She shrugged and wheeled her cart to the next corner, where she took up a post against the bricks.
The alley was dark and cluttered with trash bins, waterstained cardboard boxes, and an unrecognizable hump that may have been a discarded water heater. Then again, it just as easily could have been a rug with a body rolled inside. A high chainlink fence spanned the alley halfway down. I could hardly climb a fourfoot fence on a good day, let alone a tenfoot one. Brick buildings flanked me on both sides. All the windows were greased over and barred.
Stepping over crates and sacks of trash, I picked my way down the alley. Broken glass crunched beneath my shoes. A flash of white darted between my legs, stealing my breath. A cat. Just a cat, vanishing into the darkness ahead.
I reached for my pocket to text Vee, intending to tell her I was close and to watch for me, when I remembered I’d left my cell phone in my coat pocket. Nice going, I thought. What are the chances the bag lady will give you back your phone? Precisely—slim to none.
I decided it was worth a try, and as I turned around, a sleek black sedan sped past the opening to the alley. With a sudden glow of red, the brake lights lit up.
For reasons I couldn’t explain beyond intuition, I drew into the shadows.
A car door opened and the crackle of gunfire broke out. Two shots. The car door slammed and the black sedan screeched away. I could hear my heart hammering in my chest, and it blended with the sound of running feet. I realized a moment later that they were my feet, and I was running to the mouth of the alley. I rounded the corner and came up short.
The bag lady’s body was in a heap on the sidewalk.
I rushed over and fell on my knees beside her. “Are you okay?” I said frantically, rolling her over. Her mouth was agape, her raisin eyes hollow. Dark liquid flowered through the quilted coat I’d been wearing three minutes ago.
I felt the urge to jump back but forced myself to reach inside the coat pockets. I needed to call for help, but my cell phone wasn’t there.
There was a phone booth on the corner across the street. I ran to it and dialed 911. While I waited for the operator to pick up, I glanced back at the bag lady’s body, and that’s when I felt cold adrenaline shoot through me. The body was gone.
With a shaky hand, I hung up. The sound of approaching footsteps tapped in my ears, but whether they were near or far, I couldn’t tell.
Clip, clip, clip.
He’s here, I thought. The man in the ski mask.
I shoved a few coins into the phone and gripped the receiver with both hands. I tried to remember Patch’s cell phone number. Squeezing my eyes shut, I visualized the seven numbers he’d written in red ink on my hand the first day we met. Before I could secondguess my memory, I dialed the numbers.
“What’s up?” Patch said.
I almost sobbed at the sound of his voice. I could hear the crack of billiard balls colliding on a pool table in the background, and knew he was at Bo’s Arcade. He could be here in fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.
“It’s me.” I didn’t dare push my voice above a whisper.
“Nora?”
“I’m in PPortland. On the corner of Hempshire and Nantucket. Can you pick me up? It’s urgent.”
I was huddled in the bottom of the phone booth, counting silently to one hundred, trying to remain calm, when a black Jeep Commander glided to the curb. Patch slid the door to the phone booth open and crouched in the entrance.
He peeled off his top layer—a longsleeved black Tshirt— leaving him in a black undershirt. He fit the neckhole of the Tshirt over my head and a moment later had my arms pushed through the sleeves. The shirt dwarfed me, the sleeves hanging down well past my fingertips. It mingled the smells of smoke, saltwater, and mint soap. Something about it filled the hollow places inside me with reassurance.
“Let’s get you in the car,” Patch said. He pulled me up, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face into him.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said. The world tilted, including Patch. “I need my iron pills.”
“Shh,” he said, holding me against him. “It’s going to be all right. I’m here now.”
I managed a little nod.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Another nod. “We need to get Vee,” I said. “She’s at a party one block over.”
While Patch drove the Jeep around the corner, I listened to my chattering teeth echo around inside my head. I’d never been this frightened in my life. Seeing the dead homeless woman conjured up thoughts of my dad. My vision was tinged with red, and hard as I tried, I couldn’t flush out the image of blood.
“Were you in the middle of a pool game?” I asked, remembering the sound of billiard balls colliding in the background during our brief phone conversation.
“I was winning a condo.”
“A condo?”
“One of those swank ones on the lake. I would have hated the place. This is Highsmith. Do you have an address?”
“I can’t remember it,” I said, sitting up taller to get a better look out the windows. All of the buildings looked abandoned. There was no trace of a party. There was no trace of life, period.
“Do you have your cell?” I asked Patch.
He slid a Blackberry out of his pocket. “Battery’s low. I don’t know if it will make a call.”
I texted Vee. WHERE ARE YOU?!
CHANGE OF PLANS, she texted back. GUESS J AND E COULDN’T FIND WHAT THEY WERE
LOOKING 4. WE’RE GOING HOME.
The screen drained to black.
“It died,” I told Patch. “Do you have the charger?”
