The lobby of the Olympian Heights reached valiantly for the limits of tasteful ornamentation. Where a newer and hipper hotel might have gone for sleek minimalism, every wooden surface of the Olympian was carved, every surface gilded, and the Persian-inspired carpets were soft enough to absorb every click of Vuitton heels without disturbing the hushed ambiance.
Even by Seattle’s indifferent dress codes, my stained jeans and torn leather jacket were going to attract attention from the hotel staff if I lingered. A group of businessmen piled out of a taxi van, airport baggage tags still on their luggage. I used the disorganized bunch for cover as they struggled with the revolving door, and crossed to the elevators.
I didn’t know Ingrid Ekby’s floor, or which room. But she was very rich, and always had been. Accustomed to the best. I swiped on the elevator pad the keycard I’d taken off Marshall’s body, and tried the brass button for the top floor, north of the twelfth. It was marked E. Probably for Executive, or Elite. As much dough as Ingrid had, I doubted they had renamed the floor just for her.
The letter glowed a bright cheery red in reply. E for Execution.
I endured twenty seconds of light jazz before the elevator opened again, revealing a hallway that was the visual version of the jazz, a study in calming neutrals. Only two doors on the hall, spaced very wide. Suites, or penthouses.
I’d try the left door first, 1401. I had made it twenty steps in that direction when the door latch clunked, and I slipped sideways into the ice machine room. The steady hum of the machine covered any sound as I wedged myself behind it.
Tamas Fekkete walked past the room.
I was so stunned to see him, I doubted my eyes, and quickly moved to risk a glance down the hall at his retreating figure. It was him, no question, all the way up to his bald pate. He had changed clothes since EverCon, into another tracksuit, this one orange. He carried one of the plain canvas duffels that had held the gold bars. It looked light. That was all I had time to register before he was gone again. I heard the elevator ding and the doors open and close.
Fekkete wasn’t dead. He wasn’t even Ingrid’s prisoner.
What the hell was happening?
I moved down the hallway and peered through the peephole of 1401. Light shone from within. Ingrid was sure to have Boule with her, and maybe a second bodyguard.
I rapped softly on the door. Waited until a shadow crossed the light at the peephole. Tapped the keycard on the lock. It beeped, and I shouldered the door open fast and stuck the S&W under Boule’s nose, his hand still reaching for the latch.
“Don’t,” I whispered, as that same hand twitched toward his belt. He wore a suit in muted green plaid, no tie, and his hair was glossy with product. I reached under his jacket to carefully divest him of his Beretta, and checked him for a backup piece.
I spun him around and shoved him into the room. “Walk.”
We could have played half-court basketball in the sitting area of the suite. Bedroom doors off to its left, and a wet bar and full dining area and kitchen to the right. Maybe the Olympian provided a personal chef.
On the fifth step Boule’s weight shifted, tensing for the pivot I knew was coming. I kicked him hard at the base of his spine. He fell to land with a painful thump on his side. His head missed the glass coffee table by an inch.
Ingrid Ekby appeared in the doorway to the bedroom. She looked even better inside than she had in bright daylight. She wore a black silk tunic, belted at the waist. Her sleek hair was brushed straight back to fall below her shoulders.
She briefly glanced at Boule, before turning her freezing gaze at me.
“Scum,” she said.
I tapped Boule on the sole of his leather oxford with my boot. “You. Crawl under the table and stay there.”
Boule didn’t move. Just stared at me, his hero’s jaw tight with fury. I raised the heavy S&W, ready to bring it down on his head.
“Ellis,” Ingrid said. Boule looked at her and she nodded. He gave me one last glare before starting to wedge himself between the curved gold legs of the coffee table.
“Why did you let Fekkete go?” I said to Ingrid.
“You should care more about yourself. Coming here was a mistake.” She could have been speaking to a board of directors, not at all concerned that an armed man had burst into her five-star suite to threaten her.
“Murdering Corcoran was the mistake. How did you find him?”
Her brilliant blue eyes flashed to Boule, back again.
“We didn’t kill him,” she said.
I touched the barrel of the gun to her forehead.
“You won’t shoot,” she said.
“Try reaching your men at the farmhouse. Then tell me I’m bluffing,” I said.
For the first time, Ingrid looked uncertain. At three inches, she couldn’t miss the flecks of blood still staining my fingernail beds, left after a hasty wiping of Marshall’s gore from my hands.
“It’s the truth,” Boule said. “She didn’t order anyone’s death.”
Half-answers. I was fed up with those, even from myself. I walked over to where he lay under the coffee table, picked up a throw pillow from the gold chenille couch, and pinned his knee to the floor with the pillow by pressing the muzzle of the S&W into it.
