by Angel Lawson
“So you’re going to confront a pimp? Yeah, that does sound risky.”
“Ugh, I keep telling you. S-p-y-i-n-g. Just spying. It’s just the park we’re going to is kind of in a dangerous part of town.”
“Well, whatever. Just let me know what to look out for.” Oliver reached under his jacket. “I came prepared.”
“What are those?”
“Binoculars. I figured we may need them.”
“You didn’t even know what we were doing, but you brought binoculars anyway?”
He shrugged and began cleaning the glass with a small, white cloth. “I had a hunch. Mostly because you’re so freaking nosy.”
Ari ignored him and drove across town toward Glory Park. The park itself sprawled over several miles. Biking and running trails crisscrossed the area, and a popular dog park used a large fenced-in section. Ari drove past the well-lit areas toward the section with the basketball courts. This was the only part of the park that was used after dark.
“Do you think they’ll be out tonight? The weather is miserable,” Oliver asked when he realized where they were headed
“The courts are covered. Half the people out here are doing business. They don’t care about the rain.”
Sure enough, the basketball courts were hopping. “So we just sit here?” Oliver asked. He double-checked the door lock.
“For now. I just want to get an idea of what’s going on. And to see if my girls are telling me the truth.”
They sat in silence for a couple of minutes. Oliver broke the quiet. “See anything?”
“Honestly? Not much. I think a couple of those boys actually playing basketball come to my office but they’re not on my caseload. There aren’t many girls out tonight, though, and I haven’t seen Shanna or Hope. But that car has been idling over there for a while.” Two or three guys had walked over to the car’s window since they’d been here.
Oliver nodded. “I noticed that, too. Drug dealer?”
“Possibly. Devon said Shanna’s sugar daddy drove a black car.”
“That one looks gray to me.”
“Me, too,” she admitted.
Ari searched the park again and frowned. “Do you see that guy over there? Behind the goalpost, in the blue sweatshirt? What is he doing?”
“No idea. But I noticed another guy up in the bleachers sitting by himself.” Oliver lifted his binoculars and adjusted the view. “Okay, so there’s a guy behind the goalpost, one on the bleachers and two others lurking around the edges. Who are these guys?”
Ari squinted, trying to see better. “Hand me those binoculars,” she said, holding out her hand. Ari held them to her eyes and searched for the men Oliver had seen. She spotted them all, including one more perched on top of a playground set. “Hold on,” she said. “How do you make this bigger? More magnified?”
Oliver spun the wheel that sat at the bridge of her nose with his thumb. “Try that.”
Ari looked through the binoculars and said, “Holy crud. I know that guy.” She looked at the other men closely and then gave the binoculars back to Oliver. “Look. Tell me who you see.”
He only looked for a second, passing over each person. He dropped the binoculars in his lap and stared at Ari. “Those are the guys from the GYC. From the fights! What are they doing here?” Boyd sat on top of the play set, which meant this was an approved outing.
“I don’t know. Oscar’s funeral was today. Seems a little inappropriate, right?”
“Maybe they just wanted to blow off some steam. They like to do all that marital arts stuff. Maybe they’re waiting for the playground to clear out. They’re keeping their distance.”
Ari grabbed the binoculars again and studied the men. Boyd sat on the playground. The other men weren’t really men, but boys. She slowly searched the area. If Boyd was there, then Davis could have been, too.
“Look,” Ari said. One of the GYC boys approached a group of guys and the few girls loitering around the edge of the covered court. “What do you think they’re saying?”
“I don’t know, but those guys are leaving.” All the men shuffled out the park entrance and down the street. “Those girls look pissed,” Oliver said. “I think they just lost their dates.”
“What the heck?” Ari said. The GYC kid waved the girls over, and with one glance in the direction of the idling car, it backed up and drove out of the park. When Ari looked again, the girls were gone and so were all the GYC guys. Except Boyd, who’d stood from his crouched position on the play set. “That was totally mob like. He looks at them and they just leave?”
