Cat and Mouse

The parking deck smells like hot concrete and old oil.

Grant takes the stairs because the elevator is a box he does not trust. Eve is in front of him. Paige is behind, lip already swelling from the bleachers. The map of the bus sits at the bottom of the ramp like a pile of warm lights. Store team is still a distant cluster on 12th. Forty-six points. No extra prize for the rec center.

Level three is quiet in a fake way.

An SUV sits crooked in the middle row with the driver door hanging open. Interior light dead. A duffel bag spilled across the seat: clothes, a charger, a half-eaten bag of chips. No keys in the ignition. Somebody left in a hurry and then did not leave.

Eve points with two fingers.

Railing. Far side. A sliver of a shoulder that does not belong to the concrete.

“Come out,” Grant says, normal volume. “We’re not throwing you off the deck. If you run the down-ramp, my people are at the bottom.”

Nothing.

Then a girl bolts.

She is fast. Campus shorts, sports bra, dark hair in a knot, bare feet slapping. She does not run at them. She runs for the far stairwell like she has already measured it. Paige swears and goes. Eve cuts the angle. Grant does not sprint full because he still does not trust what full looks like in a concrete box.

Paige catches her anyway. They hit the railing hard enough to bang. The girl fights like the rec center girls fought, except she has had longer to be terrified. Elbow. Knee. She tries to rake Paige’s swollen mouth.

“Get off. Get off me. I am not getting on that bus.”

“Yeah, we heard that already today,” Paige says, breathless, and hangs on.

Grant gets there, drops to a knee, and has to chase her wrist twice. She is slick with sweat. She tries to bite him and gets denim instead.

“Name.”

She laughs in his face, mean and scared.

“No. You don’t get that. You don’t get anything.”

He does not waste a second try.

“I claim you.”

It is instant.

The fight does not fade. It dies. Her body goes pliant against the railing like the anger got unplugged. Her eyes find his and stay there, wide and devoted, the loyalty already sitting in her like it had been waiting for a switch. She looks at Paige’s hands on her arms as if she cannot remember why anyone would need to hold her.

“Aria,” she says immediately, eager to give him what she just refused. “My name is Aria. I’m yours. I’m sorry I ran. Tell me what you want. I will do anything.”

Grant stands her up before the parking deck turns into a scene.

“Bus. Now.”

“Yes sir.”

Forty-seven.

He checks himself out of habit. Hands. Map.

Nothing new. Just another light, already pointed at him.

That should be the end of level three.

It is not.

A man’s voice rolls up the ramp from level two, trying to sound friendly and landing on hungry.

“Aria? Baby, you can come back. I saw the bus. We can wait it out. I won’t be mad.”

Eve’s angle changes. Paige stays close. Aria’s face does not go complicated. She steps nearer to Grant like the voice is a stranger.

“That’s him,” she says. “He found me by the food truck last night. He never got a hand on me. He has been talking through stairwells since. I don’t want him. I want you.”

Grant walks to the rail and looks down.

One guy. Mid-twenties. Ball cap. No pack of women. A baseball bat hanging from his right hand like he bought it this morning and has not used it yet. He sees Grant and stops two-thirds up the ramp, smile already assembling.

“Hey. Easy. That’s my girl. We were just—”

“She was hiding from you,” Grant says.

The smile flickers.

“You don’t know that.”

Aria does not bother being polite.

“I know that. I’m his. Go away.”

The guy looks at the three of them, then past them as if the rest of the bus might still be a rumor. He does not look rested. He does not look upgraded. He looks like Derek before the chair: a man who thought a bat and a first name were a plan.

“You claimed her?” He asks Grant.

“Yes.”

“Then we have a problem.”

Grant does not give him a speech.

“You can walk back down and keep the bat. You can also do something dumb on a ramp. Pick fast.” Grant glares at him.

The guy picks dumb. He comes up swinging.

It is not a fight. Not really. The bat is slow. Grant steps in, catches it the way he caught Derek’s wrist, and the wood stops like it hit a post. The guy’s eyes go wide at the strength. Grant shoves him. The guy sits down hard on the ramp and the bat clatters away.

“Stay down,” Grant says.

The guy stays down. Breathing. Not dead. Not brave anymore.

“She’s mine,” he tries one more time, weaker.

“She isn’t.” Grant nods at Eve. “If he gets up before we are on the bus, you put him back down. Don’t chase him across campus if he runs.”

“Got it.”

They take Aria down the stairs. She looks at the open SUV once and does not ask to go back for the charger. She stays half a step off Grant’s shoulder, waiting for the next instruction like that is the only map she needs.

Mary is waiting at the bottom with the bus door open and a face that says she counted to sixty and then counted again.

“Well?”

“Girl hiding. Guy hunting her. She’s ours. He’s on the ramp with a headache.” Grant keeps it short. “Forty-seven. Still nothing.”

Mary looks at Aria.

Aria answers before anyone has to drag it out of her.

“Aria. I belong to Grant. There are more in the dorms. West hall. Fourth floor. I heard them last night through the connecting stair. They were trying to keep quiet. I don’t think they have a guy with them. I think they just have a dresser in front of a door.”

Jaycee leans out of the bus.

“So dorms next, like you said.”

Grant looks at the rec center they already tore open, at the parking deck, at forty-seven women packed into a charter bus that is starting to look like a mobile problem.

“Dorms next,” he says. “Jose, west hall. Don’t climb the curb.”

Jose mutters, “No promises,” and starts the bus.

Aria sits two seats off the aisle, hands in her lap, eyes on Grant. Not sorry. Not half-and-half. Claimed all the way through.

Behind them, level three stays empty except for an open car door and a man sitting on a ramp, holding his wrist.

Grant does not look back.

Forty-seven.

West hall has people on a fourth floor.

The last claim still did not reward him.