“Corcoran had the gold,” I said. “Fekkete just walked out of here, carrying gold. Fill in every blank, or I’ll see how many limbs you’re willing to live without.”
“The fence,” Boule said, words racing each other out of his mouth. “We found the gold through the fence. We put word out to anybody who might make a deal for the gold, weeks ago. Told them we were potential buyers. In case any more bars turned up on the market.”
Smart. If April’s partner Fekkete had a stash of other kilobars, apart from what the hunters had found in the safe, they might have captured Fekkete when he tried to sell them.
“The fence called Marshall last night,” Boule said. “There was a meeting set for today.”
“You already had Fekkete by then. What were you after?”
Ingrid spoke before Boule could. “I told Marshall to go. I wanted to make sure you were working alone.”
Boule winced as I pressed down on his knee. “Marshall came back with half of the gold, one red suitcase. He said the fence had refused to tell them who the seller was, or whether the other half would be coming. That he drew on them.”
“And Marshall told you they were forced to kill the fence. You bought that?”
Ingrid managed to make a shrug look elegant. “I accepted the fact that Marshall might have taken the rest of the gold for himself. If he had, it would be easy enough to confront him later. I had other concerns.”
“Now I’m one of them. Marshall lied to you about more than the fence. There was no gold at the meeting. They killed the fence in cold blood, and forced my friend to take them to where we’d stashed the gold. Then they murdered him.”
“Do you want an apology? You are a thief. Your friend was a thief. I honored our deal. Fekkete for the gold, and for Michael O’Hasson.”
I could have gone with Jimmy to meet the fence. Would I have been able to save him if I had? Or would I have wound up sealed in Hollis’s smuggling compartment right next to him?
“Where’s the gold?” I said.
“Not here,” said Ingrid.
In quick succession I walked through every room, keeping an eye on both of them as I searched. The red suitcase wasn’t here, and neither were the canvas bags full of kilobars.
I couldn’t take their lives. And apparently I couldn’t steal their gold.
But I could steal their revenge.
“Who are you calling?” Ingrid said.
“Sledge City Gym. Somebody there will care that Fekkete’s walking around loose.”
“No,” she said immediately.
How about that. Actual emotion from the ice queen.
“Give me a reason,” I said.
“I need him. I’ll pay you.” She vibrated with sudden intensity. The change was startling.
“You’ve sung that song before.”
“The gold is in the hotel vault. I promised it to Fekkete. He has two bars to show as proof that he has more.”
“Ingrid,” Boule said from the floor.
“I’ll get you an equal amount,” she said. Making fists so tight, her nails must be cutting her palms. “But you must help us.”
“Proof for who?” I said.
She didn’t answer. I pressed Send and put the phone to my ear.
“Joe Slattery,” she said, like the words were razors on her tongue.
I paused, and cut the call. “Joe’s dead.”
Ingrid made a sound closer to a raven’s caw than a human laugh. “God, I wish. I’ve wanted nothing but his death for my entire life, it seems.”
“He disappeared twenty years ago. More.”
“He had to. Because my father—the great goddamn Karl Ekby—would have cut a hole in his belly and taken a week pulling out his intestines with fish hooks.”
“Why?”
She looked at me as if the gun in my hand didn’t exist, as if she was giving serious thought to tearing my throat out with her pearly teeth.
“Ingrid,” Boule said again. His tone was tender. I remembered what Lorenzo had told me.
There were whispers about the brothers. Bad rumors. Beating the living hell out of women. Raping them.
Ingrid’s veneer of calm reformed, like a thin sheet of water freezing and smoothing cracks on an icy lake. She turned and walked to the wet bar and began to rinse her hands at the sink.
“You,” I said. “You and Joe. That’s what this is about.”
She dried her hands on the cotton bar towel, delicately, like dabbing a wound. Her makeup was still perfect. Her posture was straighter than ever.
“Me and Joe,” she said. “We are tied together, aren’t we? Maybe it will always be like that.”
“Back in Los Angeles,” I guessed, “when the Slatterys worked for Karl.”
“I was barely fifteen. Joe had seen me, just once. I was late leaving my father’s offices and the Slatterys came. They upset me, even then. They were frightening men.”
She stepped back into the center of the room. Reclaiming her position of power.
“A month later, Joe took me right off the street near my school and into the trees. It was—it seemed like a very long time. Hours. I think he meant to kill me when he was through using me. I was an object to him. He was—crooning—more and more. Building up to it.
“When I realized that I was going to die, I remembered to fight, like waking from a trance. I bit him. In the neck. So hard that when he threw me off of him his first thought was to stop the blood before catching me, and I ran. I escaped.”
