A Leap in the Dark (Assassins of Youth MC Book 2) (22 page)

“Yes, I did.” I couldn’t believe Pratt was admitting it. “He knew too much. He knew where my photo studio was. I couldn’t afford a loose cannon like that running around! So Parley Pipkin and Immanuel Zabriskie came and took his dear sweet body away. Now you listen here. Let all heed my will. I am the only way of salvation. Now be ready, because it is the call of thy God.”

“Just let him,” whispered Deloy.

So I let Pratt fall to his knees, but only because I knew it would distract him. I had a plan up my sleeve.

I’d put myself into this trance thousands of times. I reminded myself it was a business—in this case a lifesaving business. I reminded myself of Deloy. I might risk my own life, but I was also risking his if I made some idiotic move. So Pratt toiled away between my thighs, and I barely noticed. It was almost as if the Rohypnol had numbed me out, and I was glad.

This trance almost felt like a coming home for me. Submitting to a force I no longer felt beholden to. I had outgrown this behavior—submitting my body for the pleasures of others—quite awhile ago, actually. It was like I’d been planning something like this move to Avalanche deep in the recesses of my psyche, but had remained unaware of it until meeting Oaklyn. I’d been ready for something new, something different. I was ready to grow up.

Like riding a bike, I fell back into the trance easily. The date rape drug helped lull me into semi-unconsciousness. I stayed aware of Pratt’s grunting and huffing and puffing, while Deloy seemed to go under into the same trance I was in. His head flopped onto his shoulder, and his hands in the wrist cuffs were limp. A smear of blood across his chin really angered me, but I stopped myself from waking up fully. It would do no one any good to blow it now, especially with the pistol still in Pratt’s hand laying across my thigh.

“What’s that?”

I opened my eyes. Deloy had said something, hadn’t he? What had he said?

He seemed to be looking at the big, dirt-encrusted window. “What’s that?” he said again.

Pratt sat up, alert. “What’s what?”

Deloy said, “That sound outside in the courtyard. Kind of like a…buzzing.”

Pratt stood. He took his gun like a gangster in a film noir over to the door, hefting it on his shoulder while putting his back into it, listening.

Deloy whispered, “Now’s the time to do whatever it is you plan to do.”

He knew me well.

OAKLYN

I
t comforted me,
being in the bosom of the loud, brash, macho club.

Mahalia was there to hold my hand. We huddled over a small cocktail table as the men conferred in their chapel. Because both Prospects—Deloy was nominally a Prospect even if he couldn’t shoot a pistol worth a hill of beans—were currently hostages, I had to serve myself. I made a stiff gin and tonic. I hardly ever drank hard liquor. But if there was a time that called for it, it was now.

“Levon will find a way out,” said Mahalia. “He’s a rough and tough guy. He’s not gonna let some fat-ass in a bowtie get one up on him.”

“We should have had a sniper stationed near the school,” I moaned. I’d been going over and over it in my head. The second Pratt came out of the school, the sniper—probably Sledgehammer, who had been in the armed forces—could have taken him out from a safe distance. “Are we trying to do this without murdering anyone?
He murdered Deloy’s friend
, Mahalia, and God knows how many other boys! They said there’s one other unidentified body in the mine, right?”

Mahalia sighed. “I suppose we’re trying to go for a minimum of bloodshed, yes. It wouldn’t really assist Maximus’ run for mayor if he was convicted of murder.”

“Convicted
,” I said pointedly, “
not
suspected. And Mahalia, you’ve seen how many supporters Maximus has. Those people
loathe
Ladell Pratt. If we can convince everyone that he murdered Kenyon Stout, not only will he not be mayor, he’ll not be a free man.”

“Yes, lots of people hate the mayor. That council has been re-electing itself for decades. But can we really prove Pratt killed Kenyon?”

“Dingo’s got all the metadata that proves he took the videos of Kenyon and all those other boys. It’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to figuring out who the other body is.”

“Still doesn’t prove Pratt killed them.”

“Look, who’s the nurse?
I
am.
I
should have compassion and all that sissy nonsense.”

“Well, it’s your old man being held prisoner by the creepy pedo. I don’t blame you for being a little…bloodthirsty.”

The chapel door burst open then as though a bomb had exploded on the other side. Gideon strode out first, making a beeline straight for the bar. As Prez, it was rarely, if ever, his duty to inform his Old Lady of the goings-on and decisions of the club. A patch holder couldn’t be seen as weak, that he somehow had to answer to a woman. It was Maximus, maybe as the candidate we’d be voting for, who sat at our table.

He sank his fingers in Lazarus’ thick black fur. The giant beast sat between us, his tongue lolling. He seemed completely unconcerned that his master was imprisoned.

“Listen,” said Maximus in his deep sportscaster’s voice, “Gideon and Deloy are at the Avalanche Elementary School.”

“I know,” I said irritably. “I was there when Dingo figured it out.”

Maximus nodded in agreement. “Yes. And Dingo put a GPS tracker into his cut pocket.”

Mahalia burst out laughing. “Leave it up to Dingo!”

I was fuming mad, maybe because someone had gotten a leg up on me. I banged my fist against the table. “So! What is anyone going to do about this completely unacceptable situation? Every minute we sit here like immature morons, my old man and Deloy are being tortured by that twisted fundy!”

Maximus held out a calming hand. “I know, I know. We—” He looked to Gideon, who was corralling all the men by the side door that led to the parking lot. He stood, pointing at us. “Got to go. You women. I know you’re dying to come, and I don’t discount your stake in this affair. But believe me, you’d be doing your men a disservice if you tagged along.”

