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“Gotta do what you gotta do,” I said, shrugging.
“He has no one, so I figured there was no one to tell them I was lying.”
“They’re probably too busy to care that much,” I told her. “And some ICUs let people in who aren’t family anyway. Depends. Did something happen at the hospital?” I asked.
“No. No, that went… as well as it could. Afterward, I went home to get Frida to take a walk. I was so busy getting water and putting her foot… oh,” she said, suddenly jumping up, and walking over to her dog, lifting her foot, and peeling something off of it.
“Is that a sticker?”
“It helps protect her pads from the hot cement. She hates the booties. But you can’t leave them on. Dogs sweat through their feet,” she explained as she continued to peel them off, then dispose of them in the garbage that I had sitting out because I still needed to install the under-counter one.
“Okay. You were getting ready for a walk,” I said when she sat again, twisting and untwisting her drink cap over and over.
“Right. I was trying to remember so much. That’s how I forgot my phone. Anyway, I was coming out of the front door. And I saw them.”
“Them, who?”
“The guys who… who shot Kylo.”
“You saw them at your building?” I asked, trying not to sound concerned, even if my stomach was tightening up.
“They were getting out of the car. And I… I saw the bald one. With the red and black tattoos,” she explained, and there was just… something about the way she said it, something about her posture—shoulders slumped inward toward her chest, head down—that had me thinking it was more serious than I’d realized somehow.
“Why did you panic?” I asked. “You said you’d seen them,” I added. “But I thought you meant through the peephole. Or out the window. Was that not the right assumption?”
The way her gaze slid up then skittered away again was all the answer I needed. But I still needed her to say it, to give me all of the details.
“Siana, I want to help. And I can’t if I don’t know exactly what happened.”
“I, uh, I thought it was over. It’d been a while. And I stuck my head out of the door. But they weren’t gone. They’d just gotten in the elevator.”
“They saw you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“What else?” I asked, sensing we were close to the full story. But not quite there yet.
“He made a… gesture,” she admitted.
“Show me,” I demanded.
Gnawing her lip, she dropped her drink into her lap, lifted her hand in a gun shape, and mimed shooting.
“At you?” I asked, hearing the guttural sound in my voice.
“Yes.”
“Fuckers,” I hissed, exhaling hard.
“Do you think they were there for me?” she asked.
In broad daylight?
“It’s hard to say,” I said instead of doubting her instincts. “I think it’s likely they came back, knowing the scene had been looked over already, and wanting to come through for another sweep. But I can’t rule out them wanting to… get in contact with you. Did they see you?”
“No. I mean… I don’t think so. The bald one, that’s the one who did the gesture,” she explained. “He had his back to me. So I turned and ran. And just… kept running. Until I was sure they couldn’t catch up to me. I’m… not a runner,” she admitted, wincing. “But we got pretty far. The problem was…”
“You had no phone to call for a ride-share. Or call the police. Or me.”
