After fifteen minutes of driving around the neighborhood, Selena began to think she was wasting her time. This was the definition of finding a needle in a haystack.
She wondered if she should call Jayden. He could almost certainly help her track down Ruben. But she quickly dropped the idea. Jayden was a SWAT cop for the city of Dallas, not her personal security service. She would do what she had to do to find Ruben on her own.
Thinking about Jayden brought a smile to her face. That wasn’t surprising. He was incredible. Seriously, how many guys would have been as cool as Jayden after getting bitten hard enough to draw blood? Not only that, but he’d agreed to go out with her on a double date with another couple he’d never met. She was pretty sure there weren’t many guys like him out there in the world. Actually, she was pretty sure there weren’tanyother guys like him. He was one of a kind.
Selena had been dreading her night out with Becca and Scott, but now that Jayden was going, she was looking forward to it. The club they were going to had some great music—even in the middle of the week—and while Selena’s main reason for going was to fly cover for her friend, the thought that she might get a chance to dance with Jayden had her grinning. Something told her Jayden Brooks could dance his ass off.
And who knew? After a night of getting all hot and sweaty on the dance floor, maybe they’d go back to her place and get all hot and sweaty doing something else.
There was a part of Selena that was shocked she’d gone there. She wasn’t skittish about sex, not even close. But it was completely out of character for her to think of doing stuff like that with a guy she’d just met. Since last night, she couldn’t get Jayden out of her head. She’d even dreamed about him. And it was the wildest, steamiest, most intense erotic dream she’d ever experienced. She’d woke up breathing hard, excited beyond belief, and filled with an almost uncontrollable urge to text him and say,Was it good for you?
She hadn’t, of course. Instead, she’d gotten out of bed and run for a ridiculous amount of time on the treadmill in the corner of her bedroom, then taken a shower. The combination of exercise and cold water was enough to get rid of all the excess energy she seemed to have built up, not to mention calm her hormones.
The one thing it hadn’t done was change her mind about Jayden. She wanted him. He wanted her. There was no reason to act like it wasn’t going to happen between them.
Selena was so caught up in thoughts of Jayden—and possibly getting naked with him—that she almost missed the group of people hanging out in the abandoned lot on the corner of Ferguson and Highland behind the discount liquor store and the tire center. She probably would have driven right by them if it wasn’t for the one guy standing head and shoulders above the others.
Ruben.
Heart beating faster, she pulled a U-turn and looped back around to slip into a parking space along the side of the shop that specialized in wine, beer, and snack food. Thankfully, it was relatively empty at this time of day, so there was nobody around to see a local high school teacher not only parking in front of a liquor store, but also slipping out of her car to disappear behind the place.
Because that wouldn’t look weird at all.
Selena stopped and looked around when she reached the god-awful, smelly Dumpster in the back They were supposed to build an apartment complex on the empty lot in the future, but for now, it was simply a piece land where the neighborhood kids played tag and sometimes tossed around a football. Older kids and adults used the lot as a playground, too. Unfortunately, their games usually involved drugs.
As she neared the group of people near the privacy fence, she saw that there were eight boys and three girls. She recognized all of the girls and two of the boys besides Ruben. Both of the boys and one of the girls had dropped out of Terrace Grove more than two years ago and were involved in the gangs. The other two girls weren’t in any of Selena’s classes, but she knew they’d started skipping school lately. Unless something changed, those two would end up in the gangs before the school year was out.
When people thought about gangs, they assumed only guys got involved in them. Unfortunately, that wasn’t true. These days, girls and women accounted for as much as ten percent of the local gang population, and they were just as involved in crime and violence as their male counterparts. Many times, the women would be stuck carrying the gang’s weapons or drugs so when the cops caught them, the women were the ones who ended up going to jail. Even worse, the gangs frequently put their female members out on the street to make money or used them for their own entertainment. In some ways, being in a gang was tougher on the women than the men. But the gangs kept recruiting them, and the girls kept joining.
Selena squared her shoulders and walked right into the middle of the little get-together, ignoring everyone else as she approached Ruben. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught some of the guys regarding her with interest. One hooted, asking if she was there to have a good time. But most of the people in the group looked at her with barely disguised annoyance.
When she didn’t respond to the catcalling, the oldest guy among them reached out to grab her arm. Anger immediately surged in her, and she smacked his hand aside as she stopped in front of Ruben.
“What are you doing here, Ruben?” she asked. “Your grandmother has been worried sick about you. I’ve been worried about you, too.”
For a moment, the Ruben she knew, the big kid with the good heart, had the decency to at least look chagrined. But then he seemed to realize he had an audience, and his face changed, taking on a casual, unconcerned expression. “I was just hanging out with my friends. It’s not a big deal.”
Friends? Since when?
Selena bit her tongue, almost drawing blood as she tried to quell the rising wave of fury rushing through her. She wanted to ask if this had something to do with Pablo, but stopped herself. Of course it did. Ruben had resisted the pull of the gangs for years, but then two days after seeing Pablo get shot, he was standing on the corner with Pablo’s gangbanger friends.
More frustration and anger clawed its way up from her stomach, and she had to force herself to take a breath. Her emotions were getting the best of her, dammit. Yelling at Ruben wouldn’t do any good.
“Not a big deal,” she said. “You stay away from home for two nights without letting your grandmother know where you are, and you think it’s not a big deal? Is that the way you treat the woman who took you in and cared for you since you were five?”
She kept her voice soft, but it was difficult. Ruben’s grandmother was almost seventy but still worked, because that was the only way she could cover the cost of raising a teenager with an appetite like his. To his credit, Ruben hung his head a little at her jab, and Selena could almost feel the shame rolling off him.
Selena was this close to taking his hand and getting him the hell out of there, but the guy who’d tried to grab her arm before wedged himself in between her and Ruben, forcing her to take a step back unless she wanted him right in her face.
Her body’s reaction to the aggressive move was startling. First, the hair on the back of her neck and her arms stood up, then her whole body tingled like electricity was running through it. Most shocking of all, her hands clenched into fists so tightly, they hurt.
“Who the fuck are you, bitch?” the guy demanded. “His mommy?”
In his late twenties at least, with tattoos covering his neck and arms, he was probably the leader of this little group and undoubtedly the one Ruben was here trying to impress. She bit down on her rising anger, ready to tell him that Ruben wasn’t in his gang yet and could go anywhere he wanted. But before she could get the words out, one of the girls she knew from school spoke.
“This ain’t his mom, Aaron.” The girl smirked. “This is the teacher from Terrace Grove that got Wheels shot and arrested. The one always putting her nose into other people’s business.”
Aaron looked stunned, maybe expecting someone bigger or tougher looking, but then his face took on a dark, determined look, and Selena knew she was in trouble. But for some crazy reason, she wasn’t as scared as she probably should have been. In fact, other than the fury flowing through her blood like acid, she felt incredibly calm.
