Page 10 of Sparrow

Hawke’s Wood, New York.

And an address that I recognize.

Holy. Fuck.

Suddenly the pieces come slamming together, and the picture is clear. The syndicate deals with a lot of things–drugs, boosting cars, chop shops, arms–but their biggest side hustle is kidnappings. Stealing girls and boys from their homes and then holding them for ransom–or worse, selling them outright into the smuggling cartels. They make a shitload of money doing it, and it’s the reason I got out, all those years ago.

So it doesn’t take as much translation as I’d like to figure out what’s going on here.

They’ve got a girl. She’s worth a lot of money and they need someone to watch after her. And she is, for whatever reason, in Wood.

At an address I’ve been suspicious of for a very long time.

I try to put the phone away. Try to clear out of the message and forget that it exists. After all, I’m not part of the syndicate anymore. I haven’t been for a long time, and that means I can very easily ignore this message and go about my life. Help Mars fix up this old truck and maybe get him to look at the brakes on my bike, which haven’t been acting right lately.

I can forget this girl even exists.

Except I know I can’t.

I know damn well that I can’t do anything of the sort.

Because I know what happens to girls caught in the syndicate’s grasp, and where she’s going to end up. And what’s worse; I know that if I don’t do anything about this, it’ll bother for me for the rest of my fucking life.

I’ll spend the rest of my days hating myself for not having saved her when I had such a clear chance.

“God dammit,” I mutter, shoving the tool chest one more time and then whirling toward my bike. The old girl is sitting against the side of the garage, midnight black except for set of scratched-up bronze pipes–the only ones I could find when I was only fourteen and trying to build a bike out of a beat-up frame and barely running engine. She’s glowing softly in the dim lighting, though, crouched like she’s waiting for some fucking action.

Like she already knows what’s up, and is anxious to get the fuck on the road.

Fucking dying to go out and act the hero. Even my bike is against me.

“Where the fuck are you going?” Mars shouts from behind me. “Orion! We’re not done here!”

I don’t answer him, though. I walk to my bike, throw a leg over, and get her started. This girl, whatever’s going on at that address, doesn’t have anything to do with Mars or his garage or his gang.

Hell, she doesn’t have anything to do with me, either.

Except the biting, highly inconvenient thought that I know she’s here, and that if I don’t answer this call and make sure she’s safe, someone else will show up.

And bad things will happen to her.

I’m not a fucking hero, I tell myself as I skid out of the garage and into the night.

So why the fuck am I tearing through Wood, probably waking half the town with the sound of my bike, trying to get to the girl before anyone else answers that call?

Orion

Icut the bike’s engine when I’m still two blocks away from the address in the text and leave it parked up against what passes for a curb in this part of town. I’m not really even in town anymore, honestly, but on the outskirts, where Main Street shoots up the mountain, still paved, and all other roads turn to dirt and meander off on their own. The train tracks run alongside the town for a moment here, surrounded by warning signs to keep people off them, but aside from that the area is largely deserted. No shops here, no houses, and even the trees are sparse.

Ahead of me, though, in about 500 yards, the forest picks up, dense and darkly thick like it’s trying to retake the land the town has stolen from it. I know how that forest looks during the day, filled with conifers and evergreens stretching their branches up toward the sky, each of them seeking to outpace the others as it reaches toward the heavens. This part of the forest is filled with birds, rabbits, and foxes, wind blowing through it now in the late spring and carrying the scent of wildflowers and freshly warmed sap. It’s a gorgeous, gentle version of the woods that become more feral and dense further away from town.

Right now, though, in the dark of a moonless night, the terrain looks dark and forbidding.

But for three lights on in a compound that used to be deserted and is now very much occupied.

I slip onto the property and stop behind the first tree I come across, then stare at the main house and start collecting as much information as I can.

This property used to belong to someone who was only in town during the summer months. They built a full complex, complete with a main house and several outbuildings, and brought their entire family up in June, then stayed until August or September. They were here when Mars first brought me up the mountain, and I remember being absolutely fascinated with someone having enough money to own an entire house that they only used for a couple of months a year.