“Not on me.”
“Vee’s going back to Coldwater. Do you think you could drop me off at her house?”
Minutes later we were on the coastal highway, driving right along a cliff just above the ocean. I’d been this way before, and when the sun was out, the water was slate blue with patches of dark green where the water reflected the evergreens. It was night, and the ocean was smooth black poison.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Patch asked.
The jury was still out on whether or not I should tell Patch anything. I could tell him how after the bag lady tricked me out of my coat, she was shot. I could tell him I thought the bullet was meant for me.
Then I could try explaining how the bag lady’s body had magically vanished into thin air.
I remembered the crazed look Detective Basso had directed at me when I told him someone had broken into my bedroom. I wasn’t in the mood to get eyeballed and laughed at again. Not by Patch. Not right now.
“I got lost, and a bag lady cornered me,” I said. “She talked me out of my coat… .” I wiped my nose with the back of my hand and sniffled. “She got my beanie, too.”
“What were you doing all the way out here?” asked Patch.
“Meeting Vee at a party.”
We were halfway between Portland and Coldwater, on a stretch of lush and unpopulated highway, when steam spewed suddenly from the hood of the Jeep. Patch braked, easing the Jeep to the roadside.
“Hang on,” he said, swinging out. Lifting the hood of the Jeep, he disappeared out of sight.
A minute later he dropped the hood back in place. Brushing his hands on his pants, he came around to my window, gesturing for me to lower it.
“Bad news,” he said. “It’s the engine.”
I tried to look informed and intelligent, but I had a feeling my expression just looked blank.
Patch raised an eyebrow and said, “May it rest in peace.”
“It won’t move?”
“Not unless we push it.”
Of all the cars, he had to win the lemon.
“Where’s your cell?” Patch asked.
“I lost it.”
He grinned. “Let me guess. In your coat pocket. The bag lady really cashed in, didn’t she?”
He scouted the horizon. “Two choices. We can flag down a ride, or we can walk to the next exit and find a phone.”
I stepped out, shutting the door with force behind me. I kicked the Jeep’s right front tire. I knew I was using anger to mask my fear of what I’d been through today. As soon as I was all alone, I’d break down crying.
“I think there’s a motel at the next exit. I’ll go cccall a cab,” I said, my teeth chattering harder. “Yyyou wait here with the Jeep.”
He cracked a slight smile, but it didn’t look amused. “I’m not letting you out of my sight. You’re looking a little deranged, Angel. We’ll go together.”
Crossing my arms, I stood up to him. In tennis shoes, my eyes came level with his shoulders. I was forced to tilt my neck back to meet his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere near a motel with you.” Best to sound firm so I was less likely to change my mind.
“You think the two of us and a slummy motel make for a dangerous combination?”
Yes, actually.
Patch leaned back against the Jeep. “We can sit here and argue this.” He squinted up at the riotous sky.
“But this storm is about to catch its second wind.”
As if Mother Nature wanted her say in the verdict, the sky opened and a thick concoction of rain and sleet hailed down.
I sent Patch my coldest look, then blew out an angry sigh.
As usual, he had a point.
CHAPTER 21
TWENTY MINUTES LATER PATCH AND I WASHED UP AT the entrance to a lowbudget motel. I had not spoken one word to him as we’d jogged through the sleeting rain, and now I was not only soaked, but thoroughly … unnerved. The rain cascaded down, and I didn’t think we would be returning to the Jeep anytime soon. Which left me, Patch, and a motel in the same equation for an undetermined amount of time.
The door chimed on our way in, and the desk clerk stood abruptly, dusting Cheetos crumbs off his lap.
“What’ll it be?” he said, sucking his fingers clean of orange slime. “Just the two of you tonight?”
“We nnneed to borrow your phone,” I chattered, hoping he could make sense of my request.
“No can do. Lines are down. Blame the storm.”
“What do yyou mean the llines are ddown? Do you have a cell?”
The clerk looked to Patch.
“She wants a nonsmoking room,” Patch said.
I swiveled to face Patch. Are you insane? I mouthed.
The clerk tapped a few keys at his computer. “Looks like we’ve got … hang on … Bingo! A nonsmoking king.”
“We’ll take it,” said Patch. He looked sideways at me, and the edges of his mouth tipped up. I narrowed my eyes.
Just then the lights overhead blinked out, plunging the lobby into darkness. We all stood silent for a moment before the clerk fumbled around and clicked on an industrialsize flashlight.
“I was a Boy Scout,” he said. “Back in the day. ‘Be prepared.’”
“Then you mmmust have a cell phone?” I said.
“I did. Until I couldn’t pay the bill anymore.” He drew his shoulders up. “What can I say, my mom’s cheap.”
His mom? He had to be forty. Not that it was any of my business. I was far more concerned what my mom would do when she arrived home from the reception and found me gone.