The Mod Girls Club Read online

  "Fuck you want?" he said.

  Behind the man, a girl every bit as naked as he was bounced from the floor and disappeared from view. Her hair was long and dark, like Bailey Burke’s. And in the glow of the TV, her skin looked smooth and pale, like Bailey Burke’s.

  Before I could say anything the man looked back at the girl, and then slammed the door in my face.

  When it struck the warped frame the door bounced back, and I threw my weight at it. The chain snapped, and the man stumbled across a floor littered with furniture cushions as if they’d made a bed on the floor. He caught himself against the arm of the sofa, then lowered his head as he charged me. I sidestepped and used his momentum to launch his weight out the door. His big shoulders caught the screen, and he took the whole screendoor halfway across the lawn with him.

  "Bailey Burke!" I shouted, and the girl started to run. I started after her, and she shot up a hallway and slammed a door behind her. My heart pounded, feeling how near she was.

  I grabbed the knob and it was locked. Behind the door bare feet slapped over a hard floor, and I heard another doorknob turn. I pounded on the door. “Contract enforcement! Open up!”

  "Get away from me!" she shouted.

  I stepped back and kicked open the door onto a small bathroom. I glimpsed her bare ass, the long dark hair sticking to her sweaty back, then she was gone through a second door that must have connected to a bedroom. I lunged between the sink and tub and grabbed at her as she scrambled past a king-sized bed covered in tangled sheets in a room that smelled ripe with sex. She stumbled out the bedroom door and back into the hallway. The house was tiny, the hallway only a few feet long, and as she made a sharp turn into the kitchen she struck the corner of a stove with her hip. The collision spun her around. Her arms flung from her sides, knocking a bottle from the countertop. Ahead of her, a door off the back of the kitchen led to the backyard. She lunged for it but slipped. Her feet shot out from under her. I gasped, remembering her countermeasure, the exploding glands laced along her spine graft, and I dove after her as she fell. My hand closed around her wrist, and I jerked her back, trying to stop her fall, trying to keep her head and upper body from striking anything—counter, stovetop, floor. If she landed wrong, all I’d be able to do was call Daysn and tell her to send the containment team. Instead my knees struck the floor—hard—and the girl landed in front of me in a half kneeling, half sitting position, her bare legs tangled beneath her, and her naked ass in a puddle of beer, but her neck and shoulders off the floor and, I hoped, undamaged.

  She thanked me for saving her life with an elbow across my jaw. I saw stars and tried to shake them off while I pinioned her arms. Then, what I saw in her face stopped me cold.

  The girl's eyes were a bright, fierce green. Not the deep brown of Bailey Burke's. And in the bright light of the kitchen her complexion looked browner than it had in the living room. She wrenched her arm from my grip and covered her breasts. Before she could make a run for it, I grabbed her fine long hair, which I now saw was more black than auburn, and I raised it from the back of her neck. Because I had to be sure. Across the smooth skin between the girl’s shoulder blades was a maze of tattoos—zodiac signs, Chinese characters, and what looked like a stanza of song lyrics in Spanish. But there was no newly installed port, no delicate healing tissues, no million-dollar Marichal mod.

  She swatted my hand and screamed, "Fuck you!"

  My stomach sank.

  That was when a roar came from the next room. Tremors moved through the floor, and I spun to see the naked man charging me, looking like a bull ape about to dismember one of the young, uppity males in his tribe.

  I didn't try to get up. I stuffed my hand into my jacket, yanked the gun from my shoulder holster, and thrust it up at the big man’s face as his bare feet reached the edge of the kitchen. He stopped so abruptly, his heels slid out from under him, and he had to grab the countertop to stay upright, thundering at me, "Fuck you, motherfucker!" Blood ran down the side of his face. Slobber dangled from his lip.

  “Mendes send you?” he said. “I'll fucking kill him!"

  The girl was already on her feet. "My papi gon kill you!" she screeched at me, and I caught the Puerto Rican spike in her voice. Just before I caught her foot with my chin.

