Page 398 of Filthy Elites

“Just don’t keep me in the dark if you turn something up, Lucan,” he said, clapping a brotherly hand to my shoulder.

* * *

Several hours later,I found myself in the dark—in the most shadowy section of the street at the far end of the block from the side of our brownstone on the corner. As soon as Anthea had turned in for the night, I’d gotten my car out of the garage and driven off as if I had business to take care of… which I did, but it’d involved looping around the neighboring block and parking here where I had a view of her bedroom window.

What I’d observed didn’t mean she was necessarily going to try anythingtonight. But chances were that she hadn’t done anything already—she’d only recently tested her options. And why would she be testing them if she didn’t plan on acting on them soon?

If I was wrong, well, then I’d suffer through some fatigue tomorrow and survive.

I popped a piece of nicotine gum into my mouth. A tingle of alertness passed through my nerves alongside the chilly mint flavor. Fiddling with the radio, I found an upbeat pop station that wasn’t my usual tastes but should at least stop me from getting too dozy.

Then there was nothing to do but wait. I’d have brought a book to read, but I didn’t want the overhead light running down my battery—or drawing attention to me sitting here in the car.

It took about two hours. Around one in the morning, about an hour after the last light on that side of the house had switched off, a figure appeared by Anthea’s window. The light from the nearby streetlamp caught on her fiery hair as she wiggled the screen free and then dropped something I could barely make out in the darkness over the ledge.

With an impressively nimble swing of her legs, she was clambering down the side of the house, gripping what must have been a thin, dark rope. Totally bypassing the Hell Kicker guards who’d be hanging out by the front door. Clever bitch.

I dismissed the flicker of admiration and watched her hop the last few feet to the ground. She immediately turned and hurried off in the opposite direction. She’d traded her dress for a black tee and leggings, and everything below her neck blended into the night.

I gave her ten seconds head start and then switched on the car engine. I couldn’t follow too closely or she’d realize something was up.

As she crossed the street, I pulled into the road and drove after her. But just as I passed the house, she vanished from view down a laneway between the backs of the houses the next block over.

I swore through my teeth and peered down the laneway as I cruised past it, not wanting to alert her by following her directly down there. I couldn’t make out her delicate figure amid the fences and garages anyway. She’d already disappeared in some new direction.

I’d barely started following her, and now I’d lost her.

Just in case I could pick up her trail again, I circled the block a couple of times, but whichever way she’d gone, she’d kept a very low profile. With a sigh, I drove back to our garage.

Fine. I wasn’t going to find out where she was sneaking off to by seeing it with my own eyes, so I’d just have to switch to plan B.

EIGHT

Anthea

It felt prettyfitting to examine the scene of the Hell Kickers’ betrayal by night. It couldn’t have been much earlier than this when the Nobles and the Hell Kickers had agreed to meet up for the exchange.

The desolate parking lot lay behind a couple of run-down warehouses, not the sort of place anyone with good intentions generally ventured. A sour, chalky scent hung in the air. It’d rained since the shootout, but not hard. A few faint bloodstains still marked the pavement.

By my phone’s flashlight, I charted out the positions of the vehicles. It seemed most likely that the Nobles had stopped their truck here, where a few pebbles had been crunched under the wheels, and the Hell Kickers would have parked across from them to leave a good gap in the middle.

One of the marks of blood was right in the middle of the space. Another two lay around where I thought the Nobles had been and one on the Hell Kickers’ side. Based on that, we’d obviously suffered more fatalities, but there must have been other bodies that’d fallen without leaving as much of a mess lingering behind. It was hard to draw definite conclusions.

I did take a little satisfaction from the thought that our people had given back what they’d gotten at least a little before they’d gone down.

Most of the casings that’d been left by the guns must have been collected by the police as evidence. I only spotted a couple that’d tumbled over near the side of the warehouses, lost among the tufts of weeds.

I stalked along the buildings and studied the walls and windows. One pane had been shattered—recently, from the lack of grime on the scattered shards. By a bullet in the fray? I made out a couple of definite, fresh bullet marks on the worn brick.

The second one made me pause and frown. Maybe I’d misjudged the positions of the crews. It didn’t really make sense that anyone would have been aiming in this direction if they’d been staked out where I’d assume, unless someone’s aim had gone ridiculously wide.

I took out a notepad and made a quick sketch of the layout and the locations of the stains and the signs of shots. I could study it more later at my leisure and see what else occurred to me.

There wasn’t much else to see. For the sake of thoroughness, I walked over to a large shipping container that was standing way off by the neighboring building. As I reached it, I paused.

There were scuff marks on the pavement around its base that suggested it’d been moved recently. The rainfall had probably washed away most trace evidence, but there was a greasy smear about the size of a dragged fingerprint on the far side that didn’t yet have much in the way of blown grit clinging to it.

Of course, the cops had probably manhandled the container making sure it didn’t contain anything related to the crime. No doubt they’d have hauled it back to the station if it would have fit in the evidence locker.

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