Boule and I watched Ingrid. She might have been reading a newspaper listing, for all of the emotion her voice conveyed. But her eyes were unfocused, lost to the past.
“I cannot forget,” she said. “I cannot move on. Not until.”
“Did you ever believe he was dead?”
“Oh no. I could not hide what had happened. My face, my body—both required surgery. When Karl went looking, Gar told him that Joe had run. Karl did not believe him. He asked Gar very hard with a lot of pain, but Gar insisted. One of the Slattery trucks was missing. Stayed missing. There was no sign of Joe. Karl let Gar live, to watch him. He had the Slatterys under his thumb for months. Found the banks and the deposit boxes where they hid their money. Then the truck reappeared.”
“With Joe’s blood,” I said.
“And marks of gunfire. Karl was satisfied. I was not. Later, when Gar went to prison and April disappeared herself, I was even more certain that Joe was alive somewhere. But I had no resources. Not at that age. I hounded my father. He broke down and explained how he kept watch on the Slatterys’ old deposit boxes. Trying to reassure me.”
“Instead, he just gave you a focus,” I said.
“April stayed hidden. After my father died, I looked. My private investigators couldn’t find her. I was half-convinced that she had died herself, anonymously in some backwater town, and that my only option was to wait until Gar Slattery was released from prison and follow him to Joe.”
“Let me guess. April reappeared.”
“She emptied one of the old deposit boxes. The clerk called us and earned ten thousand dollars, just by getting pictures of her and her car.”
“And you paid her a visit.”
Ingrid didn’t answer.
“She must have been pretty tough,” I said, looking at Boule. “Your men got her to spill about the safe and the gold. But she wouldn’t give up Joe. Just like Gar wouldn’t, when Karl tortured him.”
“The Slatterys are strong,” Ingrid said. “They still die.”
Strong, and cunning. Joe was alive. Nearby. I believed Ingrid was right about that part. Hell, I might have already seen him. Someone like Joe Slattery would want to be where he could move the pieces on the board, control his men while staying under wraps.
“April told your men about Fekkete, too?” I asked.
“Szabo, his name used to be. I remembered him from my father’s trial. A distinctive man. I knew he had worked with Karl at the same time as the Slatterys. If he was April’s partner, then I was certain he must have some idea where Joe is now. But he vanished before we could find him.”
“So you set the trap at the safe. Hoping to catch Joe, or at least Fekkete.”
Ingrid nodded minutely, acknowledging her failed gambit. “One of the last things April confessed was the alarm she had installed in her safe. It was simple enough to use it for our own purposes.”
“And you sent Marshall to the fence today on the off chance it was Joe selling the gold and not me. Strikeouts, both times. You’ve got bad luck, lady.”
“Fekkete will bring Joe to me. I will finish this.”
I shook my head. “The Slatterys have the Sledge City gang. They’re tougher than you.” I glanced at Boule under the glass table. “And you’re down to the dregs.”
“Then help me,” Ingrid said. “I meant what I said.”
“Like our last deal.”
She stepped forward. “Damn you. Don’t you think I deserve to see him dead?”
I didn’t answer.
“Listen.” Ingrid stood directly in front of me. “Gar is being released from prison tomorrow morning. Fekkete will meet him at the airport and take him to see Joe. We’ll catch them there. Everything is all prepared.”
A bad thought, what sort of dark preparations Ingrid might have made for Joe Slattery. It wouldn’t be a simple bullet between the eyes. Not after two decades of rot eating at the woman’s soul.
“I’ll win,” she said.
Maybe she would, somehow. But it wasn’t my fight. Let these maniacs massacre each other.
“After you’re done, if you’re alive,” I said, “get out of Seattle. Stay out. If I find you or Boule or any of your people in my town again, it’ll be war. You won’t win that.”
I used one of the bar towels to wipe my prints, as I ejected the magazine of Boule’s Beretta and cleared the chamber before dropping the gun on the carpet.
“You were wrong,” Ingrid said, just as I reached the door. “Wrong about April.”
I stopped.
“You don’t think I have the courage to dirty my hands,” she said. “But I was the one who gave April Slattery the shot of potassium chloride. I held her under the water. I watched her die.”
Ingrid raised her head, every jagged shard of willpower back where it started.
“And I felt better than I have in years,” she said.
Home, for the first time, didn’t feel safe.
There had been times when it had felt a little scary, sure. I’d had nightmares like every little kid, and then Granddad would leave the lights on and a radio playing for me. He had drawn the line at my sleeping in front of the TV.
