Corinne jabbed her with an elbow, and Ada ignored her with the long-suffering air of a mother whose toddler was misbehaving. After a few minutes the door creaked open again, and Charlie slipped into the alley with them, hollering over his shoulder at the man to stop being such a dictator.
“Hey, Ada,” he said, barely nodding toward the others. “I’m going on in fifteen minutes—I can’t—”
“You’ve got to let us in,” Ada said.
“What?” He looked around the alley, then lowered his voice. “You know I can’t. Not tonight.”
“Why not tonight? Charlie if you know something about Johnny, I swear—”
“What’s going on with Johnny?” Charlie asked.
Ada hesitated.
“Nothing,” Corinne said. “Something’s ruffled his feathers, and we think Carson might be able to help. Why can’t we come in?”
“Tensions are high, is all,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “After what happened at the docks—well, you just need to go.”
“Please, Charlie,” Ada said. “We’re not here to cause trouble. We just need ten minutes.”
“You can’t really think that Luke is going to talk to you. You’ll be thrown out the second he sees you.”
“Let us worry about that.”
Charlie regarded them for a few seconds, his expression flickering in the moonlight. Finally he nodded.
“You two,” he said to Ada and Corinne, then nodded toward Gabriel. “Not him. He looks armed.”
Gabriel made a noise of protest, and Corinne elbowed him.
“There’s a door around the side,” Charlie said, gesturing. “It’s the stage door. I’ll meet you there in five minutes.”
He went back inside and shut the door behind him. They could hear his muffled conversation with the other man before there was quiet.
“You two are not going in there by yourselves,” Gabriel said.
“We’ll probably only have a couple of minutes with Carson,” Ada said to Corinne.
“So how do you want to play it?” Corinne asked.
“The same way we always do, I guess.”
Ada was loosening her neck scarf, her smooth forehead creased with a slight frown. She seemed distracted, and Corinne had the sudden thought that she was upset about lying to Charlie. She wasn’t sure how to address that, and before she could, Ada had started toward the stage door.
“Excuse me,” Gabriel said. “Am I just going to be ignored all night?”
“Probably,” Corinne said. “Unless you add something worthwhile to the conversation.”
She turned to follow Ada, but Gabriel grabbed her hand and pulled her back. Corinne was disconcerted by the sudden nearness of him. His grip was firm but gentle, and she found herself wondering how his hands were always warm. The minimal space between them felt charged, like the air before a storm. Then Gabriel spoke and ruined the moment.
“There’s no way I’m letting you two go in there alone.”
“Fortunately, we don’t need your permission,” Corinne said, extricating her hand from his. “Ada and I have been a team since before you knew how to pull a trigger, and we are capable of more than you can fathom. Kindly shut up and let us handle this.”
She moved back a step but refused to break away from his dark stare.
“Even though your idea of handling it is to storm in blindly and accuse one of the most dangerous men in Boston of murder?” Gabriel asked. There was a stitch in his brow, and his fingers had curled into tight fists at his sides.
“We know what we’re doing,” Corinne said, turning her back. “No one asked you to come.”
She rounded the corner to wait with Ada at the stage door. Gabriel trailed behind her but didn’t say more. Ada caught Corinne’s eye with a questioning look, and Corinne answered with a shake of her head. After a few minutes passed, Gabriel cleared his throat.
“Is there a point when I should be concerned?” he asked quietly. His tone had lost its bite. “Or shall I just sit out here all night, twiddling my thumbs?”
“Give us twenty minutes,” Ada said.
“Then you can do something stupid,” Corinne added.
Gabriel didn’t reply. The door opened, and Ada and Corinne slipped in, tapping fingertips as they went. The inside of the Red Cat was heady with smoke and liquor. Ada whispered something to Charlie that Corinne couldn’t hear and touched his shoulder lightly, but she stayed at Corinne’s side.
Together they ducked through the bustle of the backstage crowd, a cacophony of laughter and tuning instruments in their ears. Corinne led the way blindly through a door that seemed to be in the direction of the main floor. It let out at floor level, stage left. Ada shut the door behind them, and they waited a moment for their eyes to adjust.