“I’ll clean my room!” I shouted as Rowe hauled me out of the cottage.

  “Sounds good,” Dad called back. “I’ll take you up on that when you get back.”

  “No, it was a trade—”

  But Rowe pulled the door shut behind us, and I’d lost my opportunity.

  Ms. Albrecht, my World History teacher, was power walking past us, complete with a fuzzy headband and earmuffs.

  “I’m being taken against my will!” I shouted.

  “Hi, Jack!” She beamed at us and waved. “Hi, Rowe!”

  “Hi, Ms. Albrecht,” Rowe said.

  “Such a nice boy,” Ms. Albrecht said to herself as she picked up the pace.

  “Did you hear that?” Rowe asked as he dragged me down the steps. “I’m nice.”

  “You’re too nice,” I said and slugged him in the thigh. “Enough, dumbass! Let me go! I give up or I surrender or whatever!”

  Rowe released me. I straightened, made a production out of cracking my neck, and tried to fix my hair because he’d no doubt messed it up—but I didn’t have a mirror.

  “Five more seconds,” Rowe said.

  “I’m making sure I don’t have spinal cord damage,” I snapped, but I started toward the maintenance building.

  I wasn’t sure Rowe was laughing as he came after me, his steps crisp on the pavement, but I wasn’t sure he wasn’t either.

  The first weekend in February on the back side of Timp, by all rights, should have been freezing—the kind of unrelenting, shredding cold that makes your dick drop off. But we’d had a warm spell, and the snow had melted everywhere below the snowline, even though you could still see your breath when you stood in the shade. The air smelled like thawing earth and winter-soggy pine mulch, and the sky was blue like the inside of a cereal bowl. It was hard to fully commit yourself to despair and choosing a life of slowly dying in front of daytime television on an afternoon like this one.

  The voices should have been a warning, but I was caught up in hatching escape plans, and I noticed them too late. When I cleared a stand of pines, I saw them huddled together on the other side, each one with a vape, blowing out the scent of mango and strawberry and what I was afraid might be buttered popcorn. Axle, with tousled brown hair and a red undertone to his complexion. Riker, with a disconnected crew cut and skin so flawless he might have been using makeup. And Jaxon, who had silky black hair that fell to his jaw and olive-colored skin. The three remaining members of the Boy Band—the Walker School’s elites.

  “What up, Abercrombie?” That was Jaxon.

  The nickname—which was really a putdown—didn’t hurt anymore. It was amazing what didn’t hurt anymore, not now. I kept walking.

  “I asked you a question, dick breath.”

  “Hey, cocksucker,” Riker called. “You miss having something in your mouth with your butt-buddy gone?”

  “Remember how he looked that night?” Axle asked with a nasty smile. “Remember how he was going to suck Dawson off?”

  “Maybe Abercrombie’s no good,” Jaxon said. “Maybe that’s why Supercreep left—you just can’t get good head anymore.”

  I stopped. I turned back.

  “He didn’t like that,” Riker said. “What’s the matter? You need more practice?”

  Rowe emerged from the line of pines, and the Boy Band’s faces changed. It was one thing to go after the janitor boy. It was another to go after Rowe, who was well-liked on campus and who, more importantly, had an obscenely wealthy family back in—I wanted to say Minnesota.

  Axle recovered first. He gave Rowe a wary nod.

  Rowe nodded back. He put a hand on my shoulder and turned me toward the maintenance building.

  “Bye, Abercrombie,” Jaxon called, although softer now, like somehow Rowe might not hear.

  I’d taken two more steps before I realized Rowe’s hand had dropped away. When I glanced back, he was trudging across the winter-yellow grass toward the Boy Band.

  “Apologize,” he said to Jaxon.

  Jaxon made a face, looked sidelong at his buddies, and hit his vape.

  When I reached Rowe, I touched his arm. “Forget it.”

  “Something wrong with your hearing?” Rowe asked. “Apologize to Jack.”

  “Are you for real?” Jaxon muttered.

  “I can handle these guys,” I told Rowe. “They’ve got all their brains in their ball sacs.”

