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“We need to go,” North says. “Before they get another read on us.”
“Go where?” I ask.
Where, apparently, is a safe house that the guys have. It’s near the market, in an abandoned subway tunnel.
We tear out of the market, dodging through stalls. My instinct is to slow down and walk. “We can’t make ourselves look conspicuous!” I point out.
“Speed over subtlety,” Cain says, keeping a hold of my hand so we stick together as we weave through the crowd. “We have to get you concealed as soon as possible.”
He looks over his shoulder at me, grinning. “Why, you get into a lot of chases?”
“Not in a while.” Not since I got good enough that I could be hired to steal fancy things from fancy apartments as opposed to pickpocketing.
Cain looks ahead again, and we continue to zip through the stalls and the crowd. We get back to the busier section of the market and we dodge the people, trying to move while also avoiding knocking into anyone. There are a few near-misses as I nearly trip over running kids or some unfortunate timing means we nearly crash into someone laden with purchases.
At least here, in the main hub of the market where everyone seems to be, any bounty hunters that appear will try to tail us rather than just attack. Donovan’s powerful, but I’m not sure he’s powerful enough to have everyone looking the other way if there’s a fight in the middle of the market. Authorities would be called in for sure, not to mention the mess it would make.
Most criminals like a clean getaway. Myself included.
This is far from a clean getaway. We’re running until my lungs burn, back up to the entryway, and then out through the bar.
“Watch it!” the bartender yells at us as we dash back through.
North leads us out onto the streets and then right down a subway entrance. Thank fuck there are a million of these in New York City. You just turn a corner and bam, there’s another one.
We head down the steps, and then hop on a train, getting off at another station I don’t even recognize. North leads us onto another platform—and then comes the not-fun part.
North jumps down onto the tracks after a subway car’s passed, then reaches up to grab me and help me down.
For once, I accept the help. I’m nervous. What if we time this wrong and get hit?
Cain and Raven jump down next, and we hurry into the darkness. Almost immediately, North finds an entryway to another tunnel and enters it. For a second, it’s like he’s vanished into thin air, walked right into a wall.
I follow with Cain’s gentle pushing, stepping through the narrow gap that quickly widens into the long-abandoned tunnel.
“How did you find this?” I ask, following North as he purposefully heads down this tunnel. I get the feeling he could get us there with his eyes closed.
“There are plenty of abandoned places down here,” Cain says. “So we got subway maps and building plans from various years and cross-referenced them to get a list of tunnels that were abandoned. Then we did some searching to find the place that would best suit us.”
“No offense,” North says, “but you’re not the first time we’ve had to camp out in a safe house.”
Did serious North just make a joke? I smile at him. “You mean I’m not the first person to fall into your laps and cause trouble? I feel so cheap and used now.”
North chuckles quietly.
“What sort of trouble have you gotten into?” I ask. “That you’ve had to… camp out?”
“We haven’t always had the safest jobs,” North says. “Sometimes fulfilling a job would anger someone else. Or a job would go wrong, no fault of ours, but the client didn’t see it that way. Or we’d be brought into a job where we weren’t given all the facts, and once we had them, we tried to back out. Nobody liked that, either.”
“We were bounty hunters,” Cain says. “Among other things. We’ve done our share of unsavory things. But we have our code, and we stick to it.”
I sense that they’re not ready to tell me more. I’m wildly curious. I want to know more about these jobs they’ve done. They’ve obviously led very interesting lives. Who wouldn’t want to know more? But I want to respect their privacy. If I’m not ready to spill my life story to them, why should I expect them to share theirs with me?
Also, why do I even care? I don’t care. I don’t. Who cares about other people’s lives? What matters is keeping my own head above water. I’ve never wanted to know someone’s life story before. Why should I start now?
Why do I care so much?
North stops at last and walks up a couple of short concrete steps to a large steel door. It’s nondescript, utilitarian, but also very obviously there.
