I took a turn and headed north into my old neighborhood, in the hopes that there would be a few of my old contacts left. Not all were abnormals, so there was a chance. My eyes drifted to the high-rises around us, then shifted toward the Empire State Building. That would be one of my next stops.
Look to the heights? I could do that.
“Dinah,” I said, “you remember that friend of Barron’s? The one he worked with from time to time?” Barron had been a part-time lover of mine when I was young and stupid. I’d thought he’d run away with me, help me start over. But, ultimately, he wasn’t that interested in giving up the money he made working for the different mob bosses. In the end, it had killed him. Which was a shame on many levels, but especially because I needed to get in touch with his contact.
“What was his name?” Dinah mused. “Harold something, wasn’t it?”
“Harden, not Harold.” Though I suspected he’d changed his name to Harden to look tough in a world where being tough started with how people perceived you. On that note, I pulled into a twenty-four-hour pharmacy.
“What are you doing?” Cowboy leaned out of the car while I went into the store. I left Diego behind, but kept Dinah in her holster, still partially hidden by the long button-down shirt.
The clerk looked up, took note of the gun, and went back to reading his paper. “No money in the till.”
I moved up and down the aisles and finally asked.
“Where’s the hair dye?”
17
I drove the car down near the river, parking it under one of the bridges. I threw the keys into the water and left the doors open. A pair of homeless men eyed me up. “Great place to sleep if you ask me,” I said. I pulled two of the bags out, and Cowboy took the other. Ruby hopped out and paced around, eyeing up the men. She lifted her lips over her teeth but didn’t make a sound.
They waited until we were a good fifty feet away and then went for the car.
“They could tell someone we were here,” Cowboy said.
“Doubt it. I just gave them a place they could sleep in relative safety for a few nights.” I set out at a jog, despite the weight of the bags. The exertion felt good on my muscles and I relished in the way my breath shortened and my lungs burned.
I led him and Ruby back into the city. I suspected a few of my hideouts would still be safe. Or safe enough.
The first was my family residence in Queens—or I should say my mother’s residence. It wasn’t that big or fancy. Just an apartment in an okay part of town. It had been my mother’s before she died, and she’d used it as a retreat when things got too tense between her and my father. Which had been often.
I hadn’t been to it in years. Hadn’t needed a refuge until now.
Daylight kissed the sky before we made it to the apartment building, sweaty and aching. Cowboy muttered something about his boots not being made for running. “We’ll get better clothing today. After we sleep,” I said.
I let myself into the building through the back door, not surprised the code hadn’t changed in all these years. Up the back stairwell, up five flights, and then through the door that led to the fifth-floor apartment hallway. The last on the right was ours, a corner apartment. Better views of the city, plus an extra window to exit if need be.
I walked up to the door and put my ear to it. No noise.
“You sure it wouldn’t have been sold?” Dinah asked quietly.
“The lease was paid for twenty years, along with maintenance and cleaning,” I said. “Still a few years left on that contract.”
I punched in the numbers on the keypad and the door clicked open. I dropped the bags and motioned for Cowboy to be quiet as I slid through the door in a crouch. The keycode worked and the place was supposed to be maintained, yes, but both those things meant very little in our world.
The two-bedroom apartment was a good size for New York, close to eight hundred square feet. Huge, really. My walk-through showed me that no one had been there for years other than the cleaning crew, and they’d been doing a piss-poor job, at best. I swiped my hand through the dust and rubbed my fingers together.
Cowboy dragged in the three bags and Ruby trotted ahead of him and went straight to the couch where she plopped herself down. A poof of air sent dust particles up, which sent her into a bout of rapid sneezing.
“You think we’ll be safe here?” Cowboy did a slow turn. The skyline had brightened and the room was already heating from all the windows. I went to the far right of the couch and pulled the cord that slid the blackout curtains shut, sending the room into instant twilight.
“Safe for now. Door on your right is your bedroom. It hooks to the bathroom so shower, shit, shave, whatever. I’ll take the first watch.”
I motioned for him to go, then waited for the door to close before I pulled up a chair and sat. Twenty-four hours ago, I’d woken in the facility with Eligor’s fingers in my mind and no idea when I would have the chance to make a break for it. Now, I sat in my mother’s old apartment in the city I’d left behind trying to figure out which step to take next.
I blew out a breath and laid Dinah and Diego on the table. From one of the bags, I pulled
