I was sure they could see me—the gas couldn’t have been that thick—and I expected a bullet in the back. I hoped they’d have the decency to shoot at my head; at least it would be quick.
But I didn’t stop crawling, and the bullet never came. I finally made it to the wall and, reaching to my right, found the doorway. Arne was right about my sense of direction. The door was open, but I was barely across the threshold when it swung shut, slamming against my head and making me gasp.
I crawled into the alley, gagging on the wisp of tear gas I’d inhaled. I didn’t know if it was heavier than air, but I wanted to be on my feet; I stood and stumbled against a dumpster. Time to live dangerously; I opened my eyes.
Immediately, they started to burn. Tears flooded my cheeks, and I couldn’t stop coughing.
Arne and Lenard weren’t there, but Rumpled stumbled through the door just behind me. He was coughing so hard I thought he’d convulse.
My eyes were burning stronger now, as though the tears were washing the chemicals into my eyes rather than out, but he had it worse. He kept saying: “Ah, God! God!” between retches.
We were helpless. If the shooters inside the bar came out here, they could have put bullets into us without breaking stride. Of course, they could have done that inside, too.
I blinked through my tears and saw a short, slender figure knock Rumpled to the ground. A second, larger figure stepped up close to me. “Well, well,” he drawled. “If it ain’t old Ray Lilly himself. Howsdoin’, Raymond?”
“Bud?” I asked, suddenly recognizing his voice. “Someone just tried to kill Arne. I didn’t see who, though. Is he around?”
“I don’t see Arne,” Bud answered. “He musta lit out.”
Again.
I could almost hear a smile in Bud’s voice. I blinked to clear my vision, and it worked a little. The slender figure moved toward us. “He’s gone,” she said. “We should go, too.” That was Summer, another member of Arne’s crew.
Bud and Summer each grabbed one of my sleeves and steered me down the alley toward the sidewalk. I let them. While I could see—barely—I couldn’t see well enough to drive. And my tears were still flowing, my nose was running, and I was still trying to blink the pain away. If the cops found me here, they’d snatch me right off the street.
I heard Bud reassure a passing pedestrian that I’d just had my heart broken. I didn’t know where we were going. “Someone tried to kill Arne. We have to look for him.”
“Oh, we’ll look for him, all right,” Bud said.
Something was wrong. Bud and Summer were part of Arne’s crew, just like Lenard, and just like I used to be, and right now they were being too casual.
A bad feeling came over me. I turned toward Summer. She’d let her hair grow out so that it almost reached her shoulders. Her face was broad and tanned, her pale blue eyes sullen in the heat. Her sleeveless jogging shirt was damp with sweat and hung untucked over a pair of shorts with an elastic waistband. Had she been one of the shooters? She could certainly conceal a gun at her back, but a gas mask, too? I didn’t believe it.
Bud was the same. He had a loose T-shirt over belted shorts, and while he’d cut off his mullet, he still wore that stupid bolo tie. He could have hidden a gun at the small of his back—or maybe under his growing beer belly—but not a gas mask.
Arne had taught them better than to dump something like that right at the scene of the crime, so I figured they weren’t the shooters. Of course, they could have been lookouts or backup. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“Tear gas is toxic,” Summer said. “There’s a Ralphs up the street. We’ll pick up some stuff that will help there.”
“At a supermarket?” I asked. “How do you know—” A fit of coughing cut off the rest of my question, and a rolling drop of sweat suddenly blinded my right eye.
“Are you seriously asking me how I know what to do about tear gas?” I’d forgotten that Summer’s hippie parents—her hated, hated parents—had marched in dozens of street protests over the years, and Summer herself had probably been dosed with the stuff several times.
“Then we’ll get out of here,” Bud added. “Robbie is going to want to talk to you.”
Robbie was Arne’s second-in-command, and we had always gotten along well—better, in fact, than I’d gotten along with anyone. I wanted to talk to him, too.
But first I needed to get away from Bud and Summer. Arne had said Wally King’s name, and that meant bad things were happening. He was the reason I was mixed up with the Twenty Palace Society. The spell book he’d stolen, the predators he’d summoned, and the deaths he’d caused almost two years before had ruined my life.
I needed to call the society, and I needed to do it in private. Those bastards take their secrecy seriously. And I needed my boss. I needed Annalise. I didn’t want to face Wally King without her again.
“We’re parked just up here in the lot,” Bud said as we turned a corner. I blinked my eyes clear again and saw a field of colored metal gleaming in the sun. They led me to a white pickup and let me sit on the gate.
Summer stepped away from me. “Bud, go inside and get what he needs.”
“You sure?” he asked, as though nervous about leaving her with me.
“Go.” She sounded irritated. He went.
I squinted in her direction. I wanted privacy to make my call, but she didn’t seem ready to give it to me. “I’m glad you and Bud are still together,” I said.
“We’re married now,” she answered, her voice flat.
“That’s great.” There was nowhere for the conversation to go after that, so it just sat there. Now that we had stopped moving, my eyes began to sting even more. I raised my hands to rub them but thought better of it. “I need to make a call,” I said. “In private.”
She didn’t move. “To who?”
“Nobody you know.” Since she wasn’t moving away, I hopped off the gate and walked along the side of the truck to the wall. Then I started toward the sidewalk.
She trailed behind me.
“Wait by the truck, Summer,” I said. “I’m not kidding. This is a private call.”
“You’re calling the cops, aren’t you?”
Out of reflex, I cursed at her. If that’s who she thought I was now, she couldn’t be trusted. It was the same as saying We are enemies.
My reaction must have mollified her a little. She sulkily stepped back, but not because she was afraid of me. I’d never known her to be afraid of anyone.
A young mother came toward me, navigating her baby stroller through the narrow space between the whitewashed wall and parked cars. I stepped around her, then looked toward the truck.
Summer wasn’t there. I glanced around the lot and inside the truck. Nothing. I dropped to the ground and peered under the cars. Nothing, again. She’d vanished.
I walked to the sidewalk, darting through a line of cars pulling in from the street. The store was too far for her to have gone inside, but where was she? I didn’t like that she seemed to have blinked out of existence within ten feet of me. Just like Caramella. Had she transported herself far away? Where?
Even now, as evening was coming on, the traffic noise was ever present. I stepped into a bus shelter for some relative quiet and took out my phone. It had speed-dial buttons, but none had the number I needed. That was only in my memory.
I was feeling jumpy as I dialed. Something was wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what. The phone picked up after four rings.
“Hello? This is Mariana.” She had an accent I couldn’t place, but I was never good with accents.
“This is Ray Lilly. I need my boss.”
“Mr. Lilly, this isn’t how you are supposed to make this request. What is the situation?”
I knew I was breaking the rules, but my instincts were ringing like fire alarms, and I couldn’t ignore them. “I can’t go into it on the phone.”