  Again tiny lights burst behind my eyes, and the girl sprinted past me. She slammed the bedroom door behind her and then advised me in Spanish of all the ways I could go fuck myself.

  I’d made a mistake, but there was no use working up an apology for these two.

  The man panted through bared teeth. "Who the fuck are you?"

  I kept the gun on him and showed him my badge again, my license with the Armed Contract Enforcement Registry. "Acer. Just like I told you."

  "Whose?" he said.

  "Marichal Labs,” I said. “Who the hell are you? This is Madison Burke's address."

  "Like hell. This is my goddamn house." His eyes scanned the countertop as if he were looking for a weapon. I wagged the barrel of the gun in case he'd forgotten it.

  But he only grabbed a dirty oven mitt from the stove and held it to the cut on the side of his head.

  "I'm John Burke, goddammit!” he said. “Maybe should ask before you broke my goddamn door down."

  I got to my feet. "Maybe you shouldn't try to hide a minor from an enforcement agent."

  He glared at me.

  "Do you know Madison Burke?" I said.

  "Of course. She's my goddamn wife."

  "Then we're getting somewhere. Is Bailey Burke your daughter?"

  "Bailey?" His face softened a little. "Why?"

  "Is that a yes?"

  "Wait a minute. Who did you say you're working for?"

  "Marichal Laboratories. In Greenwood Hills."

  The flush of anger returned to his face. "What's Bailey got to do with that Marichal place?"

  "I need you tell me where your daughter is,” I said.

  Burke’s eyes slowly widened. Then he turned and started toward the living room.

  I followed with the gun. He grabbed a pair of pants from the living room floor. I was fine with that. I’d seen enough of him to last a lifetime. But when he dug a handset from the pocket, I stopped him.

  I didn't want him calling either one of them, or anybody else for that matter. "No way,” I said. “Give me that. Now."

  He curled his lip and showed me his stained teeth.

  I angled the muzzle of the gun at his knee.

  He tossed me the handset, and I slipped it into my jacket.

  “Put your pants on, and I'll ask you again: Where’s Bailey?"

  “Thats why I gotta call her”

  Across the living room, I spotted a framed picture on an end table. The girl in the picture looked like Bailey Burke. She was his daughter all right. She had his chin and jaw. And maybe she lived here once. But the state of John Burke’s house, along with the fact that he had a teenager in his bedroom, said that time had passed since his daughter lived here. I hoped.

  "When did you last see Bailey?”

  He shook his head. "I dunno. When her mother left."

  "When was that?"

  "Months. She took Bailey with her."

  "Have you heard from Bailey in the past twenty-four hours?"

  "Why?"

  “Have you?”

  “She missing or something?”

  "I wouldn't be here if she weren't. She's missing from Marichal Labs."

  Again his face reddened with anger. "Well, what in hell do they want with her? Bailey’s got nothing to do with that."

  "Bailey has everything to do with Marichal now. She signed a contract."

  His mouth fell open. "Over my dead goddamn body. What for?"

  "Hosting. She had a procedure twenty-four hours ago. Spinal graft. Today she went AWOL."

  "No way in hell!" he shouted. "No way, man, that is fucked! You're wrong. You mean my wife! Maddy's the one that went to Marichal. Hell, I told her last summer. I told her don’t you go getting any f
uckin' ideas. I told her to keep Bailey away from those sons a bitches." Burke balled his fists. "They can't do that! She’s a minor! Not without my say-so!" His voice was half plea, half accusation.

  “Really?” I nodded at the closed door to his bedroom. "You'd be surprised what minors get up to without their parents' consent."

  But this explained the phony Mod Girls Club membership. It was to avoid getting parental consent. In the districts, the clubs provided legal guardianship. Somebody, probably Madison Burke, didn’t want her husband in on the deal she was cooking up with Marichal.

  "Do you have any convictions?” I said. “DUIs? Misdemeanors? Any kind of record at all?"

  "What the hell's that got to do with anything?"

