Free 36 Hours by Allison Brennan Page B

done. ”
    Jake made sure the camera was set up properly, then he muted the police scanner. He turned to Angel and said, “It’s going to be okay, kid. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
    “If you’re alive,” she muttered and turned away.
    “What?” He spun her around. “What does that mean?”
    “It means that someone wants me dead, and they’ll kill you to get to me.”
    “I survived Afghanistan, I can survive L.A.”
    She shrugged and turned away, but not before Jake saw how scared he really was.
    Maddie didn’t seem to know what to do any more than Jake did. Angel sat down in one of the folding chairs and said, “Lights! Camera!”
    Jake turned on the video, confirmed that it was recording. Maddie sat down in the chair next to the camera and said, “Please give us your legal name, address and birth date for the record.”
    After the formalities were out of the way, Maddie asked Angel to state for the record what happened on Saturday night. Angel said, “Shouldn’t I go back farther? To when Raul Garcia killed the two women?”
    “If you’d like to start there, but it’s most important to give your statement regarding the shooting.”
    “It’s all connected. Two weeks ago, my best friend Marisa called me begging to pick her up. She said something bad was happening and she was scared. I went to get her, and she and George Garcia were arguing outside this warehouse. George wouldn’t let me take her, so I followed them inside and—”
    She hesitated. Jake knew hesitation wasn’t good because it would make a judge or jury think she was making up the story. Maddie prompted her. “And then what?”
    “Two girls— about nineteen or so—were being raped by Raul’s gang. Six of them. They were, um, nearly done, and the girls were swearing and crying and one of them jumped on Raul. He hit her and took out a gun. He spoke only in Spanish, and I’m not fluent, but I think he said that they deserved everything they got because they sided with the wrong people. Then he just shot them. Two bullets each. He turned to me and Marisa standing behind George and starting swearing at his brother. George talked to him, alone, and Raul came back and said if we told anyone what happened, he’d do the same thing to us.”
    As she spoke, her face paled and she was shaking. Jake’s fists clenched and he barely resisted the urge to hit the wall. This was the first he’d heard the whole story.
    Maddie, too, seemed to be affected. “And did you tell anyone?”
    “Not for a week. But I couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t hear anything about the girls on the news, like they weren’t important enough for anyone to know that they’d been raped and murdered. Like because they were Mexican hookers they deserved it or something. I got so mad, at the Garcias, and at Marisa for getting involved with them, and at myself for not stopping them. Not at least doing something. I talked Marisa into going to the police. We took the bus downtown, talked to a cop.”
    “Do you remember the officer’s name?”
    “Jimenez. I don’t remember his first name. He took down everything we said and then said someone would call us.”
    “Did someone?”
    “Kristina Larson. The ADA. She asked us to come to her office on Tuesday, which we did. We each gave our statement, and Larson said to come back on Thursday for a follow-up, she needed to talk to the investigators or something. She threw around a bunch of terms I wasn’t paying attention to because Marisa was becoming hysterical. On the bus home, she fell apart and said she couldn’t do it, she didn’t want to die.” Angel’s voice trailed off. Then she cleared her throat and said, “Marisa disappeared that night and I started looking for her. I came home Wednesday and there were two guys lurking outside who I knew were with G-5. I left. Found out my mom was arrested for drunk driving when her counselor tracked me down, so I lied and said I was staying with Marisa. But I missed