Chapter One
BAM
Icatch my breath as Niki, my partner in crime, rolls over the inert body with his shoe.
“That’s Cole.”
Niki tilts his shaved head in my direction. “You know this guy?”
“I recognize him. He was in Josie’s book.”
“Josie who?”
My buddy isn’t slow. He just doesn’t have room in his head for anyone who is not his girlfriend, Andy, or his family. He’s especially not going to remember another girl, which is fine by me. Other people perceiving Josie is irritating. Not that she should be hidden indoors all the time, but it would be nice if other people—guys in particular—would keep their peepers to themselves.
“From Andy’s school. The junior reporter girl.”
“Don’t remember her or her book. She’s a writer?”
“She’s put together a notebook of stuff about different guys going missing. This is one of them.” I squat down next to Niki and pull the collar of the dead boy’s flannel shirt away from his neck to expose the bruise marks. Someone strangled him withtheir hands. “He played basketball. Went missing about four weeks ago.”
“Body’s pretty fresh for someone who has been missing a month.” Niki straightens and glances around the dilapidated warehouse. It’s mostly empty. Whatever machinery this place once held was scavenged for parts years ago. The floorboards are cracked, and vines and weeds are sprouting in the crevices. If the gerbil, the marks we have to collect payment from, hadn’t told us about the kid, he might have decomposed before anyone found him.
Niki and I are the muscle in community collective, as our fearless leader Carter calls it. The alliteration is catchy but dumb. We’re a gang, and Niki and I enforce the rules. Today, we were out collecting dues owed for services rendered. That’s another Carter phrase. Essentially, we’re bill collectors. When we arrived at the door of our debt owing gerbil, he offered to show us a dead body in lieu of the five big ones he owed Carter.
“Let me take a few photos and then we can jet.” I pull out my phone before my partner responds. He walks over to the entrance and speaks in a low voice to the gerbil who led us here.
“You let him off?” I ask.
Niki shrugs. “Information is currency too.”
“I would’ve done the same.”
“I know.”
And that’s why we’re partners and have been for three years now since we joined the Riders. Technically, I suppose it’s only been two years since we were tatted and pinned. The tattoo is the public sign of our allegiance to the gang. Pinning is the private ceremony where you fight the existing crew, and if you are still standing at the end, they pound a pin into your bleeding and bruised chest. Initiation into the Riders gang isn’t easy, but since most of us spend our time chasing people and fighting themwhen we catch them, it makes sense to test our endurance and strength.
A few weeks ago, I thought Niki might leave the Riders. He’d fallen for a girl and thought, at the time, that the Riders would be too dangerous for her, but in the end, he came to the conclusion that hhaving someone to help watch his back—someone like me—made everyone safer.
It’s not like I was going to fall to my knees if I had to break in a new partner, but it’s nice that he’s still around.
“Need me to read to Julie tonight?” I offer. He doesn’t get a lot of alone time with his girl, so sometimes I pitch in and read to his baby sister. It’s not like I’ve got anything going on, what with being on my own for as long as I can remember.
“Not unless you want to get murdered. Andy’s been reading a dragon story to Julie. Temmy something. Can’t remember the name exactly, but anyway, if you interfere with that, Julie will stab you with a fork.”
“Appreciate you looking out for me.”
He bumps my fist and peels off in the direction of his new place where he lives with his mom, his sister, and now Andy.
My choices are to go hang out at the laundromat, the place the Riders call home base, which these days is emptier than a tomb after Easter, or my apartment, which is also very empty.
I’m a guy, so I shouldn’t need company, but my feet don’t want to move in the direction of my place. Ten minutes later, I find myself outside of a small café near the school. Because I know things about people, because it’s my business to know where they live, where they hang out, the sight of a curly-haired head bent over a book isn’t a surprise.
I’m here, I tell myself, to give Josie an update because she deserves it, not because I’ve been thinking about her for days, not because I see her when I close my eyes at night, not becausemy apartment feels like a tomb that isn’t going to have any Easter surprise.
I open the door and watch with faint amusement as eyes widen and feet scrape against the tiled floor as kids rush to leave.
Josie’s head pops up to observe the mass exodus. I slide into the booth bench across from her and steal a cold fry from her plate. “Whatcha working on? Your missing boys?”