  “I’m going to count to three,” Rowe said. He was still looking at Jaxon, still hadn’t pulled his gaze away for so much as a heartbeat. “And then I want to hear, ‘I’m sorry, Jack,’ and I never want to hear the stupid name for him again.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Axle asked. “Just because he’s swinging on your knob—”

  Rowe punched him in the face. Once. Axle staggered back, his teeth bloody, one lip split. He stared at Rowe and started to cry.

  With a startled shout, Riker stepped forward, already swinging, and Rowe took the blow on the side of his head and staggered.

  Jaxon looked at me, a warning glance. Then he turned on Rowe. When Riker backpedaled after another blow that made Rowe stumble, Jaxon took a step like he was going to dart in and take advantage of the opening.

  “Fuck no you don’t,” I said and threw myself at him.

  2

  Holloway

  Seattle at this hour was cold, drizzling, and dark, and it smelled like brine and mold and urine. On this narrow side street, the only light came from the neon tubes of the tattoo parlor I was watching: ELECTRIC SHEEP. The pink neon rippled in the puddles.

  I huddled at the corner of an alley and waited. My raincoat kept me dry, and the fill power was high enough to keep me tolerably warm for several hours. All I had to do was watch. The target would emerge eventually. I had followed her here from Salt Lake, by way of San Francisco, where she had met several tech executives under circumstances that Jack would have described as sus.

  Drawing a deep breath, I redacted that thought. Those thoughts were no longer permitted.

  Instead, I focused on this moment, now: the breeze off the Sound, the damp against my cheeks, the hint of moldering garbage, the chemically clean slice of rubbing alcohol that came from a distance.

  This target might be the one. And, if she wasn’t, then the next one. Or the next. Or the next. One of them would know who had hired Paxton to blackmail Aston. One of them would know who had stolen the package that had been sent to me. I would follow their scarlet thread, one of them leading me to the next, and learn the truth. No matter how long it took.

  The sound of the door opening broke my reverie, and my attention returned to the Electric Sheep. The woman who emerged was barely more than a girl—complexion like sour cream, her blond hair curling at the ends where it was dyed pink, stocky in a pea coat that was too big for her. She wore jackboots, which made no sense considering Seattle’s hills. She checked herself, adjusting the courier bag slung over one shoulder, and turned up the street. I let her go a hundred yards before I followed.

  On a night like this, we were the only two on the street, and so I kept my distance and, as much as possible, moved from deep shadow to deep shadow. If she looked back, if my timing were off, she’d see me, and I’d lose her. But without a team, without someone else to help coordinate the pursuit, my options were limited. The drizzle made a soft patter against my hood, and the sound of her jackboots clipped up the uneven pavement.

  When she cut away from the street and headed into a parking garage, I began to run: long, smooth strides. Not a full-out sprint, but controlled, quiet, and fast. By the time I reached the garage, she had disappeared from sight, but that wasn’t a problem. Not yet.

  I stopped just inside the building’s concrete shell and listened. The sound of footsteps echoed back to me, so I ignored the stairwell to my right and continued on the ground floor. A surprising number of cars were still parked there, even at this hour. Perhaps nearby residents used the garage. A condo building. Apartments. It was the kind of thing I should have known, should have taken time to learn, to research. A Holmes is always prepared.

  The sound of steps stopped, and I stopped too. The silence lasted a beat too long. No jingling of keys. No beep of a car responding to a fob. I turned and saw the two men who had emerged from the stairwell—the same stairwell I had ignored. Because I had been hasty. Because I had been reckless.

  They were big men, dressed in black, and they wore ski masks. One of them carried an assault rifle on a strap, while the other held a pistol in one hand. Movement at the corner of my eye made me turn, and I saw her, the operative I’d been following, her sour complexion curdling with a smile as she drew a sub-compact revolver from her courier bag.

  Calculations. Probabilities. Decisions.

  I launched myself at the agent, and she let out a startled squawk and swung the revolver in my direction. I jinked left. The noise from the first gunshot slapped me. I juked right. This time, something whined past me, and then, from behind, came the crack and crumble of concrete. The agent was still trying to line up her shot, but by then I was close enough to check her with my shoulder. Jack would have been proud; the thought was an ember that glimmered deep inside me. Her feet came up from the concrete slab, her eyes widened, and then she fell.