“What’s he doing now?” Oliver asked, but Boyd answered the question himself when he leaped from his perch fifteen feet away to a high stone wall surrounding the basketball courts. “Um…wow.”
“I know,” Ari said, taking one last look for Davis. He wasn’t there, though. But someone told that kid to approach those girls. And someone gave that group the power to monitor and remove a whole group of kids and a possible drug dealer with one look.
Increasingly, Ari suspected she knew whom.
* * *
“Okay, so that last part? Not so risky,” Oliver said. “But this? This seems dumb. I mean you suspect this guy is kidnapping teenage girls. So you what? Go straight to his house?”
“I don’t think he’s kidnapping girls. Something’s weird and he’s first on my list of subjects. And technically this isn’t a house.”
“Nice. This place is huge! He could have a whole brothel in that place and no one would know,” sarcasm evident in his voice.
“Which is why I have to check it out.”
“Ari,” Oliver said in a serious tone. “I love you. And I know you like to push the limits. But this is idiotic. I can’t let you go in there.”
Ari looked at her roommate and best friend and gave him a hug across the center console of the car. “Oliver, I love you, too.” She unlatched her seatbelt and opened the door. “Call the police if I’m not home by morning.”
Oliver hopped out of the passenger seat and chased her down. Ari had just reached the GYC’s door when it swung open. Davis stood in the middle of the opening with a confused expression on his face. “What’s going on?”
“We need to talk,” Ari said. “Oliver is convinced you may slaughter me or something. Will you promise not to do that?”
They both looked at Oliver with his set jaw and puffed out his chest. Impressive, but there was no way he could take Davis in a fight. Davis gave Oliver one of those dude nods. “I’ll get her home safely.”
“See?” Ari said.
Oliver sighed. “Fine. But don’t come crying to me when you’re working on Stewart Street, okay?” He turned in defeat and got in his car. Ari wasn’t sure if he’d really just go home. She suspected he’d probably run straight to Detective Morgan.
“I’ll text you in an hour, okay?” she yelled but he’d slammed the door and started the car. Ari followed Davis into the building and he locked the door behind her, reminding her that Oliver might be right. There could be a brothel under the building. She just needed to find it.
Ari followed Davis past the lobby. He turned unexpectedly away from his office and pushed open a door leading to a different stairwell than she’d used before. She hesitated at the bottom of the stairs. “Does this lead to your secret brothel by chance?” Ari asked.
“What?” he asked.
“Never mind.”
“This leads to my apartment, where, for the record, I do not take prostitutes.”
Like he has to pay for sex, Ari thought. She relented and following him up the stairs. She focused on his tight green shirt and the way she could see the taut muscles down his back. Ari shook her head. That was not what she was there for. She had questions and needed answers.
Even though Ari thought the building only had two levels, they walked up a third. At the top, Davis stopped and entered a series of numbers into a touch pad next to a heavy wood door. He glanced back. “I have the best hopes for those kids,
” he said. “But I don’t trust them near my stuff. Or anyone else, really.”
He held open the door and Ari walked through. She didn’t know what to expect, but what she saw wasn’t it. Dark hardwood covered the floor, stretching to all four corners of what looked like a studio apartment. The ceiling slanted upwards, peaking over a huge wall of windows. The space was meticulous. Gleaming stainless steel shone from the kitchen. Cool slate lined the fireplace. Ari eyed the rich, blood-red rug in the living area and wondered if it was an antique. The place reeked of money, something she never assumed Davis had.
From the door, she could see the twinkling lights of Glory City. The opposite wall held another long row of curtains. Davis said, “There are windows behind the curtains that look over the gym. I can keep an eye on things from here.”
“This is pretty amazing, Davis.”
“It took me a long time to get it like this but, yeah, it’s nearly how I want it.”
