“Let’s say I’m the killer,” Gort said. “I like to plan. I select the places for my corpses carefully. Before I ever bring a body here, I’m going to walk through this plaza on different days and at different times. I’ll memorize the entrances and exits. I will take note of the people and their patterns. When do people come in, when do they leave, who locks the doors at night. I might memorize the faces of the regulars, those who visit every day.”
“Makes sense.”
Gort tapped the buildings one by one. “Pan oil merchant, a harness maker, a shoemaker, and two accounting houses. This is a trade plaza. It’s deserted at night. The two accounting houses have guards they lock inside, and they don’t come out until morning.”
“If a killer shows up with a body and sees people loitering about in the plaza after dark, he’ll run,” Reynald said.
“So, what’s the plan?”
“The plaza has no places to hide, but the side streets do,” Reynald told me.
“We’ll put Will here and Lute here.” Gort touched the two streets leading north.
“I will take this street here.” He tapped the third street, which led south. “But there’s a lot of distance between those streets and the center of the plaza. We don’t know which direction he’ll be coming from, and if he’s as good as we think, none of us should take him on alone.”
I stared at the plaza.
“It would be good if we could hide in one of those buildings.”
Reynald smiled at me and touched the roof to the west of the statue. “I’ll take the oil merchant.”
“How? Did you bribe them?”
He shook his head. “No. Didn’t bother asking. They would never let me into their warehouse overnight.”
“Then how are you going to get into the building?”
Something heavy landed on the table in the middle of the map. A thick padlock with its arm out.
“Done!” Kaiden said.
“How?”
He grinned at me. “My dad was a lockmaker.” The smile faltered, then slid off his face. “I’m good with locks.”
I’d had no idea. It struck me—I knew almost nothing about Kaiden. According to Lasa’s notes, his parents had died, and he must’ve been apprenticed to someone, because the entry mentioned his “trainer” had sold him.
“The lock on the oil merchant’s door is the weakest,” Gort said. “And there is no guard inside.”
It made sense. Pan oil wasn’t dirt cheap, but you would have to steal barrels of it to make it worth the risk, and then you would have to sell it somewhere. There were better thieving targets in that plaza. The oil merchant didn’t bother with a guard.
“It’s not a bad lock,” Kaiden said. “It’s not a good lock either. Thirty breaths. Maybe fifty.”
“Once the killer shows up, I will engage him,” Reynald said. “If he tries to retreat, one of the others will block his exit long enough for me to press the advantage.”
Anxiety squirmed through me. I didn’t like this plan.
“In addition, we’ll put Shana on this roof here.” Gort tapped one of the western roofs. “If things get out of hand, she’ll shoot him.”
“Where am I going to hide?”
“At home,” Reynald said. “You’ll stay here and wait for us to come back.”
No, I didn’t like this plan. Not one little bit.
Reynald nodded to Kaiden. He swiped the lock off the table and scurried out of the room.
“What do you know about your friend from the Garden?” Reynald asked.
