“Be careful.” This was from Ben.
A gnawing feeling began to grow at the base of my neck, and I couldn’t have agreed more. I scented fresh blood. I pushed myself forward again, careful not to jostle the car, and peered past the front tire to the Eldorado, which lay silent and dark, Collins unmoving inside. I glanced over at the man in the lawn chair, and realized he was already dead. I wanted to jump up, tell the rookie next to me to radio Ben, but I couldn’t risk spooking him so that he shot me, injuring Jasmine’s aura, and I didn’t want to blow his cover if he hadn’t already been made. Unfortunately, the suspect returned just then, strolling down this side of the street as coolly as if it were midday, whistling under drug-soaked breath. He brought the scent of more blood with him.
If I’d had only myself to worry about, I’d have rushed him…stakeout be damned. But mindful of Jasmine’s frail shell, pale and inanimate, waiting back home, I rolled under the chassis of the car instead, and remained silent. What happened next would haunt my dreams.
“He’s heading back your way, Brown.” Ben again.
My officer answered, the sweat now pouring off him in sheets. “I see him.”
Brown stayed where he was. The man drew closer. I shut my eyes and fixed my mind on Jasmine’s trusting face.
He was quick. That was how he’d gotten by Collins, killing him without missing one step of his psychotic beat. I smelled the steel of his gun, and that pop sounded again…the same I’d heard over the radio minutes earlier in the stairwell. I flinched as the bullet plowed through the floor, but held my breath. I hadn’t felt this vulnerable in a long time…not only in the months I’d been a superhero, but years.
I swallowed as the hard toe combat boots turned from me, and a walkie-talkie clattered to the pavement. It had to belong to the guy in the lawn chair. That’s how the suspect knew where everyone was located. Then the whistling began again, and trapped beneath a car with a dead cop in it, wrapped in a little girl’s fragile skin, I could only watch as the killer headed straight for the trash-strewn lot and Ben.
Ben wasn’t stupid. He knew their cover had been blown, so he didn’t try to radio, and he was no longer slumped next to the pile of trash. Instead he’d fled to the back of the gated lot, a narrow, weed-choked strip of iron fencing separating two project houses from each other, but by the lazy gait of his pursuer, and that meandering song he was whistling-which I now recognized as some sort of sadistic death march-I knew there was no way out. So I waited until the killer’s shadow had lengthened into giantlike proportions on the street, and let it snap and disappear before grabbing the radio he’d abandoned, and followed.
My choices were limited. I might be a superhero, but I couldn’t be everywhere at once. I couldn’t be behind the killer and still stop a bullet from entering my lover. I couldn’t protect both Jasmine and Ben at the same time. “Hang on, Jasmine,” I whispered.
I ran along the outside of the fence, crouched low as I leaped over bottles and cans and anything else that would give up my presence and location. I slowed fifteen feet behind my target, who stood an equal distance to the end of the fencing, and saw I was right. The fence there was high, barbed, and there was no way out.
“Know what we call this, Po-Po?” the man called out, his baritone ringing beautifully through the silent night. “This be Dog Run. ’Cause of its length and ’cause you only get out if I feel like lettin’ you out.”
Silence from the end of the run, but I knew Ben was there. The killer knew it too.
“You want out, you gonna have to go for a little run.”
“You’re under arrest.”
The man laughed with his rich, deep voice. “Now I know you think ’cause you got that big ol’ forty-five pointed my way that I be steppin’ aside and let you on your way, but we both know I can’t do that. You’re what ya’ll call an eyewitness. I call you a loose end, and Magnum don’t abide no loose ends. But maybe we can come to some sort of agreement. Step on out here before I start punching some more holes through that back fence…and anything standing in front of it.”
And he reached into the front of his baggy pants to pull out a sawed-off shotgun. I lifted my walkie-talkie to my mouth, and pushed the button before he could point. From somewhere in the darkness, Ben’s radio squawked to life.
“You put that big bitch down or I’ll show you exactly how to tie up a loose end.”
Magnum jerked like a fish on a line, and swiveled to face the entrance of Dog Run. His grip tightened as he turned back to Ben.
“To your left,” I told him, through the radio. He strained to peer over his wide shoulder. “Your other left, asshole.”
As his head jerked away, I dropped the walkie-talkie and leaped, clearing the fence to land beside him in the space of two seconds. Despite my speed, and Ben’s surprised gasp, it was about one second too long. The jittery gangster was already turning back, and I was stuck in a precarious crouch beneath him, but not so precarious I couldn’t jam my fist upward in a superstrength undercut that rocked the breath from his body. I know. Such a girl thing to do. But as he crumpled, curling into himself with a strangled groan, I rose and hammered my locked fists down onto the back of his neck. Lucky for him, I didn’t want him to identify me later. I’d just taken the edge off his misery.
I planted a boot on his back to make sure he remained motionless, then looked up into the shadows at the back fence. “You can come out now.”
Ben didn’t move. His nerves were spiked, his anxiety and indecision sour on the still air.
“Ben,” I said, knowing his name on my lips would jar him into action. “Come out.”
It wasn’t the happy reunion I had imagined. He emerged like a refugee, his figure hunched in ragged clothes and lank hair, stinking of garbage and sweat and whatever else he’d smeared over his body, though his eyes flashed, sharp and assessing. It wasn’t a look like Joaquin’s, with marble-hard orbs burning from beneath a skeleton’s frame. It wasn’t like any of the agents of Light either; he didn’t possess the confidence of a nonmortal, or the ability to scent out danger before it was seen. No, this was an altogether human gaze, but still cold, petrified emotion. It was the look of a predator.
And I didn’t care. I sucked in a deep, grateful breath. He was perfect, and safe, and whole.
“How do you know my-”
But by then he was close enough to see me.
“What’s wrong?” I said, his expression making my throat tight. “Never seen a dead girl before?”
Joking was the wrong approach to take. Ben began to shake.
“Shh. Okay,” I said, stepping toward him. “It’s okay.”
“J-Jo?” he said, his voice thin with disbelief.
Magnum began to stir on the ground. I brought my boot down, knocking him unconscious again. “Yeah, honey. It’s me.”
“But y-you’re…”
“I know,” I said, nodding sadly. “Meaner.”
“But how-?”
“Ben, honey, there’s not really time, is there? You have five dead officers out there and, I assume, a lot of explaining to do. Cuff this asshole, and get to it. We’ll talk later.” I glanced back down at Magnum’s sprawled bulk. “He didn’t see me, so whatever story you come up with will do. He didn’t put up a fight, so you won’t have to explain my footprints in the dirt. Cover them with your own and-”
I stopped, tilting my head, listening to sounds far in the distance.
“What?” Ben asked. “What is it?”
“Sirens,” I said, a moment before they could be heard by a mortal.
His face cleared once he made them out, and he looked at me with renewed astonishment. “I called them on my cell while I was running back here.”
“Good. Tighter time frame. Your story, whatever it is, will hold.” I took a step past him toward the back of Dog Run as the first flashing lights careened around the corner. Ben stopped me, grip tight on my arm. I should have kissed him once, because once would be enough, saving him in a single instant. It was enough to make him remember me, and us, and to keep him from going on that date with Rose. From accepting poisonous kisses from strangers. From leaving me behind entirely.