The blue-red stops moving.
“They’ve stopped,” I say.
“Checking the pier access point,” Ryan replies. “They’ll confirm the sightline in—”
“Now?” I ask.
“Now,” he agrees. “Move.”
We move. Ryan sets the pace, which is fast-walking, purposeful and unhurried-looking and covering ground at a rate that is neither.
The crowd is thinner tonight, the core devotees, the families heading out, the night-owl locals settling in for the last hours. Enough bodies to move through. Not enough to disappear into completely.
I stay at Ryan’s shoulder. Tristan stays at mine.
We make it past the stage, which is between sets, the crowd redistributed. Past the prize display by the game alley's perimeter.
I hear the radio.
Not words, just the crackle of law enforcement communication, the sound that has a frequency I’ve been calibrated to for three weeks. Behind us. Forty meters, maybe fifty.
I look at Ryan.
He’s already heard it.
“Faster,” he urges.
We’re faster.
And then—because the universe has a sense of humor that I’ve been on the wrong end of before—I hear someone in the crowd say something, and a head turns. The radio crackle gets a response, and the response is louder. Ryan says, “Don’t run,” at the same moment that I hear behind us: “There—the woman in the—”
“Don’t run,” Ryan says again, and his hand finds my arm.
“They’ve seen me,” I reply.
“I know.”
“Ryan—”
“Iknow.” He looks at the ground ahead. We’re at the edge of the game alley, the shadow maze twenty meters to the left, and I feel him doing the calculation, the same one I’m doing, and we land on the same answer at the same moment.
“The maze,” I say.
He looks at it. “Lola—”
“I know the way around it.”
“If they follow us in—”
“They won’t find us,” I assure him. “Trust me.”
“We could get trapped—” Tristan starts.
“We won’t.” I look at Ryan. “Do you trust me?”
One second.
“Yes,” he says.