  "It’s got everything to do with everything. You’ve got a record, don’t you? I could pull it up, but you could save me the time. Your daughter might thank you for it.”

  He curled his lip and looked around the room, as if he might have left an excuse for his fucked-up life lying on one of his stained couches. "I got a DUI. Two DUIs, I guess. But ten years apart! Now what the hell's that got to do with—"

  "Somebody lied on your daughter's application. They said she belonged to a Mod Girls Club. Do you know what that is?"

  "What? Those're for slum girls!"

  "They're for girls with criminal or neglectful parents. They provide way around legal consent. So companies like Marichal don't have to deal with problem parents—the kind that only start paying attention to their kids once those kids start earning money. Somebody lied to get you out of the picture, Burke. Marichal probably pulled your record, saw the convictions, and didn't give it another thought."

  His chest rose and fell, the anger swelling inside him like boiling water in a pot. "You…" His hands shook as he pointed at me. "You tell me, you tell me what the fuck they did to my daughter!"

  In the hallway behind me, a door slammed, and the Puerto Rican girl stalked into the living room, her high heels stabbing the carpet. She was wearing clothes now, sort of—a clear plastic shell over a satin bra and a sheer skirt that worked up and down on her backside the way an eyelid works over an eyeball.

  Burke forgot about his daughter long enough to watch the girl storm out of his house. She slammed the warped door, and it caught the jamb and bounced back open.

  "Tina!" Burke shouted.

  "Forget her,” I said. “You got bigger problems."

  He showed me a grief-stricken face.

  "You said you knew your wife got tested at Marichal last summer. Did she tell you about her mutation?"

  The way Burke cringed said it was the first he'd heard of it. "What?"

  "You wouldn't know about it if she didn't tell you. But Bailey has the same mutation. It passes from mother to daughter. I don’t know anything for sure, but I’m guessing that’s how she got in with Marichal. Through your wife. Now she's disappeared. And if I don't find her she's going to get very sick very soon. You said you haven't seen her. When did you last see your wife?"

  "I haven’t. But Maddy was here today." His eyes widened and fixed on the kitchen. He pointed toward it like a deaf-mute and lumbered across the room. He jerked open a cabinet door above his refrigerator. "I wasn’t here. But Maddy musta been here because when I came home the safe was open. And only me and her can open it."

  "Not your daughter?"

  He shook his head.

  Inside the cabinet, the steel panel of a small wall safe stood half open. Burke swept out everything inside. Papers, a few pieces of jewelry, a battered-looking hard drive. He dumped the armload of junk onto the counter.

  He opened a manila envelope and slid out a plastic sleeve of cards showing the faces of baseball players from decades ago. "I got ones in here worth thousands," he said.

  Maybe he did, but they weren’t what his wife had come for.

  Atop the pile lay a passport. A withered broken rubber band was stuck to its cover.

  "Is that your passport?"

  He flipped it open. The photo inside was Burke but ten years younger. Clean shaven, less dissolute, his hair still jet black and cropped tight above his ears. He let out a moan at the sight of his lost youth.

  "Did your wife have a passport? I don’t see another one."

  He dragged a hand through the pile and looked at me with wonder. "It ain't here."

  I looked at the date on his. "Was your wife's expired, too?"

  He shook his head and squinted into the distance, like gears were turning in his mind. "Maddy got hers renewed. Last summer. When she was doing that Marichal thing. Said she was gonna take a trip."

  "A trip? Where?"

  "Mexico. Vacation. Said she was gonna get something done to her face while she was down there, too. Then go back to work modeling for photographers, the way she used to. That’s what she wanted that Marichal money for."

  "She said she was going to take a trip on the money she would make at Marichal?"

  "Yeah, but I told her she's too old to model for them websites."

  “That doesn’t matter. Modding doesn't’ pay that kind of money. And you don’t get to go on vacation’s when you’ve got a company’s hardware in your back."

  "That's what I said!" He thumped his chest as if he knew what he was talking about. "Modeling. She's so full a shit. Spends money like she's a model, that's it."

