Sebastian chortled approval and bounced up and down on Owen’s shoulder a couple of times.
Alice took a deep breath and lowered her flamer. “Okay. That was…impressive. Is he, uh—?”
“No. Unconscious.”
“You are a very good shot,” Alice said.
“Unlike you, I took the time to read the manual.”
Alice gave him a reproachful glare and then looked at the closed door of the old nightclub. “We should get out of this alley in case he’s got pals.”
“Oh, he’s got a crew, all right. This wasn’t a random mugging. That would be too much of a coincidence. He was following us. We need to know how he figured out that we had left the Amber Palace and, more importantly, how he found us here in the Shadow Zone.”
“Maybe they were watching Carl Voyle’s apartment or the fortune-teller’s house.”
“I don’t think so. They’re tracking us.”
“How? They would need to plant a specially tuned crystal or amber on one of us. You and I are both using locked stones.”
“One member of this team is not wearing secure rocks.”
They both looked at Sebastian. The cheap crystals in the lucky dust bunny necklace glittered ominously in the foggy daylight.
“Well, shit,” Owen said. “It’s that damned necklace.”
“It’s not Sebastian’s fault that someone might have put a tracker on his necklace,” Alice said, looking quite fierce.
“I’m not blaming him; I’m blaming myself. This is on me. I should have run a check on it. But we will work with what we have. I think we can use it to draw the rest of the crew out of hiding.”
“You have a plan?”
“Yes, but I’ll need a distraction.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
It did not take longfor the crew inside the shuttered nightclub to figure out that things were not going to plan. The door cracked open a short time later. A man called from the shadowed interior.
“Latimer?” he said. “What the fuck?Latimer.”
“What’s happening out there, Dempsey?” another man demanded from inside the club.
Alice, Sebastian crouched on her shoulder, watched from the back wall of the alley as a figure stepped cautiously out into the open, mag-rez in one hand. He looked at his fallen comrade and then fixed his attention on the empty entrance at the far end of the alley.
“They’re gone, Hank,” Dempsey called over his shoulder. “They got past Latimer.”
“No way.” The one called Hank appeared in the doorway behind Dempsey. “The tracker says they’re nearby, or at least the dust bunny is.”
“I can see the necklace. It’s on the ground near Latimer. They found it, ditched it, and took off.”
“Shit. Latimer fucked up.”
“This is not good,” Dempsey muttered.
Alice moved out of the fog-bound shadows of the back wall.
“Your friend had a slip-and-fall accident,” she said in what she hoped was an eerie singsong voice. Then she experimented with a giggle. It wasn’t easy because she was not in a giggling mood. “He should sue someone.”
Hank whipped around and saw her.
