SEVENTEEN
Decima
The cops insistedon 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?