  "You’re still missing the point,” I said. “Even the big contracts don't pay up front. Apart from a stipend, all the money’s on the back end—to keep people from getting ideas like the one your wife told you about: Probably she wanted out of town so she could sell the mod offshore. The only way to get that kind of money in a short timeframe is to deal with a jacker: basically steal Marichal’s tech and hock it on the black market. And if that's what your wife is up to with Bailey right now, then your daughter is in as much danger as she could be. Where does your wife live?"

  His chest rose. "You’re right. I'm going with you! She's my damn daughter!"

  I took one look at the adrenaline flushing his cheeks and swelling his pupils, and I grabbed him by his voice box and hauled him out of the kitchen.

  "What the fuck!" he squawked. His hands clamped around my wrist.

  I dragged him up the short hallway and hurled him onto the king-sized mattress in the bedroom. He slammed against the headboard.

  "You're not going anywhere, Burke." I took a pair of handcuffs from my belt. "You're not leaving, and you're not calling anybody either. You had a lifetime to take an interest in your daughter, and it's too late now." I closed one cuff around his hairy wrist, then jerked his hand behind him and snapped the other cuff around the bed frame.

  "What the fuck!" he said.

  I made him tell me the passcode for his handset, then had him show me his wife's address in his contacts list. I didn't like how far away it was, but I felt pretty sure it was a solid lead. The address would take me back across the river. Back to Faith Junction.

  I popped the battery out of his handset and tossed it across the room. Then I squatted beside the bed and let him see the gun again, just to give him some closure: "Get in my way tonight, Burke, and your daughter dies. Understand me? And if that doesn't mean enough to you, you better believe it means plenty to me. It also means plenty to the insurance company, who will lock your ass in a detention center for the next twenty years. Got it?"

  I took the hallway back to the living room, and Burke shouted after me: "Hey!"

  I pulled a handcuff key from my belt and tossed it on a footstool that was set at an angle against the side of the couch. I slammed the door behind me, and it stayed shut.

  Finding the little pillbox prefab that Madison Burke now called home took me nearly half an hour. Which was plenty of time to ponder what John Burke’s estranged wife had gotten their daughter into. Could a mother’s heart be black enough to sell her own daughter to a chop shop? Or had she fallen for some smooth-talking broker's lie? Been taken in by a spiel about a "way to do it" where nobody got hurt, where the girl was simply f
itted with a harmless device that would painlessly transmit data from her mod to a Marichal competitor, who in return would pay a handsome monthly compensation? There were new cons out there every month. All of them lies. The chop shops worked only one way. The brokers had their fancy phrases like competitive intelligence and data integrity. They threw around the household names of Marichal's competitors, the big multinationals who advertised during prime time—as if that’s who you were climbing in bed with, not some butcher in Pond District who would slice open your daughter's back, haul out her spinal column, and sell it to a reverse-engineering house in Indonesia.

  I'd got myself worked up enough by the time I found Madison Burke’s address that I nearly drove over the lawn and rammed her door down. But I didn't. The house was the fifth one from the corner. The fifth crummy little concrete cube glowing pink in the haze of half-dead vapor lamps. I drove past it, turned onto the cross street, and parked the truck in the lot of a plumbing supply warehouse.

  I patted my pockets and made sure I had the foil pouch of solution. Then I jogged between a pair of outbuildings to a dirt alley that ran behind the houses.

  In the first yard, something growled in the dark. I headed the other way, and a massive animal speeded to the end of its chain, yanking it so hard the steel links creaked. A Rottweiler, its bark like a saw cutting through plywood. I jogged the rest of the way to rear of the fifth house.

  A light burned behind a curtained window. But unlike her husband's place, no sounds of amour issued from behind Madison Burke’s door.

  I climbed the step and gripped the front doorknob. Locked. I put an ear to the door. The house was quiet. I kept listening, and after another moment I made out a distant creak. Floorboards, maybe. Or an interior door on a creaky hinge. No voices. No TV, no music. But movement.