Page 3 of Delta (Alpha #12)

I toss a pint glass toward Zidane—it smashes behind him, and he and Gleason whirl to assess the threat. I bolt through the scrum to the employees-only door, which is where the keycard comes into play.

Boom.

Almost free.

The hallway here is narrow and stacked with boxes of booze, plastic racks full of clean pint glasses, rocks glasses, and high balls.

Now I just have to find my way out of this maze of back hallways and outside.

It takes almost twenty minutes and a lot of wrong turns, but I eventually emerge into the cold night air, and hustle, shivering, away from the hotel to the nearest road. I use my phone to summon a car—thankfully, there's one around the corner and it arrives within a couple minutes.

I slide into the back seat, grateful for the piping hot interior.

" Wohin ?" The driver is a middle-aged man of Middle Eastern heritage, speaking Arabic-accented German.

I name a nearby club, and he nods.

" Sprichts du English ?" I ask.

He rolls one shoulder. "Little."

"If I pay you, will you stay near the club and wait for me for a couple of hours?" I ask.

"Wait? No ride other customer?"

" Ja, bitte ," I say, which is about the extent of my German.

He frowns at me in the mirror. Looks away, blinking—coming up with his number in his head. He holds up two fingers. "Z wei hunnert ."

I dig my purse out from beneath my hoodie and withdraw some cash from my wallet, showing him two hundred dollars. I give him a hundred-franc bill.

"The rest if you're still here in two hours," I tell him.

"Okay, ja . I wait." He takes the hundred and stuffs it in his hip pocket. "Two hour only. After, I go."

"Two hours," I agree. " Danke ."

We pull up to the curb near the line, and he points to a parking lot down the road. "There. I wait."

I peel off the hoodie and sweatpants, switch my shoes, and fold the clothes into a pile on the seat. "See? I'll be back.”

He just nods. "Two hour."

I step out of the four-door Audi sedan and hustle to the end of the line, which is, fortunately, short…seeing as I'll be a popsicle in about ten minutes out here in this brutally cold wind.

I reach the front of the line, and the burly bouncer juts his chin at my purse, flashlight at the ready. I open my purse, keeping my ID in hand, along with a pair of 100-franc bills.

The bouncer sees my ID first, and his eyes widen at my name—as the kids of very famous parents, I'm pretty well known by name, if not always by face. Plus, my social media presence is pretty big, if I do say so myself. Then he sees my gun.

I lean close and whisper to him. "You know who I am, and you know why I need that. It's for protection only, I promise.”

The francs vanish into his meaty palm, and he nods. "Don't get me fired," he mutters in English. "You won't like it if you do."

I smile sweetly at him. "I'm a perfect little angel."

He just snorts. "My daughter follows you on TikTok."

Unfortunately, that's really all that needs to be said. I'm…notorious, I guess, for shenanigans, getting into trouble, and being an all-around nuisance. Thus, the bodyguards—they're as much to prevent me from pulling stunts exactly like this to keep me safe.

I show him my powered-off phone. "Look, it's off. I just want to have fun…Kevin." I look way up at him. "Can I call you Kevin? You look like a Kevin." I bat my eyelashes at him.

He rolls his head. "Name's Jerry. Just…stay outta trouble, okay, Ms. Harris?"

I point at the black Audi visible down the road a way. "That's my driver. I'm paying him two hundred francs to wait two hours for me, and then I'm going back to my hotel. I promise.”

He jerks his head at the club. "Go on." A big hand wraps around my wrist, and hard brown eyes fix on me. "No trouble."

I give him a saccharine smile and a cutesy little "who, me?" shrug. "Never."

I hurry inside out of the icy wind, rubbing my hands up and down my arms and then sticking my freezing fingers under my armpits.

Clicking on my heels down a low, dark, narrow hallway lit by a handful of neon signs, I descend a short set of stairs into the belly of the club.

Dance music thuds and pounds, sending adrenaline and excitement surging into my veins.

I'm dancing before I even hit the dance floor.

I don't even need a drink, I just need this.

Sweaty bodies everywhere, the air so thick you can taste it, flesh against flesh, the rhythm pounding through you, abandoning yourself to the moment, to the music, to the palpable, unspoken unity of hundreds of people all moving to the same beat.

I dance my way through the crowd, pausing here and there to share a moment with a cute boy or two. I always move on; they're just boys.

Eventually, I find my way to a bar and order a vodka sprite and a glass of ice water, and ask the bartender for the time—I still have an hour.

Back into it.

More than a few boys try to keep my attention—sorry boys, Bryn's not on the prowl tonight. This is just for me.

Hands find my waist and a chest pushes against my back—I go with it for a few minutes, reach up and behind me to clutch a slick, sweaty neck. When his hands get handsy, I shrug out of his grip and vanish into the fray.

I wish I didn’t have to count the minutes, I wish I could stay here all night. Just dance, drink, and forget everything.