She surveyed the room again and noticed a half wall obscured what Ari assumed was Davis’s bed, offering a little privacy. The idea sparked warring butterflies in her stomach. Davis walked over to the leather couch near the fireplace and said, “So this is where things get complicated, right?”
Ari sat down and he followed. “Yeah, I think so. I saw your guys down at the park tonight.”
“The boys go down there when they can and try to keep the park safe.”
“Safe?”
“Yeah, everyone in town knows them. Or of them. They’re under instruction to keep things pretty calm or call the police if necessary. Their presence is enough to keep a lot of the troublemakers away.”
“Like scaring off drug dealers?” she asked.
He nodded. “Those bastards are like cockroaches. Turn on the light and they scatter, but they’re never really gone. They’re also not nearly as brave as you would think. They’re scared of trouble. They can’t make money from prison.”
His explanation made sense. Sort of. “While we were down there, I noticed they left with a couple of young girls.”
“Oh.” His eyes lit up in recognition. “The brothel comment. I’m not running a brothel.”
“I never thought you were,” she lied.
“They gave those girls a safe escort home.” He noticed her skepticism. “I’m serious. Boyd had supervisor duty tonight. They go in the van and if necessary, give any of the kids a ride home that need one.”
“Is that what happened that night I was here? When Peter and the others came back with the hurt boy? He didn’t really fall, did he?”
“No. He got into it with a couple of thugs.”
Ari stared at Davis, long and hard. His eyes looked so dark in the shadowy room. Finally she whispered, “And Oscar? Were you guys out keeping everyone safe that night, too?”
“Oscar was lured out and murdered by my brother. I already told you that.” His reply came out stiff and guarded.
She reached for his hand. “Since the first time I came here, I’ve known that something was off. That this was more than just a sports-centered residential program for troubled youth. What’s really going on here?”
“There’s nothing going on here, Ari. I’m teaching these boys to be careful and protective of their city. My father taught me the same thing. It was the foundation of our lessons here. Still is.”
“You’re using them to fight your battles. Like little soldiers.”
He pulled his hand away from hers and laughed. “They aren’t my soldiers. I’m not running an army here.”
“Davis, you train a group of specifically picked boys to fight. Masterfully. You teach them to take care of the city, defending the helpless girls down at the park and pushing drug dealers out of public places. Even fighting against the Vigilante—or his copycat. Don’t tell me they aren’t some kind of army. And that you’re not in charge.”
He didn’t respond. Ari couldn’t tell if that meant she was right or, if he was too angry to react. She didn’t plan to wait around to find out. Standing, she turned to leave, but Davis grabbed her by the shoulder, pulling her back to face him. They were face-to-face and the anguish Davis felt rolled off his body in waves.
“Don’t hurt me,” Ari said quietly.
He shook his head and cupped her face in his hand. “I’d never hurt you. Ever.”
The sincerity of his words cut through her heart. He reached down and pulled up the sleeve of his shirt revealing his forearm.
“I’ve spent the last several months protecting you.” Lifting his hand, he unlaced the leather band he wore around his wrist. “It’s not an easy job.” Ari took his hand in her own and stared at the tattoo on his wrist, remembering the first time she’d seen it uncovered. The feeling of panic engulfed her—like it had that day in the hardware store.
Before she could react, Davis said, “I told you my mother died when I was thirteen. I didn’t explain how. Everything about her death changed my life.”
Ari knew the feeling. Her own life had been rocked the day her parents had died. “How?” she asked.
“She owned a small boutique downtown. The first few years, my father would meet her every night and pick her up from work, but over time, they got slack, and comfortable. I had baseball practice or football games and my dad would take me when she was at work. The night she died, I begged him to go pick her up. I had a feeling—no, it was more than a feeling. A sense of urgency to be with her. He and I argued and in the end I ran out, riding my bike down to the shop. When I got there, I found her bleeding on the street. She’d been murdered locking the front door.”