“We won’t,” Mahalia said with assurance.

I wasn’t so sure, but we managed to stay quiet until the men had all stomped out. We locked gazes when the Harley motors roared to life. They idled only briefly before the pipes roared off down Crosstown Street.

I was the first to speak. “So. You know where the elementary school is.”

“Yes. I used to bring Dingo food and clothing there.”

It was as though we read each other’s minds. We both knew we were going to disregard Maximus’ warning. There was no way I was going to sit there lamely while the men did all the work. Besides, if someone was hurt, I was a registered nurse.

All at once, we both jumped up. So did Lazarus, and I grabbed his leash as we ran.

Again without discussing it, we piled into Mahalia’s truck. I wasn’t about to text Dingo or anything stupid like that. We would easily find five Harleys parked in a school lot. In fact, we must’ve driven so fast we soon caught up with their “tail gunner,” the last guy in the pack, Gideon. I didn’t have to tell Mahalia to slow down so we wouldn’t be detected. We slowed way below the speed limit.

She said, “They’re probably going real slow so as not to give the pigs anything to nail them for.”

I hadn’t thought of that. I wondered if Atticus Rosenkohl knew what the mayor was up to at the school. I was surprised I hadn’t seen any cop cars on the way, waiting to nab anyone who tried to find Pratt.

I asked, “Would it make sense to park around this hill? Past that, it’s all flat.”

“Good call. Then we can walk.”

The school was in a small valley surrounded by very low, undulating sandstone hills. We parked the truck in a small ravine and shoed it the rest of the way. The midcentury glass of the abandoned school soon came into view. We couldn’t see the scoots.

Mahalia said, “They must be around on the basketball court side. They probably don’t want Pratt to see their bikes.”

We were silent another couple minutes. Then I said, “Remember that basketball player you dated in high school?”

“Before I met Field?” Field was her first—I should say
only
, since her second was a polygamist fundy—husband who had died in a construction accident. There were some who thought this “accident” was brought on by Allred Chiles and his henchmen.

“That guy. Did you ever think you’d wind up in love with a biker?”

“Oh, shut the front door! Oh my sin, no! Not in a hundred thousand lifetimes.”

“But now that you are, it feels natural and right.”

“Of course. Are you—are you in love with Levon?”

“Yes. And I stupidly told him that right before he left for the school. Guess what, Mahalia.
He didn’t say it back!
”

“
No!
”

“Yes!”

What else could Mahalia say? She was obviously filled with pity for me. She even put her arm around me as the three of us trudged toward what was beginning to feel more and more like our doom.

“There they are!” I cried in a stage whisper, although we were much too far away for them to hear us.

“Look.” Mahalia pointed. “If we head up that gorge toward the hot springs, we can peek around the corner and they can’t see us.”

The men dropped from our line of sight as we clambered up the parallel gorge. We had to hop from boulder to boulder, and I didn’t want to let Lazarus off the leash for fear he’d go running to find his “dad.” I didn’t need him to be murdered twice in one month.

Another outlet of the gorge would give us a view of the basketball court where the bikes were parked. I hoped to hell Lazarus wouldn’t bark.

The leather-clad men were also peeking around a corner of the school. Dingo alone kneeled on the cement tinkering with something.

“We should’ve brought binoculars,” I said.

“They must be trying to figure out which room he’s in,” said Mahalia. “I wonder if they’re going to storm it.”

“Throw one of those smoke bombs, maybe? Tear gas?” I wish we had brought those items, too.

“You know, isn’t it ironic? Levon and Dingo and Deloy are all Lost Boys. Now a club named The Assassins of Youth turns out to be their salvation.”

That irony hadn’t been lost on me. “Let’s pray, Mahalia.”

I felt her hand slip into mine. Since her Cornucopia ordeal, I knew she didn’t actively practice any religion, but we were praying hard. It was all we could do.

LEVON

“What’s that sound?”
barked Pratt. He looked at us as though we should know. Maybe he thought we’d planned something. We hadn’t. We weren’t that organized.

I had the
shuriken
between my fingers behind my back. The angle was awkward, but I could definitely angle it so the edge acted like a knife, and I sawed away at the zip-tie while Pratt was distracted at the door.

He went to the filthy window but probably couldn’t see a thing. He didn’t want to wipe it with his pristine sleeve, so he searched around for something to use as a rag. He was forgetting about us as his central focus. He knew we were safely bound, and he was the one with the gun.

I caught Deloy’s eye, and he gave a slight nod to acknowledge I was doing something. My whole life I’d loathed feeling powerless. That was why I’d taken control of my out-of-control life in my early twenties. I’d become my own boss so I’d never be at anyone’s mercy again. I didn’t have to accept clients if they didn’t meet my standards. I noticed that quite a large percentage of them even paid more than we were asking due to feelings of guilt. We were all utterly masters of our own universe up at Liberty Temple.

The whirring sound came closer to our door. When Pratt found a T-shirt to wipe off the window, the whirlybird went right up to the clean spot in the glass. Pratt gasped.

“What the…” He headed straight for the door.

Deloy was perplexed, but not for long. “It sounds like one of those—”

I whispered. “Drones that Dingo uses.”

The one I’d seen Dingo use was a blue quadcopter. It took bird’s eye view videos that actually had very high res. I had to smile inside as I sawed away at my ties. If nothing else—even if Pratt got carried away and shot us right now—the club would have proof of his doings.