Only she wasn’t reading. Though passersby might never glance at her, I immediately noticed that her eyes weren’t moving across the page. She kept her gaze right above the pages of her book and watched the street instead.
I slipped into the shadows to spy. Evelyn hardly moved, nursing her coffee so slowly that it had surely gone cold already. The minutes dragged on, and I moved inside the restaurant across the street to save warmth. In a booth by the window, I ordered a warm meal and watched Evelyn. When the server delivered the entree to my table, I took one bite before Evelyn abruptly stood up and left the cafe.
“Damn it, Ev.”
I threw a few bills on the table, apologized to the server, and ran into the wintry street, shoving my arms into my coat as I hurried after Evelyn. Her purposeful stride led us through Glencoe’s quaint downtown area. She kept her head bowed against the wind, but if I knew Evelyn, she had her eyes peeled on everything within her field of vision.
I was so focused on Evelyn that it took me a solid minute to notice she was following someone else. Up ahead, a squat balding man in a black trench coat ambled up the sidewalk, chatting into the Bluetooth device attached to his ear. He appeared to be in no hurry, and he did not pay much attention to his surroundings. Without looking, he stepped into a crosswalk against the light, causing an oncoming car to blare its horn at him. Startled, he backtracked. Evelyn halted too, pretending to examine a street sign. When the light turned green and the crossing signal flashed white, we all continued.
We walked for a solid half mile. The man in the trench coat slowed, his breath coalescing into short bursts of white vapor. He was not an athlete or in any condition to overexert himself. Furthermore, he remained oblivious of Evelyn’s presence. She kept about twenty feet between her and the man. If he bothered to turn around once or twice, he might have questioned why a tall, blonde woman with pointed European features pursued his route.
Aware of Evelyn’s keen senses, I remained as far from her as possible without losing her trail. Once or twice, she and the man disappeared around a corner, but I managed to locate them again. The third time this happened, the man turned into an alleyway, heading toward a parking lot on the opposite site of the avenue. Evelyn rushed to catch up with him, so I picked up my pace too.
At the corner, I peeked into the alleyway. The man was halfway through to the other side. Evelyn quickened her pace, drawing something from the inside of her tan coat. I almost called out, but for once in my life, my preservation instincts kicked in. I clamped my lips together.
Evelyn approached the man swiftly. He whirled to face her a half-second too late. In a single gesture, she plunged the sharp blade of a knife into his upper thigh. In the next second, she made a matching wound in the opposite leg.
A dull roar filled my ears. My stomach bucked. Blackness threatened to take over my vision as Evelyn stood above her prey.
The man was too stunned to make a sound. He dropped to his knees and gazed at his hunter with vacant eyes. She stared back, waiting. Blood gushed from the man’s legs and stained the snowy ground red. Evelyn kept her boots far from the fluid.
“Wagner,” the man choked, and he fell forward, flat onto his face. Dead.
Evelyn checked the man’s pulse then wiped the blood from her knife. Professional. Nonchalant. Completely unbothered by her actions.
I must have made a noise, because Evelyn’s head snapped up. When her gaze connected with mine, her mouth dropped in horror. She slipped the knife into her coat and came toward me, leaving the dead man to lie alone in the shadowy alleyway.
All of my senses went into high alert as fight-or-flight kicked in. I pivoted away from the alleyway and broke into a sprint, narrowly avoiding getting hit by a car as I dashed across the street.
“Jack!” Evelyn called. “Wait!”
I did no such thing. I ran from my best friend. I ran from the woman who I’d known since childhood. I ran from the one person I thought I could rely on for the rest of my life. I ran because she was a killer, and I had not seen it coming.
18
We crashed to the ground as Evelyn tackled me around the waist. She pinned my arms to the side. Since I couldn’t brace myself, my face took most of the fall, my cheek scraping along the pavement. Hot liquid trickled down my face and into my mouth. Coppery blood.
Evelyn wrapped her gloved hand around my lips as I opened my mouth to scream. She’d taken me down between two parked cars, so the people of Glencoe were blind to the attack. Evelyn outsmarted my every move as I tried to break free.
“Jack, stop!” she hissed, her breath hot on the back of my neck. “Let me explain!”
I bit her hand, hard enough to bruise her through the glove. Evelyn, accustomed to pain, did not let go of her grip on my mouth. Instead, she looked both ways to check for witnesses, then hauled me into a nearby alcove. She carried me by the waist, and though I kicked and punched, she made it seem as easy as transporting a tantrum-throwing child.
In the darkened alcove, she pinned me against the wall. I tried dropping out of her grasp, but she was ready for my signature move. Her enormous thighs clamped together and kept me in place like a pair of pliers.
“Listen to me!
