When Dawn arrived at Jac’s, she kept an eye out for roving security vehicles as she punched in the code to open the gate. She knew it from last night, but that didn’t mean neighborhood watch would welcome Dawn’s Soda Can Special cruising the area. She’d definitely make this quicksilvery.
She shot up the drive, then, with a spray of gravel, pulled to a stop near the door, disconnected from her phone, and cut the engine. Speedy as a streaker running across an Academy Awards stage, she darted outside and to the entrance, inspecting the area where she’d dropped everything early this morning.
It didn’t take two seconds to find the ATM card wedged under some trimmed bushes.
“Idiot,” Dawn said to herself as she walked back to her ride. “That was brilliant.”
When a jasmine breeze floated by, she glanced up. It sounded like the Friend was trying to get her attention.
“What is it?” Dawn asked.
Heeee-eeeeere… The breeze whistled upward, toward one of two chimneys piping out of the gingerbread house’s roof.
Chimneys. Two. Red.
Something Kiko said when he’d touched Frank’s shirt poked at Dawn. In one of the two red fingers pointing up to the sky.
In one of them?
Nah, Dawn thought, looking at the roof, at the red brick jutting up like…well, like two red fingers. Dawn had told Breisi, and Breisi in turn must’ve passed Kiko’s mumbo jumbo on to the rest of the Limpet team, but that didn’t mean anything he said was valid enough for them to go on. Still…
With a burst of hope, she forgot any fatigue and exploded into a run, heading for a tall oak that spread its branches far and wide.
In one of the chimneys, huh?
She grasped a branch, using all her strength to lever upward, pulling until she flipped around and hovered above the branch like a gymnast on a bar. Years of competition and practice had brought her to this.
She rested, climbed higher, higher, flipping and rising. Resting. Then she got close enough to the roof to crawl over a stocky branch, to plaster her body to the shingles. There, she pushed up to a crouch, getting her balance.
A soft gust of jasmine air felt like a hand barring her progress. A warning.
“Why did you tell me if you didn’t want me to investigate?” Dawn said, irritated.
She had no idea what Frank would be doing in a chimney, but she forged ahead anyway.
I’m gonna find him, she kept repeating, never looking down.
The Friend swished away, screaming toward the ground.
Dawn should’ve taken that as a hint.
Because the next thing she knew, something pinched into her neck, and she only had enough time to collapse to her stomach, nails digging into the shingles as she slid downward.
Her head got cloudy, fuzzed with heat and confusion.
Down, down, the world speeding by, flip-flopping, her fingers burning…
Before Dawn could register any more, a bed of jasmine softness scooped her up, hefted her to the ground, then winged away in a swish of speed.
Drugged, Dawn thought, the grass against one cheek, the trees and sky and house all blending together.
She started to lose consciousness, eyelids falling. But before her lights went out, she saw a tall woman with short, curly dark hair and a pistol coming around the brick corner.
Oh, fu—
Just as the woman raised the weapon again, she got slammed to the ground by an invisible force.
By a Friend.
And that’s when Dawn went dark.
D AWN? ”
A female voice, flowing into Dawn’s dreams like hot cocoa warming down a child’s throat on a rainy day.
At first she felt achy—old injuries creaking and moaning, her body heavy and shaky. Then, pushing open her eyelids, Dawn felt a crush of velvet against her temple. This wasn’t grass. And when she saw walls and pictures through her lashes, she guessed that she wasn’t outside at all anymore.
Falling, grasping, nails scratching over shingles…
Woozy, she forced herself awake, feeling some medicinal goop on the tips of her fingers, then finding Jacqueline Ashley sitting in a chair across the living room. The painting of a jazz-age rake with his hair shined back loomed behind Jac like a…
Friend. What had happened to Dawn’s Friend?
In spite of her protesting body, she forced herself to sit up. Then she shook her head, bristling off the dizzy weakness with pure determination.
Through the visual dust bunnies, she saw that the portrait wasn’t the only thing hovering over Jac’s shoulder. The tall woman, maybe a Samoan, with short, dark curls, dark eyes, and a major-league scowl, was standing guard, too. She looked a little worked over with half her brown face scrubbed raw, and Dawn hoped her Friend had gotten in a few good bruises at least.
But where was she…?
“So the crack shot doesn’t have a gun right now?” Dawn muttered, referring to the Amazon. She was surprised she could talk with all the cotton dryness in her mouth.
“Julia, could you please give her some water?” Jac asked, gaze still on her trespasser.
Unsteadily, Dawn moved to the edge of the settee, the movement driving home that her jacket was lighter now. Without even checking, she knew that her gun was gone, her other weapons taken, too. And her phone—not a chance. Damn it, she had to call Breisi, even The Voice. Someone.