* * *
There were certain parts of the city that the holiday spirit didn’t reach. Where festive lights gave way to darkness, and all the decorations stopped abruptly, as if the city itself had decided the cheer wasn’t worth it past this point. Where the streets narrowed into a tangle of alleyways, the flickering neon signs casting their sickly glow over sidewalks webbed with cracks. People here moved like ghosts, slipping from one shadow to the next, never still for long.
My attention locked onto a small figure hunched on acrumbling stoop. Knees drawn up, fingers worrying at a hole in his hoodie, pulling threads loose one by one. The boy’s face was all angles and hollow places, dirt smeared along his jaw and crusted under his nose. He looked even younger in person.
“Hey, kid,” I called out, stopping a few feet away.
The boy stiffened but didn’t bolt. Smart. Or just tired. Instead, bright eyes peeked at me from beneath the tangle of shaggy, unwashed hair.
“I ain’t got nothing for you.”
His voice was rough and gravelly, but not naturally so; more like he was deliberately trying to sand away any trace of youth and vulnerability. It was entirely unsuccessful.
“That so?” I crouched down, resting my elbow on my knee. The movement brought us eye to eye, and I watched him run the math—measuring the distance, weighing whether I was close enough to grab him if he ran. “Funny, ‘cause you’re the one who’s been leaving messages at my doorstep.”
The faintest glint of recognition crossed his face before being swiftly wiped away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t play stupid with me, kid. I won’t ask twice.”
There was nothing subtle about the threat in my voice—not that I had any intention of following it through. He didn’t need to know that, though.
The boy’s shoulders curled inward. His gaze darted past me, sweeping the street with the paranoid efficiency of someone who’d learned young to catalog every escape route. A siren wailed somewhere in the distance, growing closer. His whole body locked up, muscles coiled tight, until the sound faded and died. Only then did he breathe again.
“It was some guy,” he muttered finally, the words draggedout like pulled teeth.
“Yeah?” I kept my voice level, patient. “You’re gonna have to do a little better than that.”
The boy shrugged. “He didn’t tell me his name. Just said he’d give me some cash if I dropped off a few letters.”
“What did he look like? Any distinctive features?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was he young, old?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is thereanythingyou can tell me about him?”
The boy’s shoulders hunched tighter, drawing in like armor. “He had his hood up. Sunglasses. I don’t know, man. He just gave me money and told me what to do.”
I let out a quiet sigh as I straightened, brushing the dirt from my knee. The boy twitched, like he couldn’t decide whether to stay put or make a run for it. I reached into my jacket and pulled out a couple of bills before he had a chance to choose.
His brows knitted together. “What’s this?”
“For answering my questions.”
He watched me with quiet suspicion for a moment before hurriedly shoving the money deep into his pockets. He turned, ready to disappear into the city’s undercurrent, but I called out to him before he could.
“Hey, kid.”
He looked back at me, wary.
“Stay out of trouble.”
The boy’s mouth twisted into something that might’ve been a smile in another life. “Kinda late for that.”
And with that, he took off, vanishing into the cracks of the city.
