Gun Games - Faye Kellerman [102]
“I’m on the . . .” Gabe was wiped out and winded. “I’m on a bus . . . on . . . God, I don’t even know where I am. Hold on . . . let me read a street sign.” He gave Decker the road and read off an address. “Can you please come get us?”
Us?
“I’m on my way.” Decker had just started to pull into the station house driveway. He put the car in reverse and drove out of the parking lot. “Are you in physical danger right now?”
“Maybe.”
Decker placed the red light on the roof of the car and turned on the siren. “How imminent?”
“I dunno. I think we’re okay right now.” He heard the siren in the background. Never had a G-sharp slide sounded so good. “Where should we meet up?”
“You stay on the bus and I’ll catch up to you. I’m about five minutes away. Stay on the phone, okay?”
“Yeah. I’m still here.”
Decker could hear muted conversation—clipped words and a lot of breathing. Even with the siren and lights, it took him a little longer to reach the bus because of morning traffic. He said, “I’m right behind you.” He turned off the siren. “Get off at the next stop.”
“Okay.”
The big behemoth chugged away for several blocks until it pulled up to a bus bench filled with working people. Decker got out of the unmarked, stood by the passenger door, and waited. Before long two figures emerged, holding hands.
Gabe absolutely towered over her.
When he and the girl got close enough, Decker saw that her eyes were red and swollen, and she looked a lot younger than the seventeen-year-old girl that Gabe claimed to have been seeing.
She also looked familiar.
And then Decker placed her: the Persian girl at the deli, not the one who was flirting with Gabe, but the youngest one who looked about ten and supposedly sang opera. And suddenly everything fit together. He opened the back door and the two of them slid inside. She was trembling and burst into tears as soon as she clicked on her seat belt. Gabe was shaking. He looked pale and wan.
“What happened?” Decker asked.
The two kids began talking at the same time. Gabe was breathless: the girl was speaking through sobs and tears.
He said, “I think a group of thugs kidnapped her—”
She wailed out, “They said . . . they were going to . . . rape me—”
“I found her phone and her watch on the ground and knew something was wrong—”
“And kill me—”
“I caught up to them and they had a gun on her and then some fucker pulled a gun on me.”
“They threatened me with . . . horrible, wretched things.” She was crying so hard, she was hard to understand. “And the girls . . . they were worse than the boys!”
Gabe panted out, “I got the gun away from that dude . . . and then I wound up with two guns . . . it’s all kinda blurry.”
“Gabe saved my life—”
“How’d I get two guns again?” Gabe said to himself.
“Hold on, hold on, hold on,” Decker said. “One at a time. Do you know who these people were?”
“No!” Yasmine cried out. “I’ve never seen any of them in my life!”
“The leader is a dude named Dylan,” Gabe said.
“Dylan?” Decker repeated. His heart did a little leap.
“Yeah, Dylan. I met him once before about four months ago. He’s a real asshole and he loves guns.”
“How do you know him?” Decker asked.
“I don’t know him, just met him once. It’s a long story.”
Yasmine became wide-eyed. “You know, I think I saw the blond girl once before.”
“You did?” Gabe asked.
“Yeah, at Coffee Bean. She was . . . staring at me.”
“When was this?” Gabe asked her.
“About two months ago. She was wearing Christian Louboutin boots.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“That a girl was staring at me and giving me the stink-eye?”
“Oh, God,” Gabe moaned. “She probably saw us together!”
“I remember thinking, why does she hate me?”
He groaned. “This is all my fault!”
“I thought maybe she didn’t like Persians.”
“Hold on, kids. One at a time.” Decker’s heart was racing. “Does Dylan have a last name?”
“Don’t know it,” Gabe said. “I could describe him. And one of the girls was named Cameron. The blonde. She’s a real whack job. She said I raped her. I swear, Yasmine, I never even