THE COPS INSISTED on blindfolding me again before we left the apartment. After the elevator stopped at the bottom, I tried to track the path we took, but they led me around half a dozen turns and along the same slightly musty-smelling passage where a rumbling sound passed us by.
The only thing I was reasonably sure of was that we were near a subway station.
We’d been in the car about ten minutes when Talon finally judged it safe to take the blindfold off, or maybe Julius had given him some signal. I blinked at the sudden brightness streaming through the car windows. We were cruising along a busy street, cars all around us and pedestrians bustling along the sidewalks, tall storefronts looming on either side. A cluster of skyscrapers towered over us just a couple of blocks ahead.
We’d come downtown. I was closer to my contact “with the red polka dots” than I’d been before, at least.
I leaned back in the seat where I was wedged between Talon and Blaze today and studied the back of Julius’s head. Talon sat as still as always, and Blaze was jiggling his leg like he so often did when the rest of him couldn’t be moving, so absorbed in his phone he probably didn’t even notice. It was an odd contrast between the two of them, but I found I didn’t mind. It beat having Garrison glowering at me for the whole trip.
But it was the leader of this bunch I focused my attention on now.
“Do I get any clues about where we’re headed or why?” I asked, giving the back of Julius’s seat a playful kick. “Did you want to make it a game of twenty questions?”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Julius said dryly. “We’re taking a look around one of the victim’s workplaces. Since you were somewhat familiar with the family and maybe some of the others who were there at the time of the massacre, I figured it couldn’t hurt to have your eyes on the scene too. But no touching anything. You see something that feels important, you call one of us over.”
“Think you can handle that?” Garrison asked, taking a glance back at me. I hadn’t completely escaped the dreaded glower.
I returned it with one of my own. “I promise not to touch anything unless it’s a weapon someone’s trying to kill us with.” My gaze darted back to Julius. “Which victim? What was the job?”
“I’d rather not skew your judgment by giving you any additional information. If you go in cold, you’re more likely to be receptive to all possible evidence.”
That sounded reasonable enough, if annoying. I frowned at the buildings outside the window. It hadn’t occurred to me that the people who worked for the household had careers outside whatever they did in the household, but maybe it wasn’t even a job for most of them like it was for me. Maybe they’d all gone out to work elsewhere at least some of the time. What kinds of jobs would they have held?
I guessed I was about to find out.
The parking spots along the sidewalk were packed. Julius took the car past a stretch of office buildings and then pulled over in the first empty spot. He nodded back the way we’d come. “It’s about two blocks that way.”
We all put on our hats and sunglasses and stepped out of the car. The men fell into step around me like before. Still surrounded. Great.
It was a little tricky weaving through the crowded sidewalk in a clump like that, though. People brushed past us on both sides, whiffs of perfume and car exhaust mingling in my nose. The road provided a constant rumble of engines.
Then Blaze jerked to a stop. He motioned to Julius, who stepped over to join him, and pointed across the street. “Is that him?” he asked under his breath.
Garrison moved away from me to join them too. Talon, in front of me, simply turned his head, but a sense of opportunity washed over me.
This was my opening. Who knew if I was going to get another one? For these few seconds, I was free to step away and bolt, and the hordes of people surrounding us would make it impossible for the cops to find me once I’d melded with the crowd the way I’d been trained to.
I took a slow step back, careful not to appear tense. Any unusual motions would draw their attention back toward me, so I took three more easy paces backward before turning and slipping around a cluster of women in business suits. With a quick swipe, I removed my cap. I let my posture drop, my knees bending slightly and my back rounding so that my head dipped lower, more difficult to see.
The cluster of women headed into a fancy café, and I let them carry me along with them. The second I passed the door, I darted past the tables and the washroom, dashed along the hall past the kitchen so quickly and quietly no one even called out after me, and was out the back door in an instant.
