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“It’s ok,” Jem murmured. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
He snapped photos of the cages. As the initial mixture of surprise and fright faded, he got a clearer look at the van’s contents. The cages were stacked along the driver’s side of the van’s cargo compartment, and they’d clearly been bolted to the metal floor. That was interesting, since it suggested this wasn’t a one-time operation.
Cardboard boxes filled the rest of the van. Jem opened the first one and found bottles—small plastic ones, the kind vitamins and supplements came in. Printed labels covered each bottle, but something about them struck him as unprofessional. The font was part of it. And the layout. And the quality of the print job. Jem hadn’t ever run that big of a game before, nothing on a scale that involved manufacturing, but he recognized shit when he saw it, and he was looking at shit. He ignored what he took for Chinese characters and took his time with the English words, making sure he got them right. Powdered rhino horn. Tiger bone. Pangolin scales. One vial with a sealed top had something liquid inside it, and Jem had no desire to open it and discover what leopard bone wine smelled like. He would lie, he decided, if Tean ever asked him how long he looked at the dried tiger penis, but he couldn’t help himself: he stuffed the plastic packet in his back pocket.
In the next section of boxes, he found drugs. They were still in prescription vials with the childproof tops, still with the labels on them. He found Cymbalta and Valium and Viagra. He found Vicodin and Percocet. He found Xanax, prescribed to Sally English, and when the bottle rattled, he shoved it in his back pocket.
The third box held small plastic totes, and when Jem opened these, he found IDs. State-issued non-driver IDs. Driver’s licenses. Social Security cards. Passports. Most of the passports, Jem noticed, were foreign. Lots from Cambodia, Thailand, Laos.
Another, smaller box, held jewelry: chains, rings, necklaces.
Part of his brain, the part that had kept him alive this long, the part that was always alert, sent up a ding, and Jem wrestled his attention away from the IDs. It took him a moment to understand what had set off his internal alarm: silence. The shouts from the front of the club had died down. Any minute now, DeVoy would be coming back.
Jem grabbed a few of the IDs and a handful of the jewelry, and he pocketed all of it as he slid out of the van. His heart was hammering now, and he could smell the flop sweat building on his body. He eased the door shut. One of the birds squawked indignantly, and it sent an electric jolt through Jem. He moved around to the back of the van to snap a photo of the license plate, but it was covered in mud. He’d used that trick a few times himself. Grimacing, Jem snapped a photo anyway—at least you could tell it was a Missouri plate.
As Jem stood, a key rattled in the door that led into the club. Then it opened.
Jem darted behind the van, into a well of deeper shadow. He pressed up against the metal skin of the building. His legs were shaking, and it took all his focus to keep himself still, to keep the tremors in his body from working their way into that thin sheet of corrugated steel.
Voices moved into the garage.
“—came back here during the fight,” a man was saying. His voice was hard, but he sounded young to Jem. “I saw him.”
“And I’m telling you, I didn’t see anything.” That was DeVoy. “I was smoking. Nobody came out this way.”
“What is your fucking van doing in the fucking garage?”
“Nothing, man! I needed a place to park.”
The silence that came after was hot and snarled. And then, in a different voice, the man said, “You want to tell me what kind of dumb shit you’re pulling?”
“Nothing!” DeVoy’s laugh rippled with nerves. “I swear to God!”
The silence lasted longer that time. DeVoy’s breathing was a little too fast.
“You sure about that? Because this is not the place to do dumb shit. This is a legitimate fucking business. Do you understand that?”
“Come on, man! I fucking told you—”
The sound of the blow was soft and stinging—a slap, Jem guessed. His legs were shaking harder, and sweat dripped into his eyes, stinging. He wiped his face on his shirt. The corrugated steel was cool and flexed restlessly at his back.
“Get it out of here,” that hard, young voice said. “And don’t bring your shit around here again.”
Footsteps clipped toward the club again, but Jem barely heard them. The panicked part of his mind played out DeVoy’s route to the driver’s seat of the van: he’d walk around the back of the van and run right into Jem. Jem eased himself up from the steel panel, wincing as the metal relaxed back into its original shape, at the slight sound of release. He had to get out in front of the van, had to get out of the garage—
The phone in his hand buzzed, and in the silence, the sound was unmistakable.
“What—” DeVoy began.
Steps slapped the concrete, racing toward Jem. The owner of that other voice didn’t waste any time, it seemed.
After an instant of shock, Jem was already running. That was what you did when your cover was blown. He twisted sideways to clear the gap between the van and the roll-up door’s track, and then he was out in the night air, with the humidity and the gnats and the stink of garbage from an overflowing dumpster and the skunkiness of weed. Security lights cut wedges out of the darkness, making patches of gravel incandescent. The loose stone crunched under foot; with every stride, it shifted and slid, threatening to pitch him face first onto the ground.
Chips of stone sprayed into the air, ahead of Jem, inches to his left. The boom of the gunshot came a moment later, thunderous in the silence.
At the corner of the building, Jem skidded into a turn. In front of the club, many of the vehicles were gone—a consequence of the brawl, Jem guessed. A big guy with a beard was holding the door of a truck, helping a woman with batwing arms into her seat. They were both staring, their attention obviously drawn by the gunshot.
Another shot cracked the air behind Jem.