  Behind me, a spray of bullets tore the air.

  Something tugged at my coat as I scrambled up the hood of the closest car. I threw myself across it. When I reached the next aisle, I dropped down and ran in a crouch. More bullets screamed across the empty garage. The sound was deafening. Where the bullets struck concrete pillars, they threw up broken fragments and clouds of dust. Where they hit cars, metal pinged and glass shattered. Alarms rang out, but they sounded muted and distant under the thunder of gunfire.

  I shouldered open the emergency exit, spun through the doorway, and glanced behind me. The shooters were far enough back that I couldn’t see them, but they would come. That was their job: to come for me, to never stop coming. A crimson smear on the door caught my eye. I touched my side. In the fluorescent light from the garage, my fingertips were red.

  Another shot ripped open the night, and I ran.

  3

  Jack

  Rowe’s room was pretty much what you’d expect. He had a Viking pennant on one wall, a Mad Max poster—he had decided it was the best film ever, no matter what I said about The 13th Warrior—an ungodly big TV with a PlayStation, clothes everywhere, and an essential oil diffuser that looked like a Star Wars robot. Glo said the smell was lavender, for calming. I said it was losing the war against the residence’s perpetual smell of corn chips and shoe funk.

  “Ow!” Rowe said.

  “Ow, ow, ow!” I said.

  Glo gave Rowe a dirty look. “Stop being a baby.”

  Emma gave me a dirty look. “They’re both being babies.”

  “We’re not being babies,” Rowe said, and then he grunted between his teeth as Glo started cleaning the split skin on the bridge of his nose. To be fair, Glo was probably using more force than necessary. She was tiny, dark hair and dark eyes and golden skin, and she was using her thumb to really get the antiseptic wipe into every crevice of split skin.

  “Yeah,” I said as Emma swabbed something onto my cheek, and I had to swallow a scream. Finally I managed to get out, “We’re being tortured!”

  Emma made an annoyed noise. She was tall, where Glo was petite, her black hair in a pixie cut, her cat-eye glasses making it hard to tell what she was thinking. Well, I had an idea of what she was thinking. Kind of. She was doing a hell of a job communicating what she was thinking. Like when she swabbed more acid on my face, and this time I made a high-pitched squeak I couldn’t stop.

  “You both should be arrested,” Glo said as she unwrapped a bandage. “You should be put in jail. In—in prison!”

  “Babe,” Rowe said. He wrapped a hand around her wrist, and she twisted free savagely. “They jumped us. They legit started it. Besides, I had to stand up for my boy.”

  “They should throw both of you in the psych ward.” Emma used my hair like a handle, yanking my head back and forth to inspect me. “That’s what they should do.”

  “That little shit attacked Rowe from behind,” I said. “What was I supposed to do?”

  “Not get in a fight!” Glo screamed. “There were three of them and two of you! You could have gotten killed!”

  “Babe,” Rowe said again.

  “Don’t say babe,” Emma and I said at the same time.

  “I’m going to throw up,” Emma added.

  “It’s gross,” I clarified.

  Rowe gave me a hurt look, but he addressed his words to Glo. “Honey—”

  Emma and I groaned.

  Blushing, Rowe soldiered on. “They were talking shit to Jack. You can’t let that slide.”

  “Watch your language,” Glo snapped. She pressed a bandage into place, and Rowe’s ruddy cheek blanched under the pressure. “I don’t want to hear any excuses. You should have walked away. If they were causing problems, you should have told somebody. An adult. That’s what civilized people do.”

  “He was calling H names,” Rowe said. “He was doing it to make Jack start a fight. Sometimes you can’t walk away—” He looked like he barely stopped himself from adding babe or honey or sweetheart.

  Emma and Glo gave me identically compassionate looks. I turned my face down and picked at the stitching on my joggers.

  “He would have done it for me,” Rowe said. “If they were talking shit—I mean, talking crap about you.”

  “Fuck yeah, I would,” I said, looking up, and Rowe and I bumped knuckles.

