“Go,” snapped Serena.
This time, Sydney did as she was told. She turned, clutched the scruff of Dol’s neck, and the two bolted between the cars. Serena watched until her sister was a speck of red, and then nothing. At least she’d have a chance.
A phone rang in the pocket of Serena’s coat. She rubbed her eyes, and answered.
“I’m here,” said Eli. “Where are you?”
Serena straightened. “I’m on my way.”
XXXIII
TWENTY MINUTES UNTIL MIDNIGHT
THE FALCON PRICE PROJECT
SYDNEY ran.
She cut through the Esquire’s parking garage and onto a side street that looped back around to the front of the hotel, and ended up a few yards to the left of the main doors. A cop stood several feet away, his back to her as he sipped a coffee and talked on his cell. Sydney felt the weight of the gun in her pocket—as if the hidden firearm would draw more attention than a missing girl in a bright red coat clutching the collar of a giant black dog—but the cop never turned around. It was late and the cars on the main road were sparse, the traffic clumping as the night wore on, and Sydney and Dol sprinted across the street, unnoticed.
She knew exactly where she was going.
Serena hadn’t told Sydney to go home. She hadn’t told her to run away. She’d told her to go somewhere safe. And over the course of the last week, safe had ceased to be a place for Sydney, and had become a person.
Specifically, safe had become Victor.
Which is why Sydney ran to the only place she knew Victor would be (at least, according to the profile he’d had her put up on the police database that night, the one she’d read through a dozen times while waiting and then working up the nerve to hit the Post button).
The Falcon Price high-rise project.
Down the block, the construction site was a spot of dark in the city, like a shadow between streetlights. There was a thin shell of wood surrounding the abandoned high-rise, two-story walls, the kind people loved to vandalize because they were both temporary and highly visible. The shell was plastered with posters and signs, tagged here and there by street art, and underneath it all, a few construction permits, and a building company logo.
Officially, there was only one way onto the construction site, through a front gate—also made of wooden sheeting—which had spent the last few months chained shut.
But earlier that day, when Mitch had brought her here to revive Officer Dane, he’d shown her another way in, not through the chained-off gate, but around the back of the building, through a place in the shell where two broad panels of wood overlapped slightly. He’d widened the gap between the sheets to let them through, the panels snapping shut again behind them. Sydney knew she could squeeze into the construction site without touching the walls, since even when the panels hung closed there was a small triangle of space near the bottom. She let go of Dol’s neck, and worried the dog would bolt, but he didn’t, only stood there watching Sydney crawl through the gap. Dol looked both distressed by Sydney’s decision, and determined to follow her. When she made it to the other side and stood, brushing dirt from her pants, the dog crouched down, and squirmed through the gap in the boards.
“Good dog,” she whispered as he stood and shook off.
Inside the wooden shell was a kind of yard, a large stretch of dirt strewn with bits of metal and plywood and bags of concrete. The yard was dark, shadows on shadows making the path from the wall to the building dangerous. The building itself towered, unfinished, a steel and concrete skeleton draped in layers of plastic sheeting like gauze.
But on the ground floor, several layers of plastic in, Sydney could make out a light.
It was diffused so much that if the yard hadn’t been so dark, she might not have noticed it. But she did. Dol pressed himself against her side. Sydney stood in the yard, unsure what to do. Was Victor here already? It wasn’t midnight yet, was it? She didn’t have her phone, couldn’t tell by the moon even if she knew how to read the moon because there was no moon above, only a thick layer of clouds, glowing faintly with reflected city light.
As for the light within the high-rise, it was steady, constant, more like a lamp than a flashlight, and somehow that gave Sydney comfort. Someone had set it there, had prepared, had planned. Victor planned things. But when she took a step toward the building, Dol barred her path. When she went around him, his jaws circled her forearm, and held fast. She twisted, but couldn’t get free, and even though the dog was careful not to bite down, his grip was solid.