Gathering Dark, Candice Fox [inspirational books for students .TXT] 📗

Eventually, Ada put the phone on the desk and I dared to creep forward and take it back.

“I don’t like this,” Ada said.

Sneak looked up.

“You think this guy posted the video without her knowing?” Ada asked.

“We don’t know,” I said.

“So you want to go put his head in a toilet, ask him,” she concluded.

“That was sort of the plan…” I said, looking to Sneak for help. “Maybe not with the use of a toilet. I mean, that wouldn’t be our … first strategy.”

Ada yawned, looked at her goons as if her curiosity had been piqued and had settled again, and she was about to order them to throw us out. I drew a deep breath and counted to three.

“You owe me, Ada,” I managed.

Ada stiffened, her gaze locking onto mine.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,” I continued, surprised by my own daring. “I saved the life of a member of your family. People know that. They might know that you never paid me back.”

“You’ve got some balls, Neighbor girl,” Ada said quietly.

“I know you’re curious,” I said. “You owe me, and this case makes you curious. You know Dayly and you don’t like what’s happened to her. I can see it on your face. You’re just afraid of doing a nice thing, what people will think of that. You have a reputation to maintain. Well, I can promise you, Sneak and I will never tell any—”

“You think I sit here all day long sweating my perfect ass off about what people think of me?” Ada asked, her voice heavy with menace. “You think I’m that fucking pathetic?”

“No.” I struggled with the word, every muscle in my body tensed with terror. “No, Ada.”

She fell quiet. I held her gaze, but only just. A minute passed, maybe the longest minute of my life. I counted the seconds and wondered what piece of me Ada might order her goons to chop off when she finally spoke again.

“I can give you five thousand dollars and a reasonable car,” Ada said.

Sneak made a sound, like a shocked exhalation. I felt the dread fall over me like a blanket.

“That’s too much.” I put a hand up. “We couldn’t possibly pay back anything like—”

“We could use some guns,” Sneak said.

“No we couldn’t,” I snapped. “We don’t want any guns. We don’t even want—”

“Get these assholes out of here.” Ada waved at the men behind us. I was dragged out of my chair by my arm, Fred’s fingers digging into the tender flesh under my bicep. I tried to call to Ada as we were ushered out, but she ignored me, taking a whiskey glass from her desk drawer and pouring herself a nip.

Fred and Mike shoved us down another dark hall and out the back doors of the club. I lifted the hem of Sneak’s shirt and pressed it against her ear, pushed her hand against the wad of fabric so she would hold it and stem the bleeding.

“Why did she do that?” Sneak asked.

“Because she’s crazy,” I murmured, in case there were cameras with audio around us in the parking lot. “I shouldn’t have brought us here. I’m sorry. We’ll go back to my place and I’ll fix your ear.”

“No, I mean why did she agree to help?”

“She likes things to be even. And I challenged her pride,” I said. “What was all that about guns?”

“We could use them,” she said. “We don’t know what we’re up against here.”

“I’m not hanging around you while you’re armed,” I said. “The only time you’re sober is when you have to go to court.”

“Should I give this to you, then?” She pulled an enormous black gun out of the waistband at the back of her skirt.

“Jesus! Where did you get that?”

“I lifted it off Mike. I got his wallet, too.” She produced the wallet from her cleavage.

“Give me those.”

Fred and Mike emerged from the club doors again. I presented Mike with his gun and wallet, and the big man snorted in surprise and anger, patting his coat pockets as though he was sure they were replicas I was offering. Fred put a banded stack of cash in my hands, as thick as a sandwich, and handed Sneak a single car key attached to a key ring with a miniature eight ball on it. He pointed to the back of the lot without taking his small, mean eyes off me.

“In the corner,” he said. “The black one.”

“Now fuck off,” Mike said.

Sneak and I walked numbly to the back of the parking lot. In the furthest corner, parked with its wide rear against a chain-link fence, was a 1988 Chrysler Fifth Avenue, its glossy black paint job lit with red highlights from the neon sign of The Viper Pit. The car had been fitted with huge chrome rims and a hood ornament of a rearing cobra. I opened the car and looked in at the interior, which seemed to be crocodile or caiman leather. Huge black scales rolling over every surface, including the dash and steering wheel. The car screamed drug dealer. Arms dealer. Killer. Thug-for-hire. It screamed Ada Maverick. It was a Gangstermobile.

Sneak opened her mouth and I shook my head before she could speak.

“Just get in,” I said.

JESSICA

On Thursday, January 1, 2009, at approximately 2:25 a.m., Blair Gabrielle Harbour left her house at 1109 Tualitan Road in Brentwood through the front door and turned right to walk down the steep driveway. Across the street, at 1108 Tualitan Road, fifty-one-year-old Derek McCoy and his wife, forty-nine-year-old Teresa McCoy, were arriving home in a taxi from a New Year’s Eve party organized by Derek’s workplace. Derek McCoy spotted Harbour as the sensor light at the bottom of her driveway illuminated her on her path toward the house next door to hers, number 1107. In his witness statement, McCoy described Harbour’s walk toward the house next door as “determined.” “I wouldn’t go so far as to say angry. But she had a