At two-thirty, Blue had woken her and told her she should leave for her own safety. He had given her one last kiss, but refused to let her stay another moment longer. Chelsea had come home around three in the morning and crawled into her own lonely and cold bed, quickly slipping into a deep sleep. But at six o’clock it was like some alarm went off in her brain and suddenly she was wide awake. Her eyes opened and she wasn’t the least bit tired. She had no desire to roll over and go back to sleep.
Chelsea sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. Her phone was next to her, plugged in and fully charged with the sound as loud as it could be. Today, even more than usual, her phone would be a part of her. She would never be without it; Terrance was going to call today. He was going tell her when and where the fight was. Now all she had to do was wait.
She showered and made coffee while her mother slept. She wondered what Blue was doing. She knew the blank expression he would be wearing. To an outsider, or someone who didn’t know him, it would look like he wasn’t thinking about anything. He would look like some simpleton lunk head. But it would be a calm surface that hid a swirling sea of passionate emotions only Chelsea had been given permission to glimpse.
Paul and Molly came over at nine when her mother woke up. Together they drank coffee, made food and didn’t eat it, and paced around the house waiting for the phone to ring. The wait seemed endless. Chelsea remembered some talk at school about hell. The speaker had been a priest who had come to talk at an assembly. A couple of kids had spray painted a pentagram on school grounds. It had been a joke, but the school had taken it “very seriously” and brought a priest in to remind them that stuff like that was no joke.
He told them that hell wasn’t just a pit of fire. Hell was your biggest mistake replayed over and over again. Hell was your regrets played on repeat for all of eternity. This was Chelsea’s hell: waiting for the phone to ring. She had no idea where Blue or Jamie were; she had no idea if Terrance was going to keep his promise. She had no power, no say in what was happening. She could only sit and wait.
At five-thirty her phone finally rang.
“Hello,” Chelsea said quickly into the phone, she put it on speaker so Molly and Paul could hear.
“Chelsea,” came Terrance’s oily voice. “How lovely to hear your voice.”
“Thank you for calling me,” Chelsea said. She couldn’t blow this now. She was so close to the answers for all of her questions.
“Nine-thirty, 748 East Marshalls Street. Come dressed as I asked.”
“Understood,” Chelsea called and the phone went dead.
“Okay,” Molly said, the moment the call was ended. “Here’s how this goes down. Chelsea, you have the actual invite; you’ll go in with a wire and scope the place out. There’s still a chance Terrance might be testing you. He might send you to one place and then have the fight in another. So you will go in and once it’s clear that this is where the fight is taking place, you’ll give us the go ahead and then you get out and the SWAT team will go in.”
“Chelsea has to go in first?” Colleen asked. “That’s too dangerous. Why don’t you go? You’re the one in the FBI.”
“Because Terrance didn’t invite her,” Chelsea answered. “The fights are by invitation only and I was the one who was invited. So I’m the one who gets to go.”
Colleen covered her mouth and looked away trying in vain to hide her tears.
“I need to get dressed,” Chelsea said. She walked into her room and began to pull out the clothes she had brought with her. She settled on a very short, low-cut, black mini-dress with lace on the back. She pulled her hair back and put on heavy black eyeliner and shadow giving her eyes a smoky, slept-in look. She matched it with a red lipstick and a pair of high, black stilettos.
She drove there alone. A wire secured in her padded bra. She knew Molly was tracking the GPS on her phone and she felt safer knowing that she was being watched. She drove slowly and with every mile she began to feel more and more sick. Nausea pulsed in her stomach and her throat and her hands were shaking. Don’t cry, don’t cry, she repeated to herself. She couldn’t afford to ruin her make-up.
The car took her far out of town, far past the houses and businesses and even past the farms until she was far out into the woods. Pine trees lined the dark roads and she drove for miles without seeing another car. Her fingers were twisting on the steering wheel and her stomach was churning. She didn’t want to see the fight. She didn’t want to watch Blue forced into the ring. She wanted to go back to LA where it was always sunny and warm and everyone was stylish and beautiful.
The house was lit up like a Christmas tree, as the saying goes. Cars lined the street as Chelsea pulled up to a valet stand and in confusion stepped out of her car.
“Good evening, Miss!” an energetic young man said as he jogged to the car and gave Chelsea a ticket in exchange for her keys.
This wasn’t what she had expected at all. This wasn’t a grimy basement under an abandoned gas station. This was a catered party with a valet staff. What did these boys think was going on? Just a normal party, did they have any idea what was happening in the house behind them?
Chelsea’s heels clicked on the paved driveway as she walked up to the house. It was a stunning log cabin with a wooden frame and huge windows; there was a large wrap around porch with chairs and tables and fire pits. Inside the house was filled with bright white lights that shone through the windows. Had she passed the house at any other time she would have thought someone was throwing an early holiday party, not a fight to the death.
A girl in a dress almost identical to Chelsea’s opened the front door. The girl gave her a knowing smile as Chelsea passed and Chelsea stepped into the party. Men in suits lounged on leather couches and stood at the bar while women in short, tight dresses walked around with bottles of champagne, whiskey, and bourbon freely filling the glass for any man who raised one.
It had an air of elegant refinery, but that was only on the surface. It was clear that something else much darker was going on. For starters all of the guests at the party were men and all of the servers were young and beautiful girls. The men clearly felt free to touch the girls however they wanted as the snuck bills down their dresses. The room stank of cigar smoke and booze and Chelsea wished desperately to be anywhere else.
“What do you think, Chelsea?” Terrance’s voice was like the twisting words of a snake whispered into her ear and she had to resist the urge to lean away from him. “Surely this is just as nice as the parties they have out in Hollywood, right?”
“It’s very nice,” Chelsea lied with a nod. “It’s just not what I was expecting.”
“Yes, it’s very refined and classy. This is what I was trying to explain to Blue. No more fights in dirty basements for pocket money. This is a real business with rich men with a lot of money to lose. Money that could make Blue very rich.”
“When is...the...well, you know?” Chelsea asked. She didn’t know if there was some rule about saying the word fight. She didn’t know if the waitresses or valets knew or not.
“The fight begins in about thirty minutes, in the basement,” Terrance said, nodding to a door towards the back of the house. Two men stood at attention next to it with guns sitting securely on their hips. “In the meantime, please, have a drink, look around, enjoy yourself. You’re among like-minded people, Chelsea. Enjoy yourself.”
He placed his hand on her bare arm and she hid her revulsion until he passed. A girl came by with champagne and Chelsea grabbed a glass and headed to the bathroom. Once in the stall she pulled out her phone and texted to Molly, “did you get that?” and then she watched as her cellphone spun a little clock and she waited and waited and then she watched as she went from three bars, to two, to one.
She frantically dialed the number, but the call wouldn’t connect. It just hung in the air, trying unsuccessfully to dial. She knew Molly wasn’t far away. The van was parked only about ten miles down the road. But the communication was only one way and she just had to hope that Molly was listening.