“Well, you don’t mean to stay, do you? Let me show you the back door. It goes into another souvenir shop, so mind your manners.” Ruby gave a soft whine and I paused at the door. She sat.
“Good idea, you watch over Cowboy,” I said and she gave a soft chuffing woof and shook her big head. “Stay.”
She whined again, and I pointed. “Stay.”
A low rumble slid from her and I snapped my fingers and pointed again, but all she did was step forward. So much for her obedience.
“Take the dog,” Fred said. “She’ll just get in my way.”
I doubted it, but I wasn’t going to argue. “Fine. Ruby,” I barely said her name and she was glued to my side, her one good eye looking up at me. The scars on her face were etched in deep, but she hadn’t given up.
And neither would I.
Learning about my daughter had made me more determined to end this thing. If I hadn’t been all in before, I was a thousand percent done with these bastards now.
The stairs that led up and out of Fred’s lair were nearly vertical. I climbed to the top, pushed open the hidden door, and looked back. Ruby sat at the bottom, took a beat, then shot up and past me and out the trap door. I climbed the rest of the way and stepped out into a storage room. Fred hadn’t been kidding. There were souvenirs everywhere. The boxes were stacked high and close together and I had to worm my way through the maze to the back door.
I opened it and an alarm went off. I didn’t hurry; the worst thing to do was move as if you had a reason to run. A snap of my fingers brought Ruby back to my side and we started down the back alley, avoiding the puddles of accumulated filth off the shops.
The address Fred had given me was in the warehouse district, near the docks. That would be easy enough to find. But I doubted there would be a welcome sign on the door.
Still, that wasn’t my first stop.
Empire State Building first. I didn’t know for sure that the old building would be a nesting ground. It wasn’t the highest, but it was iconic and stately, and for lack of a better word, it felt like it would be the place a fallen angel would haunt.
It felt right, and that was enough for me.
I could have gotten on the subway or taken a cab, but I wanted to walk. The distance would take me thirty minutes at best, and I needed the movement more than anything else.
“So . . . you gonna talk to me?” Dinah asked.
“About what? How we’re going to burn them to the ground and salt the ashes?”
She shook a little. “No, I figured that was a given. I was thinking more about the fact that your girl had survived. I didn’t want to ask before, but I assumed the worst since you only spoke about Bear. By the way, I did know you were pregnant when you gave me to Easter. I could hear her heartbeat when you put me on your hip. Why didn’t you just tell me?”
I crossed the road, dodging traffic, before I spoke again. “I didn’t want you to worry. You deserved to find your daughter too, Bea.”
“Don’t call me that,” she said, her voice softer than ever. Beatrice had been her name before, when she’d been . . . alive? I wasn’t even sure how to say it. Before her soul had been placed into the gun.
Diego cleared his throat. “So you two really were sisters?”
“Half,” Dinah said. “Same asshole father.”
I strode down the sidewalk, and the people who caught sight of my face under the brim of my cap scooted to put additional distance between us. A cop car rolled past me, the cop on my side gave me a quick eyeball and then looked away.
Twenty minutes passed and I was closing in on the building, making my plans as to just how I was going to do this thing. It all depended on whether or not the fallen was where I thought he would be.
“Diego, get ready with a sedative round,” I said as I took one last corner and the iconic building came fully into view.
I didn’t slow my steps as I went through the large double doors. I dutifully paid for my ticket, said that Ruby was a support dog which, while I got the side eye, they didn’t argue overly much, and went to the elevator where I stood next to a group of tourists also waiting for their ride up into the clouds. Dinah snickered. “Goody two shoes.”
The man closest to me turned and shot me a look and did a double take of Ruby standing quietly next to me. She showed him her teeth, just a quick flash of white not even followed up by a growl.
“I’m sorry, did you say something?” His accent was thick, German by the sound of it. I locked my eyes on his, pinning him with a stare that had him swallowing hard and scuttling backward, muttering under his breath.
When the doors to the elevator opened, I stepped in first, turned and faced the tourists. Ruby let out a low rumble. “Room for one.”
The German man bobbed his head and put his hand on one of the women with him, holding her back. “Yes, I think that would be best.”
I tipped my head ever so slightly to him as the doors closed. The music in the elevator was soft and meant to be soothing as the ornate box chugged its way to the top. Ruby lay at my feet and put her head on her paws, for all the world looking like she was going to take a nap.
“You really think you’ll find one of the fallen here?” Diego asked. “I mean, how can you know?”
“Because,” I said, not really wanting to give
