“It’s me. Scorpion.” He’d been sitting on a bench next to the entrance to the Ferris Wheel.
“Where’s Lily?” I demanded. “Where the fuck is my sister?”
“I don’t know! I’ve been sitting here for two hours waiting for her. We were supposed to meet up here at one.”
I wasn’t even mad that Lily was planning on sneaking out of Paige’s place to meet Scorpion. I was getting legitimately worried about the girls. This was not an instance of a couple of irresponsible teenagers coming home late from a concert.
“I’ve been texting her all night but they haven’t been going through. I didn’t know what else to do so I’ve just been sitting here.”
“So you don’t know anything about where they could be?”
“No! After the fire, the patches had a meeting but since I’m still prospecting I wasn’t included, so I took off and came here.”
Dammit. He was my one solid lead.
I turned to head back to the car. “Okay, thanks.”
“Ryder?” Scorpion’s hands were stuffed into his jeans pocket.
“Yeah?”
“Can I…” he cleared his throat. “Can I help you find her?”
This was no business for a Las Balas prospect to be involved in. I started to shake my head no, but he added, “Please? I just can’t… I mean, I need to do something.” He wiped his face with both hands. “I love her. What if…I…”
“Fine. You can come along with me. But you need to keep your fucking mouth shut with anything you see or hear. Do you understand me?” This was probably a huge mistake, but my instincts were telling me that having him with me was better than leaving him to his own devices.
“Thank you, Ryder. I won’t be in the way. I promise.”
I shook my head and headed to the car with a tall, gangly, worried young man in tow.
* * *
We were drivingup Berry Avenue and I was prepping Scorpion for what we were doing. “We’re headed to the Blue Dog Saloon in North La Playa. I’d recommend taking off that fucking jacket and keeping your mouth shut. The brothers are not gonna be too happy if they find out who you are.” I reached down and handed him a baseball cap. “Wear this and keep your head down.”
“Scott,” he said, as we passed by Swole’s gym.
“What?”
“That’s my name. Scott. Scorpion was just my nickname in high school.”
“Did you graduate?”
“Yeah. I went to Fillmore. Was gonna go to LPCC but my ma got sick.”
I didn’t have time to ask more, so I just said, “There it is. Remember. Keep shut and let me do the talking.” The more I thought about it, the more I was regretting bringing him along.
* * *
The place was still pretty packeddespite the fact that it was almost 4:00 am. Hawk was gone, and of course Padre wasn’t there. Neither was Yoda, but Chalupa saw us as soon as we walked in.
“Hey man, did you find…” He stopped dead in his tracks as soon as he saw Scorpion. He looked back and forth between us questioningly and then asked, “Any luck finding them?”
I shook my head and said “Nope. Where’s Hawk?”
“I think he went over to Frog Park to talk to some guys. See if they heard anything.”
I nodded and made my way to the back of the room and Scorpion kept his head down and followed us.
