I reached into the day old bin and plucked out a jelly donut to settle my nerves. “Maybe you should consider toning it down a little. Two hundred decibels is loud enough to kill you.”
Bao lifted the opening in the counter and stepped in behind it. “Know what else can kill you? Snooping around under the counter of a convenience store that’s been robbed three times already this year.” His expression was grave. He rested his hands on the counter above where he kept his handgun, and I didn’t feel so hungry anymore.
I tucked the donut into a bag and set my change on the counter. Then I thumbed through the paper and checked to make sure it was all there.
“Are you going to this rave I keep hearing about?” Bao folded his arms and leaned against the counter while he watched me pack up my loot. I responded with an indeterminate shake of my head.
“Anh wanted to go with your friend Richie McRich. I told Dad I need her to mind the store for me tonight. She’s pissed, but she’ll get over it.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what she sees in that guy. She should take a lesson from you and just not date. She doesn’t need the distractions. You, on the other hand.” He shook a finger at me. “You’ve got your eye on the prize. You know how to play the game and I respect that. That’s why you’re such competition for her. If she’s not careful, you might pull that scholarship out from under her.”
“I’m counting on it,” I said quietly, not sure how I felt. I left, clutching my newspaper to my chest.
? ? ?
The halls were empty when I got there. Regular classes had been canceled for a memorial assembly honoring Posie and Teddy. I was in class when Rankin took attendance, but no one had noticed when I veered off to the social studies wing instead of following the others to the memorial service. I carried the Missed Connections to the civics classroom, my soft soles too loud on the tile, but no one was there to hear me.
A laminated street map of Alexandria was mounted on a bulletin board in the hall, just outside the classroom. I traced a finger over the intersecting lines, checking them against the clue in my other hand.
Isosceles had the right angle.
The Torpedo is a straight shot to the Yards.
Follow my tracks.
The Torpedo Factory was a collection of boutiques, galleries, and restaurants on the waterfront in Old Town, spread over the top right corner of the map.
Clearly, the ad was a problem of triangulation, accounting for two points of an isosceles triangle—the Torpedo Factory and Potomac Yards, the old rail yard that lay almost due north of it. But the clue didn’t reveal the location of the right angle. If the ninety-degree angle was located at Potomac Yards, that would put the unknown angle somewhere in Fairlington. But if the vertex of the right angle was at the Torpedo Factory, the clue would take me several miles south, on the other side of town. The killer was giving me one more chance to screw up, just like I’d done the night of the play. But if I screwed up this time, I wouldn’t be on the wrong side of school. I’d be on the wrong side of town.
I pushed up my glasses, certain I’d missed some subtle clue hidden in the text. I held the torn ad against the map and read it again, pushing my finger into Potomac Yards, then dragging it south along the railroad hash marks that paralleled the Torpedo Factory . . .
Follow my tracks.
“Bingo, you bastard.”
I changed direction at the factory, tracing the railroad
west and pressing a finger into the center of an industrial park in Cameron Run. A grid of at least a dozen warehouses. I tapped the spot thoughtfully. With a yardstick and a few quick calculations, I could probably narrow the location of the vertex to a particular street.
A reflection appeared, a ghostlike shadow against the glossy laminated surface of the map. I stiffened as a dark sleeve reached over my right shoulder. Fresh pink scars crisscrossed the calloused knuckles of the large hand that disappeared under a black hoodie. An expensive cologne tickled the back of my throat, a cloying combination of musk and menthe.
Oleksa braced against the board and arched over me, close but not touching.
“You think too much about these things.” His clipped accent rappelled down my spine. “And not enough about others.”
I moved left, but his other arm rose to block me, boxing me in between him and the map. I held my breath, mind rolling through the self-defense moves Mona and Butch had insisted on teaching me. Heel to shin, elbow to ribs, head to chin . . .
“Why aren’t you at the memorial service?”
My jaw clenched. I didn’t owe him any explanation.
“Three students are dead. You should be more careful,” he said. I raised my head slowly to see his face reflected in the map. “Whelan’s more dangerous than you think.”
I shot a deliberate glance at the scars on his hand. “Reece isn’t the one with anger management issues.”