“Is it after you?” Davy asked, then clarified. “Specifically, after you? You weren’t just a target of convenience during a sweep?”
“No, it was…” Hill started to explain, then stumbled to a halt. He’d been going to say “it was the same thing that happened in the apartment”…the thing that Davy had lied to him about. The lie wasn’t a surprise; it was the sort of thing the man Hill had spent years researching would do. It was the “why” of the lie that made Hill bite his lip and hesitate.
Davy didn’t bother to try and look hurt. He just rolled his eyes in exasperation as he hustled Hill into a loping walk, a tentacle at the back of his neck and slung around his waist.
“I get it, I’m an asshole,” Davy said. “But I’myourasshole, remember? God himself handed you the leash and said, ‘sic ’em.’ Is this really the time to question God’s judgment, before his kid’s big day?”
The laugh hiccupped out of Hill, more from surprise than amusement. It got one sharp “ha” out before panic throttled it back down into his gullet.
“You lied to me,” Hill said. “You knew what happened to my computer.”
The brief look of…regret? guilt?…that crossed Davy’s face surprised him. It didn’t last long, gone in the time it took Davy to look over his shoulder, but it had been there.
“It happened again,” he said.
Hill supposed that was all the acknowledgement he was going to get. He opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, Davy stepped off the curb and into traffic. A lifetime of road safety lectures made Hill try to dig his heels in. It didn’t do much good. The tentacle around his waist tightened and yanked him unceremoniously along in Davy’s wake.
A festive green Ford screeched to a halt inches from Davy’s legs. Hill was the one who flinched at the thought of what might have been. To be fair, though, theywouldbe his legs again at some point…and he’d rather they not be in bits.
The driver of the Ford stared at them, eyes huge and face pale, from behind a swinging Xmas Tree air freshener. A dozen tiny LED lights cast multi-colored shadows on her face. Davy waved vaguely in her general direction and kept on dodging cars.
“What are you doing?” Hill objected as he tried to twist around to check on his pursuers. He’d lost track of them, and he scanned the crowd—of deadandliving faces now he was back in close proximity to Davy—for sharp ears and bloodied muzzles. “They’re going to catch up.”
“The Company has two big rules,” Davy said as they reached the other side of the road. “Do what it tells you, and don’t get in death’s way.”
Hill screwed up his face. “What?” he said. “I don’t—”
“If it looks like death might be imminent, when someone plays live-action Frogger, for example, the Company’s operatives keep their distance,” Davy explained. “It’s like they always say, don’t speed when you have a body in the trunk.”
“No one says that,” Hill snapped.
“They should,” Davy said. “It’s good advice.”
“So is don’t play in traffic,” Hill said. “You didn’t listen to that…and flirting with death is only going to keep those…”
“Hounds.”
“…Hounds away for so long.”
The tentacle around Hill’s waist gave him a possessive squeeze, the end of it curled around his thigh. Davy turned and gave him a quick, wicked smirk.
“We’ll see,” he said, with a wink of one hard-to-read pitch-dark eye. “I’m a really good flirt.”
“And you have a plan?”
“Working on it,” Davy said.
He paused briefly to look up and down the street. Hill took a breath to argue and then let it out raggedly.
“Maybe I should hand myself in,” he said. “You didn’t see what I did back there. I’m dangerous. I’m—”
“An idiot,” Davy finished for him. “Shut up and keep moving.”
If he’d meant the offer, Hill could have argued. Instead, he felt a wave of gratitude at Davy’s gruff rejection of it. Without thinking, he reached down and took a tentacle, the skin of it velvety as it curled around his fingers.
They pushed through the crowds on the street. Anytime the Hound drew closer, Davy rolled his ankle and fell off the curb into the street, or got into someone’s face with convincing drunken aggression.
Hill cringed as Davy got bounced off a wall by a furious boyfriend. He mouthed “sorry” to the offended woman on the way by, and then to the outraged bystanders who watched his body stagger down the street.