  Glo rolled her eyes. Emma rolled her eyes. The little diffuser made a whispering noise that filled the silence. Then Emma let out a long breath, and Glo shook her head, and they traded a glance that I had absolutely zero idea how to read. When Emma dabbed at a knot on the side of my head with a wet washcloth, her touch was gentle, and Glo was being careful as she laid another bandage across the bridge of Rowe’s nose.

  “We do not approve,” Emma said.

  “Not at all.”

  Rowe and I bumped knuckles again. Discreetly.

  “No,” Emma said.

  Glo was trying not to giggle.

  “We kicked their asses,” I said.

  Rowe nodded enthusiastically. “Uh huh.”

  “Oh my God,” Emma said under her breath.

  Glo giggled some more.

  “So, like…” Rowe said.

  I nodded. “We’re kind of, um, wounded warriors.”

  “No,” Emma said again.

  “You’re idiots,” Glo corrected. “That’s what you are.”

  “We definitely need sustenance,” Rowe said.

  “No,” Emma said. Exasperation crept into her voice, and she was trying not to smile.

  I nodded.

  “You two got hit in the head too many times,” Glo said.

  “Tacos,” Rowe said.

  “No way,” Emma said.

  “Definitely tacos,” I said.

  “If you two bump fists or whatever you call it,” Glo said, “I’m not talking to either of you for a week.”

  We did rap knuckles. But we waited until she was cleaning up the wrapping from the bandages.

  “I saw that,” Glo said.

  “Tacos,” I chanted.

  Rowe joined in. “Tacos.”

  “Tacos! Tacos! Tacos!”

  “Oh my God,” Emma said over us, but she was starting to laugh, and Glo was shaking her head as she pitched the trash in the wastebasket. “Fine. We will go get tacos.”

  Rowe cheered. I whooped. We managed to bump knuckles again.

  I was still getting into my coat, amazed at how much my face hurt and wondering if I would actually be able to eat a taco—maybe soft tacos only, today—when I felt it: that phantom pain, the one that went straight to my heart, the one that made me feel like I couldn’t breathe. And then Rowe wrapped me in a one-armed hug, and it was hard to think about that kind of stuff when you had your friends, when they were dragging you to tacos, when you’d almost had your head bashed in but you’d done some serious fucking damage of your own.

  Hard, but not, it turned out, impossible.

  4

  Holloway

  The night market had no name—at least, none that I knew. It was not one of Hong Kong’s celebrated tourist attractions. It was small, everything darkened by a patina of grime, the air full of the smell of frying noodles and cigarette butts bobbing in stagnant puddles and the creeping miasma of rotting fish. Stalls pressed together, displaying glass bracelets meant to look like jade, pegboards strung with t-shirts and embroidered jackets, curtained booths and folding tables for tarot reading and palm reading and face reading. The narrow aisles were crowded, too, and bodies jostled me. C-pop blasted the crowd from every direction, at least a dozen songs competing for attention at full volume. Ahead of me, two young women chatted and laughed and examined a dress, oblivious to the crowd washing around them. An older lady shuffled through the press of bodies with a basket on her back. A whip-thin man elbowed past me, surging toward a stall hung with folding fans that were clearly imitation sandalwood.

  Pain zigzagged to my brain, and I stifled a gasp. The graze to my side had only taken two stitches; there was no reason for it to be bothering me as much as it was. Pressing a hand to the spot where his elbow had caught me, I checked the bandage under my shirt. Dry cotton met my fingers, which meant the man hadn’t broken open the stitches, but the bandage was loose, the adhesive already starting to pull away from my skin. I would have to figure out a better way to reach the wound; its location made it difficult for me to clean and dress on my own.

  Farther down the row of stalls, the operative stopped. This one was a person of indeterminate sex, short for a male or average height for a female. They had a bowl cut of dark hair and a puffy black coat that made it hard to gauge their build. They exchanged a few words with the woman in the stall, and she threw back her head and laughed, exposing a missing front tooth. Then the operative passed something to the woman and accepted something else in exchange—something small, plastic. Drugs, most likely.

 

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