A map of the city unfurled in my mind. I sprinted down an alleyway, loped across roads, turned several corners, and then hailed a taxi that happened to be passing by. There was no sign of the cops anywhere around me, and now I was going to vanish completely.
As I dropped onto the worn leather of the cab’s back seat, a twinge of regret ran through my gut. I hadn’t managed to find out anything all that useful from their investigation, and they’d obviously known more than I’d been able to drag out of them. But who knew if I’d ever have gotten anywhere with them?
My contact had specifically reached out to me. The information she’d offer could trump everything the cops had in their case file.
The address I gave the cabbie was on the other side of downtown from the household. The edges of the city there were pretty much the opposite of the suburban street where I’d lived. Trampled cardboard rested on the sidewalks, and homeless people sat begging on several of the corners we passed, their eyes tracking the movement of everyone who passed by. Trash blew along the curbs. The buildings could use a fresh paint job at best and gutting at worst.
I got out outside the sagging canopy over the entrance to the local mall. Inside, the florescent lights flickered with dying bulbs, and the smell of grease hung in the air as if that was the main ingredient in the food court—which maybe it was. At least the air conditioning was on full blast.
I walked on, leaving the heat of the summer day behind me. My heart started to thump in anticipation.
The storefront for the electronics store was one of the neatest in the place, phone models and the latest cheap gadgets displayed in rows in the display window. A fake potted plant stood next to the doorway to give the space a homier feel. I’d always thought it was kind of ridiculous, but what did I know about retail strategy?
The woman who’d reached out to me was leaning against the counter next to the cash register. She straightened up the second I walked in, a smile flashing across her face but her stance tensing. She was relieved and yet nervous to see me.
I filed away those observations as I came to a stop a couple of feet from the counter, as if I wanted to check out the hard drives and cables tucked away behind the glass underneath. My gaze stayed on her face.
This contact had picked her temporary code name to go with her message well. The first time Noelle had introduced me to her, I hadn’t met anyone with so many or such prominent freckles before. I’d asked why she had polka dots on her face. And the red part—well, her fiery curls must have inspired the usual code name she went by too: Scarlett.
“You got my message, then,” she said, sounding oddly breathless. “I was a little worried—I thought they might be wrong—well, it doesn’t matter.”
My body went on the alert. I stepped closer. “Who’s ‘they,’ and what do they have to do with me?”
Scarlett pursed her lips, her eyes darting around the store and then coming back to rest on me. “Someone reached out—I don’t know much about it—I don’t really ask questions, you know? They passed something on to me that they wanted me to get to you if I could. They seemed sure you were alive, but after everything I heard about what happened…” She shuddered. “Just a second.”
I shifted on my feet impatiently as she turned to rifle through a cabinet behind her. “Who passed this thing on?”
“I’m sorry, I really don’t know,” she said. “There wasn’t any face-to-face communication. They left the package on the counter while I was in the back. I guess they must have known I had some connection to you, so I’d have a decent chance of getting in touch.”
And whoever had gone to her hadn’t hoped to find me directly. Hmm.
“Did they say anything else about me or the murders?” I asked.
She shook her head, her curls jiggling around her face, and tugged a padded envelope about the size of a paperback novel out of the cabinet. “Just that if I could get this to you, I should. They were very emphatic about that.”
I peered into her pale eyes as she handed the envelope over. Had she been threatened with some kind of violence if she didn’t manage to complete the task? Offered a reward if she did? There seemed to be more at stake here than just handing over a package as a favor.
“And you really don’t have any idea who brought it?” I pressed. “Don’t you have security cameras in this place?”
Her mouth twitched. Fear. I knew that emotion—I’d watched it cross the face of enough of my victims. But I didn’t think it was me she was afraid of.
“Whoever it was, they were too careful to get caught that way,” she said, but I wondered if she’d even dared to check.
“If you’d let me have a look—” I started, and she shook her head more vigorously than before.
