Yeah! Just to let you know, there are more surprises on the way. Oh, and ATL stands for Atlanta. Sorry for not updating like I usually do though. I caught a cold so I've been resting a lot. Don't worry, I didn't forget about y'all. I'll try to update as much as I can.
Chapter 7: Protection
The next morning, everyone woke up early and was going to take Alex to Merril's old place. They went early to avoid any adults seeing them. They all walked down there in a crowd to hide Alex. On the way, Danny was thinking about what he and Alex used to do back in Atlanta. They used to spray paint walls, shoot paint balls at people, and run jobs for Tay. Tay. One guy no one messed with.
They finally reached the house. They went up the stairs and knocked on the door. Since it was early in the morning, there were no parties right now. It was all-quiet. There were a couple of footsteps and the door opened. Curly was there.
"What do you want kids? I'm trying to sleep."
"Curly," started Danny. "I need you to hide my friend. Someone's after him."
"Who?"
Danny pulled Alex up front and Curly sized him up.
"You'll need to talk to the boss. Hold on."
Danny turned around to Jack.
"The boss?"
"He means Tim Shepard. He's still the leader of the Tim Shepard gang and there were a lot more people."
Tim then came to the door.
"What's up?"
"We need you to hide my friend, Alex."
Tim looked at Alex.
"What's he hiding for?"
"Some guy is after him."
Tim smiled.
"I like that. He can stay. Come in kid."
Alex walked into the doorway and turned his head.
"Thanks guys."
"No problem. I'll drop by every once and a while."
The door closed and Danny yawned and stretched his eyes.
"Let's get back home. I'm tired."
Everyone agreed and walked back to the Curtis house.
"Hey, Danny?" asked Houston.
"Yeah."
"Who is Tay?"
"Yeah," started Rachel. "I wanna know what's so dangerous about this guy. When you came here, all you talked about was Alex and you ex-girlfriend. You never mentioned anything about Tay."
Danny just kept looking straight ahead.
"I'll tell you guys when we get back to the house."
Everyone walked in silence on the way back to the house. When they got inside, everyone sat down and Keith started by saying,
"Okay Danny. Story time."
Danny looked at everyone and started.
"Tay is a drug hustler. I met him when I was ten because he was beating up these guys that were gonna jump me. When I asked him why he did it, he just said because he wanted to blow some steam on people. Pretty soon, he started talking more and he introduced me to his gang. That's where I first me Alex. I joined the gang and Tay made a deal with me and Alex. If we do jobs for the guy, he would protect us. They weren't any big jobs like murder. I could never do that. We would meet guys for him to do deals with. He had a couple of other guys to do that also. That was a good thing. Because one night one of his other guys hooked him up with an undercover cop. That was the night my mom told me I was going down here."
Everyone just stared at him.
"Why isn't he going after you?" started Rachel. "You told us about that night. Both you and Alex took his car to get away."
Danny shrugged.
"I guess I'm just lucky. He could probably only get to Alex for taking his get-away vehicle. Alex told me in a letter that all the other guys had been arrested or disappeared."
"I think it's just suspicious," said Maria.
"What's suspicious," asked Keith.
"About why he would only go after Alex-."
"Stop it!" yelled Danny.
Everyone looked at him. He had his hands on his head.
"I don't want to even think about that!" he yelled again.
It was silent. I guess no one thought about how Danny felt about this situation. It almost reminded some of them about when Trix was on trial.
"Sorry," said Maria putting her arm around Danny. Jack then jumped up.
"Hey. I know. I'll make some chocolate cake. Be back in a second."
Jack went into the kitchen and Keith grabbed the remote.
"Wonder what's on Disney Channel," he said.
"Playhouse Disney," pointed out Rachel.
Keith smiled.
"No," spat Rachel. "We're not watching Dora the Explorer."
"Fine," said Keith laughing. "I'll just see what's on Nickelodeon."
"Okay. But no Spongebob or Rugrats. Watch Hey Arnold or something."
