I’m not going to do it.
I’m not.
I won’t let myself. I’m not going to do it. In fact, I’m going to go home and angst in my bed for a while, maybe make myself sick on ice cream. Vin continues to lecture me, but I lower the phone from my ear so that I don’t have to be entirely present for it.
“She went that way,” an unfamiliar voice several stories below stops me.
I only just catch myself against the architecture, clinging onto my perch. Did I hear that right?
There’s a black van below on the street, no logos or anything on it, and a couple of guys leaning against it, staring down the corner Lacey just turned.
I watch as the two men exchange a few more words, one gets in the van and starts the engine, the other starts walking down the street in the same direction as Lacey. Just who are these goons?
Immediately, I’m moving along the frieze, following him at pace. I’m going to keep an eye on Lacey just a little while longer.
“I’m just trying to look out for you,” Vin’s voice comes through, startling me a little. I almost forgot he was still on the line.
“Mostly what you do is yell at me,” I sigh back.
I hang onto the side of the building for as long as I can but eventually have to go up higher to stay hidden, at least while I’m following them through busier parts of town. Eventually the turns take us down quieter and quieter streets, and the buildings become shorter and shorter, and I can follow along walkingacross the rooftops. In about seven blocks no one has looked up and spotted me. They never do.
Somehow, I can’t imagine this is the scenic route home for Lacey. Not when we’re on the end of town that’s close to the marshy edge of the river that soaks up every foul smell only to return it every slight weather change.
She stops, and I watch the man following her about fifty feet back duck behind another car. I grit my teeth. It couldn’t just be two people innocently going in the same direction, could it?
The orange streetlamp bathes the night in an unworldly monochrome. Lacey digs through her purse and pulls out a paper map and a pen, before she crouches beside a half-eroded manhole cover in the middle of the empty street to peer in.
More fucking ooze.
Someone needs to get this girl a better hobby, I swear. Stage an intervention or something. Still, a little ache in my chest rises in admiration of her dedication, watching her stand and mark something off on her map.
I glance back at the guy tailing her, and he’s fallen further back. I stay on him while Lacey disappears around another corner. He pulls a radio out and says something into it. With my attention trained on the guy, I quickly fall too far behind Lacey to see where she went.
Shit.
Ok, I don’t care that we’re in the middle of a fight, I’m just going to take care of this for her real quick. Forgiveness, permission, whatever, later.
I interrupt whatever Vin has been saying in the last minute or so. “Hold on, dude.”
I take a leap off the building, cut through the air, and my shin collides with one of the guy’s shoulders, sending him sprawling to the ground in the middle of the street. He’ll be fine. Probably.
I only turn around when the van’s headlights cover me. I push up onto my feet, squinting into the glaring lights.
Behind me, the driver gets out of the van. “Hey!”
“Hey yourself,” I snap back, a weird knee-jerk reaction to him shouting at me. That’s embarrassing. Maybe I’m only any good with banter when it’s Lacey.
Whatever, I can take two guys.
“That’s the one,” the guy I thought was following Lacey says, pointing directly at me. He reaches for the van’s back door, throwing it open. “Seize him!”
More guys in the van than I originally accounted for climb out, one after the other.
I didn’t think there’d be more guys. Holy shit. One of them starts to go for his belt or pocket, and I can’t take any chances here. I’ve got wings, not armored skin.
“Hey, man, uh, I may be a bit. I’m getting seized,” I say into my phone, trying to sound like I’ve got it handled.
Vin manages to sound annoyed that I would pick now to inconvenience him. “Are you for real?”
