Page 32 of The Sin

The sheer number of people in this place and their strange habits overwhelmed me.

There was something else about this scene that was wrong.

I wasn’t sure what… Maybe it was the mixed crowd? The roles of women and men in Capra were strictly defined. That must be it, I decided. Men may be in a hurry on their way to or from a shift, so much so that they grabbed and ate on the run—or on their feet, as the case here may be, but not women. Capra women lingered at tables in the town square, there for the socializing more than anything else.

Here, women appeared to be as much on the go as the men.

I moved on, finally spotting the tower Paula had told me to look out for. A massive needle in the concrete haystack that peeked out above the buildings directly ahead of me.

I forgot my hunger and picked up my pace. I couldn’t walk a direct line, though. I had to steer left, then right, then left again as my path was cut off by apartment blocks. I lost sight of the tower and kept going, searching for All Saints. The ancient Anglian church was supposedly easy to spot, a marker between The Break and the Packing District.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I came across the steepled, limestone church. The last thing I needed was to land up on the wrong side of the marker and have a run-in with the Blood Throats.

Following Paula’s instructions took me to the end of a long row of tall, narrow buildings. There was no buzzer on the outer door, but it wasn’t locked. I walked right in, and up three flights of stairs to apartment 389.

I was taking a chance on catching this Lydia woman at home, of course, but I didn’t have a choice. Roman wasn’t going to leave me to roam The Smoke indefinitely. Every day here could be my last opportunity.

To my surprise, and relief, the door opened on my knock to a cheerful woman with orange ringlets framing her cherub face and bright blue eyes. She was pretty and young, and heavily pregnant.

“Oh, hi!” My gaze locked on her protruding belly for a minute longer than was polite.

She didn’t take offense. The smile she gave me was wide and welcoming. “Hello.”

“I’m sorry to…” Her smile was catching, and I broke into a smile as well, waving a hand at her stomach. “Congratulations.”

“Aah, thank you.” She placed a hand there and fake-groaned. “Three weeks to go, then I get to see my feet again. Are they still there?”

I chuckled and we stood there a moment, smiling like comrades, like I knew anything about the joys and tribulations of growing a baby.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” I said. I’d worked on my cover story and delivered it without a hitch. “I ran into Paula earlier and we got to chatting about Jenna. Jenna Simmons? I realized it’s been a blue moon since I saw her, and I was hoping to reconnect. Paula suggested you might still be in contact with her?”

“Jenna? Oh, yes, we see each other regularly.” Lydia lowered her voice confidentially. “I was in a bad place, you know…” She twirled a finger near her temple “…mentally, I mean. I was at the hostel because there were complications with my pregnancy.” She cupped both hands protectively around the curve of her stomach. “Everything turned out fine, thank goodness. The bleeding’s stopped, but Jenna was so sweet and supportive while I was there.” She flapped a hand at me. “You know, right?”

I smiled and lied through my teeth. Well, maybe Jenna was sweet and supportive, but I had no personal experience of it. Unless you counted her sharing her flask of white rum with me as supportive. The Jenna I knew was a high-energy, insolate, insubordinate train wreck. Trouble with a capital T. That’s exactly how she’d landed up here in The Smoke.

“Jenna is such a sweetie,” I said agreeably. “Do you have her address?”

“She hasn’t moved out of the dorms yet, so far as I know.” She pressed a finger to her chin, thinking. “She must have mentioned which one she was placed in, but for the life of me, I can’t remember.”

“Are the dorms together, like Hostel city?”

“No, honey, they’re scattered all over The Break.” Her expression shrugged around a silent apology. “But you know what? She’s hardly there, anyway. From what I’ve gathered, she mostly stays over at her boyfriend’s place.”

My eyes popped. I didn’t comment, though. From the way she said it, Jenna having a boyfriend, staying at her boyfriend’s place, was all kinds of normal. Instead I asked, “And where would that be?”

“Somewhere near the Blue Tree canning factory? I’m honestly not sure. If she told me, it’s gone.” She flicked her fingers like an explosion. “Pregnancy has turned my mind into a sieve, I’ll tell you that.”

I grimaced, disappointed.

“She might be at the community center,” Lydia said and pointed somewhere over my head, apparently unable to speak without using her hands. “Do you know where that is?” She didn’t wait for me to shake my head. “Do you know where All Saints is?”

Finally, something I did know. “Yes! I do.”

“The community center is the awful vomit colored complex behind it.”

“Does Jenna help out at the center?” I was thinking of charity work.

Her brow twitched. “You could say that. She teaches reading and writing.”

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