to keep doing this? How long can you survive without working? I haven’t seen you do shit for a whole week.”

  “I’m here to protect you now.”

  “Says who?” Brooke tried her best not to sound agitated. “Did Lee tell you to? Did Jamie? Ace?”

  John rose from the couch and began pacing, looking out the windows. “I won’t do it. Not without Lee’s permission.”

  “What do you think he’d say?”

  “There’s no money in it! Nothing for anyone to gain. And we don’t know where he could even be.”

  “Just think! Would anyone be able to help? Could we go and speak to someone?”

  “It’s a fucking suicide mission!” John looked frustrated now, but he still stared out the window, biting his lips, thinking.

  “What about Raven? Sam? Hell, even Garett, if he knows something?”

  John came back to the couch and sat down. “I won’t promise you anything. But we can go there, to the club, and speak with Raven. But if she says it’s a stupid fucking idea, we’re not doing it. She’s been able to get into the minds of people, she’d know.”

  Brooke felt a jolt of relief spreading through her body. “Thank you.”

  “But first,” John touched her hair, “I’m getting you some hair dye, you need to at least try not to get recognised.”

  Chapter 10

  So the hair got dyed in a chocolate brown. Brooke used an eyebrow pencil to try and make her eyebrows just as dark. It didn’t look too bad, really. But a whole day had passed, and all she wanted now was to see if there was any chance of getting to Luca. John didn’t seem optimistic, not at all, but at least he would speak with Raven, and possibly Lee.

  They left the apartment after having a light dinner of frozen pizza. Taking John’s car, a red Audi, they drove to the club. Once parked in an alleyway not far away, John grabbed his semi-automatic out of the glovebox

  “Bring yours, too,” he said before exiting the vehicle. Brooke had her revolver already tucked in the back of her jeans.

  It didn’t take long before he noticed something was off. He moved closer to the stone walls of the buildings next to the club. “Stay close, and don’t make a sound,” he said as they slowly moved to the door.

 

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