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I was halfway across the street, angling to my house, when a Jeep rounded the corner at a high speed and screeched to a halt a foot away from my right leg.
"Where've you been, Lily?" Bobo was hatless and frantic, his brown coat unbuttoned. There was no trace of the ardent young man who had kissed me the night before.
"Helping Claude move downstairs. Walking."
"I've been looking for you everywhere. Get inside your house and don't go out tonight."
His face, almost on a level with mine because of the height of the Jeep, was white and strained. No eighteen-year-old should look like that. Bobo was scared and angry and desperate.
"What's going to happen?"
"You've been too many places, Lily. Some people don't understand." He wanted to say more. His teeth bared from his i
"Tell me," I said, as calmly as I could manage. I snatched off a glove and laid my hand over his. But instead of soothing him, my touch seemed to spark even more i
My own anxiety level jumped off the scale. What could have happened so suddenly? I looked up at the facade of the apartment building. Claude's new windows were dark. Deedra's, above him, were also out. But Jack's lights were on, at least some of them. His living room window was faintly illuminated.
I stood in the middle of street in the freezing cold and tried to make my brain work.
Without deciding it consciously, I began to run—not toward my house but toward the apartments. Once I was inside the hall, hurrying past Claude's door, I tried to walk quietly. I went up the stairs like a snake, swift and silent. I tried Jack's door. It was unlocked and open an inch. A ball of fear settled in my stomach.
I slipped inside. No one in the living room, lit only by the dim light reaching it from the kitchen. Jack's leather jacket was tossed on the couch. Further down the hall, the overhead light in the spare bedroom glared through its open door. I listened, closing my eyes to listen more intently. I felt the hair stand up on my neck. Silence.
I'd only been in here once, so I picked my way through Jack's sparse furniture very carefully.
No one in the kitchen, either.
I was biting my lip to keep from making a sound when I stood in the doorway of the guest bedroom. There was a card table holding a tape player, a pad of paper, and a pencil. There was a Dr. Pepper can on the table. The folding chair that had been in front of the table was lying on its side. I touched my fingers to the Dr. Pepper can. It was still cold. A red light indicated the tape player was on, but the tape compartment was open and empty. I ran back to the living room and fumbled through the pockets of the leather jacket. They were empty, too.
"They've got Jack," I said to no one.
I covered my eyes to think more intently. Claude was downstairs unable to get around on his own. At least some portion of his police force was corrupt. Sheriff Schuster was dead and I didn't know any of his people. Maybe the sheriff's department, too, contained one or two men who at least sympathized with the Take Back Your Own group.
What if I couldn't save Jack by myself? Whom could I call?
Carrie was a noncombatant. Raphael had a wife and family, and without putting it to myself clearly in words, I knew a black man's involvement would escalate whatever was happening into a war.
If I went in and was captured, too, who would help?
Then I thought of someone.
I remembered the number and punched it in on Jack's phone.
"Mookie," I said when she answered. "I need you to come. Bring the rifle."
"Where?"
"Winthrop's. They've got—my man." I was beyond trying to explain who Jack was. "He's a detective. He's been taping them."
"Where'll I meet you?" She sounded cool.
"Let's go in over the back fence. I live right behind the Home Supply store."
"I know. I'm coming." She put her phone down.
This was the woman I'd cautioned about leaving town yesterday, and now I was urging her to put herself into danger on my say-so. But I didn't have time to worry about irony. I ran down the stairs, leaving Jack's door wide open. It wouldn't hurt for someone else to become alarmed. I ran to my place, let myself in. I pulled off my coat, found a heavy dark sweatshirt, and yanked it down over my T-shirts. I found Jack's forgotten watch cap. I pulled it over my light hair. No gloves, I needed my hands. I untied my high-tops and pulled on dark boots, laced them tight. I would have darkened my face if I could have thought of something to do it with. I came out of my front door as Mookie pulled in. She leaped out of the car with the rifle in one hand.
"What's your weapon?" she asked.
I raised my hands.
"Cool," she said, and we began to run for the tracks without further conversation. From the high point of the railroad, we surveyed the back lot of the Sporting Goods store. There were lights on in the store. The back lot was always lit, but there were pools of darkness, too.
"Let's go," my companion said. She seemed quite happy and relaxed. She required not one word of explanation, which was refreshing, since I wasn't sure I could manage anything coherent. We jogged down the embankment. I was about to take a run at the fence and accept the barbed wire at the top, but Mookie pulled wire cutters from a pocket in her dark jumpsuit. This was no fashion model garment, but a padded, heavy, dark workman's jumpsuit with many pockets. Mookie had a knit cap pulled over her hair, too. She went to work with the wire cutters, while I looked around us for any signs of detection.
Nothing moved but us.
Finally the opening was large enough and we scrambled through it, Mookie first. Again, nothing happened. We moved into a pool of darkness and crouched there behind a gleaming new four-wheeler. Mookie pointed at our next goal, a boat. We had to cross through some light, but made the boat safely. We waited.
In this run-and-wait fashion we worked our way from the rear of the lot to the back of the store. There was a customer door at ground level and a loading dock with a set of four steps going up to it. From the dock there was an employee door leading inside to the huge storeroom. The customer door was dark. I was willing to bet it was heavily locked.
They'd left someone on guard at the loading bay door. It was the pimply boy from the Home Supply store, and he was shifting from foot to foot in the cold, which I no longer felt. He had a rifle, too. Mookie whispered, "Can you take him out silently?"
I nodded. I'd never attacked anyone like this, someone who hadn't attacked me first, but before that thought could lodge firmly in my consciousness and weaken me, I focused on his rifle. If he had it, I had to assume he was willing to use it.
The boy turned to peer through the window in the employee door, and sneezed. Under cover of that noise, I leaped silently up the steps, came up behind him, snaked my arms around him to grip the rifle, and pulled it up against his throat. He struggled against me but I was determined to silence him.
He weakened. He grew limp. Mookie helped me lower him to the concrete platform. She pulled a scarf from one of her pockets and tied it around his mouth and bound his hands behind him with another. She took his rifle and held it out to me. I shook my head. She placed it down against the base of the loading dock, out of sight. She evidently thought he was alive and worth binding, so I didn't ask. I didn't want to know now if I'd killed him.
I wondered if they'd come to check on him. I stood sideways to the little head-high window reinforced with diamond-patterned wire, and looked through into the lighted storeroom. I could just see movement past a wall of boxes and racks, but I couldn't tell what was happening.