And if I’m gonna be totally honest, there were some nights since coming home from the Rolfssons’ that our big house seemed a little too big, especially when dodging the creaky stairs on my way down to sneak a snack late at night.
But those are just spookhouse feelings. The kind of scare you get when you know somebody is going to jump out and go Boo and you’ll yell and then you’ll leave and go on to the next ride. Fun.
I saw a dead guy today.
I saw a murderer today.
And he knows where I live.
I’d tried Granddad twenty times. Hollis, too, and left him like three messages. I even tried to reach Mr. Willard, and he was scarier than any funhouse. Nobody answered. It was like the whole town had packed up and vanished.
Leaving the house might make me miss Granddad when he came home. If he came home. The longer he was gone, the more stressed out I got. Where was he? They had driven away from the mansion in the RV like twelve hours ago. Was he driving it out of town? Fencing the artwork they had stolen?
Or was he lying in a grave somewhere, just like Quincey?
I pictured Granddad’s face in profile, half-submerged in the earth. Dead white except for the whiskers and eyebrows and black hair like mine.
No. Don’t think about that. Think of something to do. Something that would—I don’t know—trick Trey into leading me to him, or reach somebody who could reach Granddad. Anything.
It would be dark soon.
This is a bad place to be, said that calm cold part of my brain. After dark.
Go to Davey’s. Go to a neighbor’s. Go to any business still open on Christmas Eve. Go.
Instead, I went to the pantry and moved the cans of Stagg chili and Chunky soup until I could reach Granddad’s hiding place. Fight or flight. We learned about that in Science last year. If I wouldn’t run away, maybe I could claw and bite. The human version.
No gun in the square hole, just ID cards and money. I’d check around the house, but I already knew every space would be empty.
I was kind of relieved. The whole shooting-Trey-in-the-leg idea that had flashed through my mind seemed like sci-fi, it was so bizarre. Still, there were other options. I had a Swiss Army pocketknife. Granddad had something better. I ran upstairs.
In his dresser drawer he kept a wooden Montecristo cigar box. It still smelled like tobacco, not the stink of cigarettes but the raw sweet aroma from a harvest. The box was full of treasures. A Zippo lighter that he filled from the bottle of butane under the stove. A silver cigar cutter. And a folding knife, with an antler handle and a razor-sharp five-inch blade. I could totally confirm the sharpness, because honing it was how Granddad had taught me how to sharpen the two little blades on my own knife.
I took it, opening up the knife for a second to look. Just holding it made me feel better.
Time for Part Two. Get the heck out. The sun was going down.
I left lights on, mostly upstairs, and in the kitchen and foyer. Then I wheeled my bike from the front porch through the house and out the back door, around to the far side. It wouldn’t be visible from the street, but I could jump on it and soar down the stone steps if I had to make a run for it. Hopefully without wiping out and breaking my neck.
Then I went to hide in the backyard shed.
Trey might not show. Granddad could return at any minute. Still, being in the shed felt like having my own gopher hole. Safe from predators. I could crack the door and peer out at the house, knowing I was undetectable.
The sun was nearly down. I could see the glow of Christmas lights from the street below our house, green and white and blue and red. We didn’t really decorate for the season, other than wrapping gifts and putting up stockings, which Granddad always filled with food. I think his family had gone hungry sometimes when he was a boy, and Santy—Granddad says that’s what the kids had called him, or Father Christmas, which was also strange—Santy bringing them food was always the best.
Dark now. Undeniably dark.
Through the windows, I had a wide view of the foyer and most of the kitchen. Upstairs, only my room. The house looked strange at night, from this direction. Like somebody had made paintings of familiar things and pasted them to a black canvas background. Nothing moved.
Until something did.
Behind you.
Not actually in the shed, but close enough. A soft bump and the sound of scraping over wood. My hair stood up. I froze so solid I didn’t even dare to reach out a finger and pull the shed door all the way shut.
To my right, something was moving along the shed wall outside. It stopped. I was sure that any second—in horror movies they always wait for a second—the shed door would be flung wide and Trey would plunge an axe—
It moved away. I heard footsteps crossing the lawn, going to the house. I leaned, just an inch, to peek through the crack.
It was Trey. Hood pulled up, tall body hunched as he skulked up to the back door of the house. I’d locked it, but I hadn’t turned the alarm on. Scaring him away wasn’t the idea. I just wanted him to think we were gone and see what he would do.
He opened the back door. I guess he could pick locks like me and Granddad, or maybe he had broken in really quietly. He stood there in the open doorway for a moment. Listening, I think. Then he closed the door behind him and moved so slowly into the house that he might have been pushing his way through clay.
