It was far hotter this afternoon than it had been last night, and sweat streamed down my face and spattered onto my T-shirt. My breath came in ragged gasps and a painful stitch throbbed in my side, keeping time to the steady slap-slap-slap-slap of my sneakers on the ground. Beside me, Deah’s face was beet red, her mouth open wide as she tried to suck down as much air as she could. She was feeling the heat too, but we both kept running. We had to.
Eventually, finally, we reached the edge of the Midway and managed to dart onto a walkway that led out to one of the shopping squares. But this was a Draconi square, and Blake’s shouts followed us, causing the guards here to turn and run in our direction as well. My head snapped left and right again, still looking for an escape route, but of course there wasn’t one. So I looked around the square again, focusing on exactly where we were and what I knew about the surrounding area.
I pointed to the left. “This way! Follow me!”
I veered in that direction, with Deah right behind me. The guards kept chasing us, but they were wearing cloaks and hats, which weighed them down and made them even hotter and more miserable than we were, and we managed to put a little distance between us and them, something I was going to take advantage of. We ran past the buildings that fronted this side of the square and into another alley, darting past trash cans and leaping over loose soda cans, empty fast-food wrappers, and other garbage.
“Where are we going?” Deah yelled behind me.
“You’ll see!”
We ran through that alley, then two more, and finally out into another shopping square, one that was in Sinclair territory. Of course, this square was deserted, since all the businesses here were closed, just as they had been out in the Midway, but that was okay because I was only interested in one particular business.
A large storefront took up the entire back of the square, and the sign over the front doors spelled out THE RAZZLE DAZZLE in ten-foot-high letters. On a normal day, the neon-blue letters would have been flashing, with the white stars that adorned the sign winking on and off, all of it creating a dazzling display. But the sign was dark today, as was the inside of the store. My heart clenched tight at the sight of the deserted store, but I sprinted over to the glass doors anyway.
“Mo’s pawnshop?” Deah asked, skidding to a stop right beside me, her breath coming in ragged gasps just like mine was. “Are you . . . crazy? This is the first place . . . they’ll think to look.”
“Exactly.”
I raised my stolen sword and smashed the point into first one door, then the other one, busting large chunks of glass out of both of them. I hated breaking anything at Mo’s shop, but Blake and the rest of the Draconis would expect us to hole up inside, once they spotted the shattered glass. If enough of them went inside the store at once, it just might give us time to escape for good.
Once I finished breaking the glass, I jerked my head at Deah. “Let’s go.”
Not understanding why I’d bothered to smash the glass if we weren’t actually going inside, she frowned in confusion but shrugged it off and followed me anyway.
I started to sprint over to the walkway that led out of the far side of the square, but I spotted a guy wearing a red cloak, checking his phone, heading in this direction. Another Draconi guard who’d been summoned by Blake. Before he could spot me, I changed direction, instead racing over to a blood persimmon tree that was close to the bubbling fountain in the center of the square.
“Now what are you doing?” Deah muttered.
“Up the tree!” I hissed. “Now! Start climbing!”
She gave me a look that said she thought I was totally crazy, but she took hold of the tree and started climbing.
“Faster! Faster!” I hissed again, climbing up right below her.
“Give me a second!” she sniped back. “I’m not as good at this as you are, remember?”
But Deah made it up the tree, with me following her. She wanted to stop after a few feet, but I made her climb higher and higher, until we were about thirty feet up in the tree, right in the center of all the thick green leaves. Hopefully, they would be enough to hide us from sight. If they weren’t . . . I swallowed. I didn’t want to think about that until I absolutely had to.
We’d barely settled ourselves back against the branches when the slap-slap-slap-slap of footsteps sounded, getting louder and closer with every passing second. Deah heard them too, and we both leaned forward and peered through the screen of leaves.
A few seconds later, Blake ran into the square, with his guards right behind him. When he didn’t immediately see us, he stared across the square at the Draconi guard who had finally put his phone away and entered from the far side.
“Did you see them?” he called out. “Did they get past you?”
The guard shook his head, and Blake whipped around to face the other men.
“Search everywhere!” he barked out. “They have to be here somewhere. I want them found. Now!”