The Original Crowd (A Whole New Crowd 0.50)

I scrambled to the window and looked.

Holy fuck.

There were four cars outside. Each had a guard at the driver and passenger doors, with guns held in open view. At the door stood a middle-aged man, with two guards behind him. Jace was behind the guards looking scary and shut off from all emotion. I’d seen that Jace before too, but he didn’t look as powerful as Tray.

I shivered again when I turned and saw him walk to a safe in the closet. He opened it and pulled out a 9mm and a .30 caliber.

“What are you doing?” I asked, now embracing my panic. I couldn’t hold it back any longer.

“Get dressed,” Tray ordered. “If you hear any gunshots, you run, Taryn. I mean it. They might to want to search the house, see if you’re here. There’s a hidden tunnel that connects most of the house.”

“Why do you have a hidden tunnel?” I asked. I wanted to act like a panicky little girl at the moment, but there’s no way in hell I’d do it. I wasn’t weak and I wasn’t spineless.

“Because my dad was running drugs with Galverson,” Tray snapped, swearing when he saw his cellphone was dead. Crossing to the phone, he lifted it and heard a dial-tone. “That’s good. We have a dial-tone.”

He moved the bed back and underneath it, he peeled back a square piece of carpet that was attached to a panel in the flooring. No one would ever know it was there if they were to walk by it.

“This is where you go, okay. If you hear them searching for you, just climb underneath the bed, and put the panel back in place. They’ll never know. Just follow the tunnel until it ends. It’ll go down. It curves through the house and then goes underneath the pool and pool-house. It continues until it connects to the street a ways down.

“Have you ever had to use it?” I asked, my eyes entranced.

“Yeah,” he hesitated, “once.” He pushed the bed back in place.

“Tray, come with me. I don’t want you to go down there.”

“I have to. They might just be here to ‘talk.’ If I go missing, everything I have on him surfaces. It’s the rules of the game and he knows it. I have so much on him, he’d have to go into hiding for the rest of his life. Plus, drug lords tend to find drug lords. He’d be hunted down and killed.”

“Tray,” I insisted, grabbing his hand.

I recoiled, feeling the gun instead.

“When Lanser asks if you’re here, I’m going to tell him that I dropped you off late last night because you were upset. The plan was that I’d come and pick you up this morning to get your car. Call the houseline in a little bit. If this is what I think it is, you might not have to run.”

Oh God.

“Tray,” I whispered.

He took one second to kiss me before he left, tucking the 9mm in the back of his pants. It was a little while later when the pounding and doorbell finally stopped.

Tray had opened the door.

I snuck to the door, it was still opened a crack so I could hear everything.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Tray clipped out, sounding like he could murder someone.

It must’ve been Galverson, because I heard a relaxed chuckle in response.

“Sal,” Jace started.

“Relax, Tray. We’re not here to kill you,” Galverson soothed, sounding at ease, in control.

“Right, because we do tea and shit like that,” Tray said sarcastically.

“Is Taryn here?” Jace asked. “Her car’s outside.”

I snuck away and scrolled to Tray’s name and selected his home line. A second later the phone rang in the house.

“Yeah?” Tray answered, sounding irritated.