Page 35 of The Masked King

“Where to?” The driver is watching me in the rearview mirror.

I’m about to give him my address when I remember I’m Kate Glasgow. “East two-twenty-fifth.” I need to be in my own bed tonight, but I can jog home from there once the coast is clear; it’ll give me a chance to clear my head, and I’ve got a spare key hidden in a safe place.

The car interior smells like polish and leather. I sink back into the seat when I catch a glimpse of movement through the passenger window, down a narrow alleyway at the back of the club. Leaning forward, I press my forehead against the glass and squint into the darkness as a guy dressed all in black, regular bodyguard uniform, shoves someone into the opposite wall.

I can’t make out their faces, and their dark clothes blend in with the shadows, but I blink, and I’m certain only one man is there when I look again. Which means there’s another way into the building, a way that I didn’t know about.

The next day, I get a taxi to drop me off a couple of blocks away from the club. The cost is covered by expenses; they’re not limitless, but I’ve not taken advantage of it until now, so I figure I’ve earned a free ride.

If anyone sees me, I’m here to collect my purse and keys… and find out if I still have a job.

Finding the alleyway at the rear of the building is easy. It must never see daylight because the ground is damp and slimy, green mold climbing up the outside of the buildings on either side of the narrow walkway. This is the part of the city that the wealthy residents never consider, the service entrances, the refuse dumpsters, the external walls that get overlooked because they’re invisible to the people who matter.

The first door is the exit I usually take at the end of a shift—where the bodyguard opens the door, guides me towards the front of the building, and blocks the other end of the alleyway with his bulky frame.

Why?

What don’t they want the workers to see?

The building opposite is almost an exact replica, the only difference, the lights are on inside. I keep walking, gasping when something slithers across my boot. I probably disturbed a rat. I tell myself that’s all it was, and it was more scared of me than I was of it. It’s what my mom always used to say if I ever found a spider in my room.

“Look at the size of you, Demi. You think that poor spider is going to take you on?”

Pulse racing, I keep moving. Last night, peering through the tinted passenger window of the car, it didn’t seem like they were this far down the alley. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe they came out of the regular exit, and my vision distorted the distance.

Then I reach the second door.

There’s nothing written on it, no number, no FIRE EXIT sign although it’s clearly heavier than a regular door, no glass panel. No handle either, so it’s one-way traffic only. I try pushing it, and nothing happens, not that I expected it to. I stand back and peer at the façade, trying to place its location within the building, but every room I have access to has no windows, and now I see that they’re all blacked out.

It’s almost as if they’ve built false walls inside these walls to deliberately keep visitors and workers disoriented. Whatever is really going inside this building, the people at the top are determined to remain anonymous.

A car pulls up at the end of the alley through which I entered. It sits there, engine idling, tinted windows hiding the occupants, just like the car that gave me a ride home the night before. Waiting for someone.

Shit!

I turn around and walk in the opposite direction, keeping my pace steady. If they think about it logically, there’s a fifty-fifty chance that I came out of the next building at the end of my shift and am simply minding my own business.

At least that’s what I tell myself until I turn the corner at the far end and start sprinting around the block to get back in time to see whoever climbs into the back seat.

Pedestrians dodge out of my way.

A German shepherd barks at me from the back of a parked truck.

I round the last corner in time to see three men climbing into the parked vehicle. All three are wearing black suits, but one appears to be older than the others, with graying hair and a paunch giving the jacket a padded appearance.

I’m so focused on the older man, wondering if he’s the top gun, that I don’t see the poodle rocking the middle of the sidewalk in a diamond-studded collar until it’s too late. I try to hurdle it, arms flailing, and stumble the next few steps, twisting my ankle and narrowly missing knocking myself out on a lamppost. My shoulder takes the brunt of the collision, and I yelp in pain.

But the car is on the move, and I can’t let it go without taking the license plate number. Limping, I jog the next few steps, pain shooting up my leg and flaring inside my skull, as the car merges with the traffic and out of sight.

I didn’t get the numbers, but from what I saw, it appeared to be an international plate with some kind of flag in the corner and a Mercedes badge attached to the trunk.

It isn’t much to go on, but it’s a start.

9

ENZO

“Back again?” The woman on the door of JADED doesn’t even try to hide her amusement now. “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?”