“It will be dark then. I won’t be able to see.”
Zack sighed. “Aquickpeek. I mean it. Quick.” He looked at Chloe and Caleb. “You two go on ahead. Sandy and I will rendezvous with—youat the mattress shop in a few minutes.”
“Catch Some Z’s Mattress Emporium, right?”
“Right.”
Chloe was glad to be moving again. She disliked standing around, exposed. “How far is it from here?” she asked Caleb.
“Half a mile? Maybe less.”
City streets resembled auto salvage yards, although not as orderly. Smashed cars sprawled every which way, across the road and even the sidewalk.Intersections were a tangled mess. At a cupcake shop, a car had crashed through the window.
“Sometimes I still can’t believe this happened,” Chloe said. “Like it’s a horrible nightmare. I just want to wake up, feed my cat, and go to work.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Life is different now, that’s for sure.”
“I’m sorry about your wife and daughter,” she said, hoping she wasn’t opening a wound.
“I don’t have a wife and daughter. I was never married.”
Huh?Zack and Sandy said you did.“My bad. Somehow I got that impression. But, you are from Chicago, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you used to do for a living?”
“Political strategist.” He chuckled. “My job was to fuck with the opposition—dig up dirt, play dirty tricks, plant false stories on social media, distract from issues they didn’t want the voters to notice. It was a great gig. A lot of fun.”
Her jaw dropped.
He laughed. “You’re shocked?”
“Uh, yeah. That wasn’t what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
She lifted her shoulder. “Maybe youth counselor?”
He roared like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Had Zack and Sandy lied to make him more likable? He certainly wasn’t likeable now. Or was Caleb the one telling stories?
“How did you meet Zack and Sandy?”
“We knew each other from before. I worked with Zack sometimes. I booked his company’s services. Zack was a professional political agitator. He recruited and hired people to be protestors, to cause discord and disruption.”
“And what did Sandy do?”
“Mostly fuck Zack.”
Chloe winced.
“Sandy comes from money. You’ve heard of old money and nouveau riche? She isgouvernement riche—her grandmother lined her pockets through insider trading while serving in Congress for forty years. The family is from California, but Sandy met Zack at college in Chicago. She’d sometimes participate in a protest for pocket change, but mostly she lived off her trust fund from Grandma.”
Somebody was lying. Was it Caleb or Zack and Sandy? “Why are you telling me this?”
“Why not? Nothing matters at this stage of the game.” He pointed to a boxy store with a canopy bed on the roof. “We’re here. We should let them see us through the window and show we’re unarmed before we barge in.”
They moved in front of the huge picture window. Spotting three men and a woman at the rear of the store, Chloe smiled and waved. Looking startled, the people hesitantly returned the wave. Caleb nudged her to the door. It was locked. The lady and one man hung back. Two men approached, one with his hand on the hilt of a gun holstered to his hip. Caleb was right about one thing—wewouldn’t want to surprise these people.