I get another drink—thirty minutes left.

I don't want to cut it too close and miss my ride, as I know for a fact that the driver will bounce with my money and my clothes after two hours on the dot, so I decide to visit the bathroom before I make my exit.

I take care of my business and wash my hands. A pair of girls about my age are primping at the mirrors—one of them does a double-take.

"Are you Bryn Harris?"

I grin, shake her hand. "Hi, yeah."

"Can we take a selfie with you?"

I hesitate. "Okay, but you cannot post it until tomorrow. I don't want anyone to know where I am right now."

They agree, and we take the selfie…or ten.

You know how it goes: you gotta take a dozen to get one good one.

They each want a hug as well, and I'm finally exiting the bathroom.

I'll never shake the imposter syndrome that comes from being famous—sort of—for nothing more than being my parents' kid. I mean, there've been big studio movies, indie films, streaming limited series, and even a short-lived weekly cable series based on Mom’s and Dad's and Aunt Key’s and Uncle Val’s adventures before I was born.

Shit, there's even talk about a limited series sequel being made about Rin's whole thing with Apollo.

I didn't do shit. I haven’t done shit. I probably won't ever do shit to become famous. I'm just famous because of other people. Yet I have to pose for selfies with strangers in a club bathroom and then ask them not to post those selfsame selfies.

It's just a weird thing, and it's hard to know how to feel about it.

I leave the bathroom in a weird mood; the shine has rubbed off my little solo adventure. Time to head back to the hotel.

I hear a scuffle—the bathrooms in this club are located at the front of a long, dark hallway. At the end of the hallway is an illuminated exit sign casting a ghostly red glow on the silver of the emergency exit's crash-bar.

I peer, squinting; strobe lights flash from the dance floor, slicing stripes of sudden light, casting shadows—moving shadows.

A pair of large male figures wrestle with the smaller shape of a female. One has his hand around her mouth and is trying to subdue her arms, while the other struggles with her legs.

One of them barks something in a low growl, in a Slavic language of some sort. Or German? I don't know. A language I don't recognize, is the point. But to me, the tone of voice communicates a statement like, “Grab her legs, you idiot."

The other one responds with what I imagine to be: "I'm trying, asshole, she's very strong."

Fuck this shit.

Not on my watch, jackasses.

I creep down the hallway, pull my gun. Assume a nice solid Isosceles stance like I've been taught my whole life. Finger in the trigger guard but not on the trigger, yet.

"HEY!" I shout. "LET HER GO!"

In my mind, what will happen is very simple.

I'll shout my challenge, and they'll see the gun and my imposing six-foot-tall frame and my adorable pink compact 9mm, and be so startled and afraid that they'll drop the girl and bolt out the exit, and I’ll be a hero.

The end. Cue the ticker tape parade. See my agent, Netflix.

The reality is a little different.

At my challenge, the ogre manhandling the girl's feet drops her kicking, writhing legs and stalks toward me, reaching behind his back.

Um, fuck.

Panic hits like a Mack truck, freezing me in place. Mom's words, Dad's words, Sasha's words, Uncle Duke's words all ring through my skull: "Never pull a gun on someone unless you're mentally prepared to pull the trigger and end a life. If you pull a gun and then freeze, you're fucked."

I've heard variations on that theme a billion times in my life. And I always thought to myself, "I won't freeze. Look who my parents are. Badassery runs in my veins."

Turns out I'm a coward. Or, at least, someone who freezes the first time the shit hits the fan.

The hulking ape-man is mere feet away from me, and I still have time to shoot. Or run. But my hand shakes. My finger simply will not curl around the trigger. The barrel wavers.

He's huge—six feet tall but broad as a barn, big-bellied, powerful, and good god almighty he stinks so fucking bad even from here. He laughs once, a cruel, amused bark.

He lashes out with a paw, knocking my gun aside, and then my gun is gone. His other hand swings around from the small of his back—at first, I think he has a pistol, but instead of shooting me, he jabs me in the side with it.

The sensation is unlike anything I've ever felt, and I've been stung by jellyfish and broken bones.

It's like a charley horse times infinity.

Excruciating pain spears through my whole body, a hot, crackling, burning sensation radiating from my skin into my muscles and tendons.

My whole body locks up. My teeth clench, and I go rigid.

I can't scream, can't breathe. He catches me one-armed and lets me slump to the cold, sticky hallway floor.

Barks something over his shoulder at his companion.

Something clatters across the concrete.

My skin burns, my muscles tingle, and I'm confused, disoriented. Conscious, but…scrambled.

He grabs the thing his partner passed to him—a syringe. He pulls the cap off with his teeth and jabs me in the arm, slowly depressing the plunger.

"Night-night, extra girl." His voice is low, cruel, and thickly accented.

Darkness swallows me.

My last thought is, Well, fuck. This isn't good.