Page 9
He’s true to his word.
The track sits behind the casino, hidden from street view, but Blue cuts off Mariposa two blocks early and sweeps us past warehouses to the dedicated track lot, where there are no cars and half the lamps are out. A chained-off ticket window is dark, the marquee bragging about LIVE RACES FRI THRU SUN as we park our bikes by the entrance and easily vault the low fence.
It’s eerie, quiet, ghostly, and a mess, with scattered betting slips lacquered to the ground by spilled beer and cigarettes dotting the cinders of the path and standing room as we crunch our way in. The track itself is just a giant sand oval, with white railings blocking off an infield of gray-looking grass. Behind it, three stories of concrete grandstand, bleachers stepping down under a sagging roof, and a glassed-in top level: black windows that don’t even reflect the sodium lamps.
And then, beyond the back wall, the casino itself. Windows glowing golden, spotlights wheeling, promising good times and great fortunes.
I shiver and don’t look.
“Creepy,” Fox murmurs.
“What did you expect?” Kit mutters back. “That the ritual animal abusers were going to tidy up after themselves?”
“Shut up.”
Blue and I say it at the same time.
“Sorry,” I add—by myself. A little breeze puffs over the field in the center of the track, and suddenly, it’s too quiet, I’m standing too still, not doing enough. I jump forward into a jog, whipping my head side to side and looking around under bleachers, next to tables. “Wendy? Wendy?”
Where would she go? I think. Inside, maybe? I glance at the side wall of the grandstand, where a door has STAFF ONLY stenciled across its face, and rush for it, but no luck—locked.
“Fuck,” I spit, giving the door a kick before rounding the corner. “Wendy?”
Behind me, I hear footsteps.
“Tink. Wait up.” Blue. “Tink.”
I slow down, heart lurching, and let him catch up.
“Where would she go?” I say. “Where would she go? To the dogs, maybe?”
When I glance at his face, his eyes are all shadow, the harsh light of the lamps cutting across his features like a blade.
“Around here,” he says, nodding to indicate. “There’s an alcove—”
He leads me under the grandstand, through a concrete tunnel that smells like wet dog and bleach, and out into a kennel yard of numbered steel doors. We’re closer to the casino now, in the back of the yard where a footpath connects the two. The yard dead-ends in a loading apron strewn with flattened boxes and crates, two green dumpsters shoved against the building.
Blue slows.
His eyes go to the space between the dumpsters, where a few crates are stacked in a neat, deliberate wall. Behind them, there’s a strip of packed dirt, enough space to make a good hiding place, I realize, and my heart leaps—but it’s empty.
“Shit,” I whisper. Behind us, boots scuff on concrete: Fox and Kit, catching up.
“Did you see that?” Kit pants, nodding forward. “Lights.”
“Lights?” Blue says. “Like—”
“Like headlights,” Fox says. “Around the corn—”
I don’t wait for him to finish the sentence. I jump, run past the dumpsters and loading bay toward the service corridor that connects the back of the track to the back of the casino. Halfway down, a white van has nosed in beside the fence, headlights still on, throwing a wedge of light across the concrete. Past it, set into the grandstand’s back wall, is another door marked CLUB LEVEL: steel, with a keypad blinking red beside the frame, sheltered by a little awning with stripes faded almost to nothing.
And two men stand just beside it.
Guys. Men. Two of them, grubby work clothes, a beat-up white van parked behind them by the fence. Maintenance, or trying to look like it—doesn’t matter—talking in low voices about nothing I want to know about. I’m about to turn on my heel and keep looking when I hear it.
“No.” Another voice. Smaller. Girlish.
And then, between the bigger man’s boots, I catch a flash of thin, sandy-brown fur-covered leg, see the flash of a tail. Which means—
