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Angel dressed, shivering in spite of the hot, humid air. She was thirsty as fuck, and hungry, but the most important thing was to get dressed and blend in.
Blend in? She burst out with a whoop of laughter. With a hand clapped over her mouth she controlled herself.Chill.
But the idea was funny, because this place—WHERE?—was full of nothing but pale Asian people. Angel was like the opposite of that. With her weave in a mess, wearing them funny pajamas, no shoes and no bra, she would stick out like a fly in the buttermilk.
She guessed this wasn’t L.A. The air was different. Her nose twitched. She craned her neck around the side of the two buildings she’d crammed herself between. Lots and lots of lights, movement, people…And nothing familiar. Angel shivered, but shoved aside the panic that wanted to come bursting up to the surface.Don’t panic. Panic kills.
Think, think. Now where did they have buildings like that? Holding in her trembling breath, she racked her brains for anything familiar. There were signs in a foreign language. Chinese? Maybe it was New York. Maybe she was in Chinatown. But Angel knew New York couldn’t bethatclean. Her bare toes wiggled in the overgrown moss; she shivered.I’m not in America no more. So where am I?
Fuck it. She wasn’t gonna panic.
She wasn’t.
Please, God,she prayed.Help me!
When she opened her eyes, she saw something leaning against the side of a nearby building.
A bicycle.
It was red, shiny and new. Someone had just parked it there. Not even locked it to anything.
Thank you, God!
The alleyway darkened.
Angel screamed and dragged the bike off the wall, but it was too late. Two giants pinned her in from both ends of the alley. No escape, but she tried. She couldn’t let them throw her in that room again…Now way, she couldn’t, she couldn’t…
They dragged her off the bike. Shouting to each other in their language they wrestled her against the wall and cuffed her arms together. These men, unlike the guard in the hotel/brothel, wore suits. And nice shoes. She screamed her head off, kicked and wriggled and did everything to throw them off, but it was no use— they were so much stronger. Very easily they dragged her from the hiding place into the bright midday sun. The streets were empty, or pretending to be. She knew how that game played. Nobody would help her.
The men bundledAngel into the back of a black car. Instead of taking her back to the brothel, the men drove deep into another part of the city. Here the buildings were taller and shinier, newly rising from the low-sunk houses of the hood she had been kept in. She must be in the business district. This was where the big boys stayed.
Is this Japan or some shit?She passed a billboard for an American movie—Preacher Man— but the writing was all in that funny alphabet. Now there could be no doubt she was not in Los Angeles, or even in America.
The car drove deeper into the maze of skyscrapers. Some were so tall she had to crane her neck into the window to see the tops— many disappeared into the white mist above. She glanced at her captors, whose shiny black hair was cut low and tight. They’re shiny new watches peeking from the cuffs of their very-very white shirts. They wore dark sunglasses.
The car was a Honda SUV, but none Angel had ever seen before. Some new fancy Asian model…
Money.
Angel guessed they were taking her to the Boss. The man with the cold eyes who had beaten her while she lay helpless in the bed.
She could smell her own fear.
“Aye,” she said. “Don’t y’all want to turn the AC on?”
They ignored her.
Eventually they pulled into a dark underground garage. Angel was too tired and scared to fight— she had the feeling now they wouldn’t kill her. Why, she had no idea.
They went inside an elevator. The guard hit the button for the twenty-third story.
Angel shut her eyes as the elevator rocketed towards the sky.Look on the bright side. They would take you to a basement if they wanted to kill you, not way up that way. Unless they want to push me out of a window…
Her eyes flung open when the elevator hissed smoothly to a stop. Her legs were shaky as hell; she had pictured falling to her death the whole way up. Both men put their big iron-hard hands on her arms. They marched her down a hallway with a cold linoleum floor…or was itglass? Windows showed Angel a tiny sprawling view of the city. The place that was so real just minutes ago, full of sounds and smells and wet misty rain-taste, was now shrunk to the size of a tiny insect hive.
The men growled at her. Another door opened. Angel stumbled inside, and came face to face withhim.
He satbehind a large black desk. Today he wore a black suit, but the jacket hung on his chair and he had rolled up the cuffs and unbuttoned the front. More casual than the men dragging Angel into the room, which made his rank above them more obvious. The man pointed to a chair in front of it. Angel sat. He told the suits to leave. They left. Now Angel and the evil man were alone. He toyed with an expensive-looking fountain pen. On the desk in front of him was a blank sheet of paper, but it was in their little Asian writing. Shoot.