“It’s already been erased,” she said without further explanation, only confirming my suspicion that she was terrified of pissing off whoever she thought she was dealing with.
A wave of frustration rushed through me, but I couldn’t change what she’d already done or what she’d refused to find out. At least I’d gotten something here.
My fingers tightened around the envelope. “Thank you. I appreciate this.”
She dipped her head in acknowledgment. Her jaw worked as if she was debating what to say next. “You’d better go now. After what those people did to your colleagues—who knows if they’re looking for you too.”
She had a point. I nodded to her and slipped out of the shop as quickly as I’d entered.
I stopped outside a discount clothing store, facing an inflated image of a model in a dress that was much more sophisticated than anything being sold in the dank interior, and tore into the envelope. A small, cheap plastic flip phone slid out into my waiting hand.
What the hell? I looked it over, tapped the power button, and the screen lit up. But there was nothing on it, just a few basic apps like the address book, which was totally empty.
No answers. No information. It felt like another dead end.
Gritting my teeth, I slipped my hand quickly beneath the collar of my shirt, shoving the phone into one place almost guaranteed to avoid detection: in my bra, under the swell of my breasts. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it shouldn’t catch the eye of roving pickpockets or anyone else who might be concerned there. I tossed the envelope in a trash can next to the shop.
I was just turning toward the entrance when I spotted them from the corner of my eye. Three unfamiliar men were sauntering toward me from the direction of the electronics store, just a little too quickly for a casual stroll. Even without looking at them directly, I felt their gazes on me.
My instincts clanged with alarm.
I swiveled and strode into the store, approaching one of the clothes racks farther inside. As I skimmed my fingers over the outfits without really noticing them, I monitored the entrance at the edge of my vision.
The three men came into the store, which was full of dresses and blouses, nothing they looked likely to wear. And they fanned out with casual precision, moving so that they nearly surrounded me.
Oh, they thought they were getting away with that, did they? I didn’t know what their problem was, but I wasn’t letting myself be cornered.
Grabbing a dress from the rack at random, I walked over to a clerk near the back of the store. She gave me a stiff customer service smile.
“You want to try it on, hun?” she asked, waving her manicured hand toward the dressing rooms. “You’ll look stunning in that dress. Let me know if you need any help with sizes.”
She deposited me in the corner dressing room, hidden by a wall from the rest of the store. I closed the door behind me and shoved the latch over.
It was a tight space. I examined the surfaces for any potential advantage before jumping and bracing my feet in the two corners of the room, holding myself well above the floor.
I waited.
When I heard someone’s feet scuff the floor on the other side of the door, I held my breath.
“She was just here,” a man’s low voice growled, just outside. “She couldn’t have gotten out.”
“Is there another entrance?”
I heard rustling, and then the door handle beside mine jiggled. “They’re all locked. Look underneath.”
I waited until I heard the telltale sounds of a man crouching down before I struck. I whipped the door open and dove at him in a smooth motion. The man on the ground didn’t have time to do more than jerk up his head before I’d tied the dress around his neck and kicked him in the nose.
He groaned and fell forward, and I hooked the other end of the dress on the doorknob, allowing his full weight to fall into the stranglehold of the fabric. As he choked and sputtered, the second man sprang at me.
I caught him in the side of the head with a roundhouse kick and rammed my elbow into the back of his skull for good measure. He collapsed with a groan next to his companion, and I sprinted out of the dressing room alcove.
Now only one man stood between me and the door. “You might want to check on your buddies!” I called to him cheerfully as I hurried toward the mall courtyard.
The guy lunged at me, and I sidestepped just in time to knock his feet out from under him. Then I sprinted to the mall entrance.
If my pursuers were any good, they’d regroup in a matter of minutes. I’d be even more ready for them then. I couldn’t have staged an interrogation in the middle of the mall, but one of the grubby alleys in this end of town? No problem.
I loped a block and a half away and stationed myself behind a tree to wait for my chance.