Ari bushed a tear away and squeezed his hand. “I’m so sorry.”
“My father developed an obsession with the fact that I ‘felt’ something that day. He hounded me and questioned me over and over again. I had no explanation. It was just a feeling, buried deep in my gut. But what he didn’t know was it wasn’t the first time I’d had that feeling. I had it the day my school bus was rammed by an eighteen-wheeler on the way to school. The urgency was so intense that I faked being sick to stay home.
“After my mother’s death, my father established a new motto. Vigilance. All the time. Never let your guard down, and prepare. And never, ever ignore your gut. He knew my sense of timing wasn’t random luck. It was a gift I had to cultivate. And if I had a gift like this, then others did, too.”
Davis walked over to the wall of curtains and pushed them back enough to see the gym below. “He watched me closely, and once he started the gym, he searched for signs in the other kids that came in. Who was exceptionally fast or had unusual strength. The first one he found was my brother. His skill wasn’t physical, though. His power came from his mind. Manipulative. He could charm the skin off a snake.”
“But your dad thought he was good?” Ari interrupted.
“He thought he could help him. My dad built this because he wanted to make sure we were ready and that the boys of the city weren’t using their anger for evil purposes. Like Antonio, the kid that shot at you. He had potential, but he squandered it.”
Ari stood next to him as he looked out over the darkened gym. “So you knew I needed your help that day at the hardware store?”
“I knew.”
“How did you know my name?”
He smiled. “I’d seen you around juvenile court. Judge Hatcher is a close friend. People talk about you and the work you do with the kids. It’s my business to know what’s going on in Glory City.”
Ari laughed. “People talk about me?”
“They do. You’ve invested your heart in these kids and people have noticed. I’m wondering if you may have a gift as well.”
“Like your instinct thing?” she asked. He nodded. She ran her thumb over the inked characters. “What does this mean?”
“Vigilance. We got them after my father died. To remind us to be careful with who we let enter our safety zone. We’ll never do that again.”
“We?” she pushed.
“Peter, Boyd, and the others. They�
�re all my brothers. My father raised us and we’ll raise the next generation.”
Ari considered the implication. “So they all have gifts like you do?”
“Yes.” Davis pushed the hair off of Ari’s face, trailing his fingers down her neck. His gentle touch lit a flare in her chest. “I barely got to you that day. There’s no way you would have left that store alive if Jace had seen you.”
“I thought you were him. Sorry I went so crazy.”
“Yeah, I know. You took a chunk out of my hand.” He laughed. “But I’m glad. Always fight, Ari. Even if you think you can’t win.”
Ari looked around the apartment. “Since it’s not a brothel, I guess a better description would be Bat Cave?”
“It’s on the third floor. How can it be a cave?”
“Lair?”
He shook his head. “I’m not a superhero, you know. No tights. No cape.”
“Uh huh,” she said. Davis moved one hand just under her ear while the other pressed against her hip. Ari shifted her feet and bit down on her lip, playing shy. “You know, I never got to thank you for saving me.”
He raised his eyebrow. “You thanked me. Several times over.”
Fisting his shirt in her hand and pulling him close she said, “I disagree.”
* * *
Ari led Davis behind the partitioned wall. His bedroom was small, barely bigger than the bed. Her fingers found the hem of his shirt and pushed it upward, revealing his hard, muscled stomach. She ran her hands over his chest while he unbuttoned her shirt, shivering when his fingers met her skin. “God, you’re perfect,” she said like she’d been wanting to for weeks.
Davis pushed her shirt over her shoulders and it fell to the floor. He ran his thumbs over the top of her breasts, smoothing her lace-edged bra. “Yeah, I could say the same thing.”
Eager, she brought her mouth to his and pressed her body forward until he fell back on the bed. Ari unbuttoned his jeans and tugged them off, laughing as he struggled to kick them to the ground. She removed her own and when she looked back up, she asked, “Commando?” with a lifted eyebrow.