A knock on the door has me jumping.
“Time to go, Anna.”
The coat has one small pocket—the gun and phone can’t fit in there together and I refuse to leave either behind. The gloves! Once I have the coat on, the top part of the gloves will be hidden. I can stick the phone in there and hide the gun in the pocket.
I type a quick text to Agent Hammond:
Chartres and St. Philip…Leaving…fancy white dress…find me.
And then I text the same message to Ethan, minus the street location, but tell him Agent Hammond is close by, too.
I shove the phone inside the glove where it sits near the upper part of my inner arm before I open the door.
Thomas hands me the flats and sure enough, the second my toe gets to the end I feel something hard there. A tracker.
He eyes me up and down and clearly agrees that I look horrible in this dress. “Let’s go.”
We leave out of the front door. He’s okay with me seeing where the house is and that’s a bad sign. I thought I would totally stick out in this ridiculous white evening gown in the middle of the afternoon. That is until I see all the other girls in white evening gowns walking through the Quarter. And with them, men in tuxedos. And every single one of them with red bow ties. We blend right in. Thomas and I are on foot and I scan the streets for any sign of Agent Hammond, Ethan, or Will. Traffic is getting heavier and heavier and most cars are at a standstill. We’re all headed in the same direction, but I’m not sure what’s up ahead, and the farther we go, the more crowded it gets.
God, I hope one of them can find me.
I don’t know where Tyler is—I haven’t seen him since I ran up the balcony stairs. He must have known there was no hope for us as a couple. It’s just me and Thomas now. He’s got a death grip on my wrist as he pulls me down the street like he knows how easy it would be for me to just disappear in this sea of white.
“What’s going on?” I ask him. I’m dragging my feet, making it hard for him. And giving Ethan or Agent Hammond time to find me before we are totally swallowed by the crowd.
“St. Joseph’s Day Parade. The girls in the dresses like yours will be presented as debutantes tonight after the parade. The men in tuxes are fathers, brothers, and other male relatives.”
“But what’s the point of this? I don’t get it.”
“It’s tradition.”
Whatever. I don’t care why they do it—it’s still weird.
“So why are the men carrying the towers of really bad fake flowers?” And they are really bad. The flowers are red, white, and green but I’m mostly trying to distract him with all the questions. And slow him down a bit.
“The men will pass them out to women on the parade route in exchange for a kiss.”
Thomas is clever. I can only imagine after we’re all dead he’ll just rush out in the crowd and lose himself.
“Where is everyone going?”
“To the parade staging area. It’s just ahead. And stop dragging your feet.”
Most of the streets have been closed off, so unless Ethan and Will are on foot, there is no way they’ll find me. I think really hard about ditching the shoes and making a run for it but I don’t know where to go. And I don’t know how far I can get barefooted, with no money.
And then I see Agent Hammond. He’s on the other side of the street, scanning the crowd. He got the text!
We’re still walking fast. And I don’t think Thomas has seen him yet.
We’re moving away from him with each step and I feel like it’s now or never.
“Agent Hammond!” I scream at the top of my lungs. And even though it’s loud with all these young girls in white filling the streets, the sound carries down the block.
He stops and his expression changes the second he hears his name. As he charges across the street, Thomas pulls me in an open brick alleyway, similar to where Tyler parked the car at Thomas’s place.
Hammond barrels through the door but stops when he sees Thomas pointing a gun at my head.
“Don’t come any closer.”