He stopped, halfway through the kitchen, and turned toward the counter and bent a little. Was he writing something? No, opening a drawer. The same drawer where Granddad and I kept the little tools, including the screwdriver Trey had stolen from us.
I knew he couldn’t be returning it. The screwdriver was still in my pocket. Was he stealing something else with Granddad’s prints on it?
He finished with the drawer and continued his slow walk. A little faster than before. He must be confident he was alone in the house now. I watched him through the windows as he crossed the foyer and headed toward the stairs. Then he was out of sight.
What was Trey doing? Searching for something? He hadn’t looked around downstairs at all.
Then he was in my room. He seemed very close, his tall hooded body right there at the window, and I shrank back into the safety of the shed.
My own room. It was freaky. It also pissed me off a little.
The lights went out upstairs.
I strained my eyes, trying to make out anything. But my room had vanished into the black canvas.
Trey was hiding there. Waiting. For us.
What could I do? Try to call Hollis again? Maybe we could trap Trey in the house somehow. I wished I had a button like in the crime movies, one that would slam steel plates over all of the windows and doors, sealing the exits.
I should leave, find help—even the cops if I really had to—and bring them here. If Trey was in jail, he wouldn’t be a danger, at least for a while.
His messing with the tool drawer bugged me, though. Had he stolen something else? Or put something there? If cops looked in the drawer, would we be in trouble?
No matter what, I’d have to abandon the shed and cross the lawn. In easy view of the upstairs windows, if Trey was watching. Better to move fast. I slipped out onto the grass and quick-walked to the back porch, where the overhang would hide me again.
I was ten feet from the back door. It would only take me a second or two to check the drawer. I could run right back out if I heard Trey coming.
Okay. Decision made.
It was my house. I’d snuck around it enough to know just how to open the back door and step across the kitchen without making a sound. The whole time, I willed my ears to be ten times more sensitive, to catch any movement from upstairs.
The tool drawer liked to stick. I slid it open an inch at a time, careful for the squeak of rubbing wood.
Trey had put something in the drawer. A knife.
Not a regular steel knife. It was some kind of thick clear plastic, and it looked handmade, an eight-inch single piece that narrowed to a point. The handle was wrapped with athletic tape. It didn’t have much of a blade, and I figured that was because the knife was intended for stabbing, not cutting.
And it was stained. Discolored at the tip and in the tiny cracks of the plastic and even a spot turning the white athletic tape a dark rusty red.
Blood. Quincey’s blood.
I couldn’t leave it here. It was the same trick Trey had tried at the mansion with the screwdriver, planting evidence. I reached for a paper towel and picked the plastic knife out of the drawer with two fingers, figuring I’d wrap it up and button it in my pocket with its buddy the screwdriver—
The stairs creaked.
I turned and ran for the back door, out onto the porch, as Trey thundered down the stairs. I vaulted the porch railing and ran along the edge of the house toward my bike. My hand still clutched the plastic knife wrapped in its paper towel. I jumped on the bike and pushed off, getting it moving.
I was going to win this race. I knew the yard much better than Trey did, and I would be down the stone steps before he figured out which way I had run.
Except he had gone out the front.
There he was in the corner of my left eye, rounding the opposite corner of the house. Racing to intercept me at the top of the steps. I cut right, the bike catching air on the steep slope. Trey dived and his body slammed into my rear tire. I heard his grunt as the bike flew out from under me.
I hit the ground, half on the slope, half on the stone steps. My arm banged into the steps and then into my head. Red and green from the neighbors’ Christmas lights flashed and spun as I rolled all the way down to the sidewalk.
Trey. Where was he? A loud clatter as the bike crashed to the sidewalk near me. My legs scrambled. I was standing, all of a sudden. Trey was lying facedown on the steep slope, practically upside down. Moving. Getting up.
I grabbed my bike and tried to jump on it. Missed. I was dizzy. My hurt arm wouldn’t grab the bars. I made it on the second try and the bike started coasting down the street. I bumped into a parked car. Kicked off again. Too woozy to run. Hard enough to stay upright and let the bike carry me.
Behind me, I heard an engine roar to life. It must be Trey. I found the pedals, somehow, and told my feet to start moving. Amazingly, they did.
The steep hill gave me wings. I flew through the second block, the third, much faster now as the street leveled out, toward the playfields leading into the arboretum park. Too late I realized I had passed all the houses and people. Past anyone who might help.
If they could. Trey was going to kill me. If I ran up to somebody and told them what was happening, maybe he would just murder them, too.
Headlights flashed as the car behind me thumped down the last block. He was coming. He was going to run me over.
The street curved sharply to the left, and I leaned into the turn, hearing the wheels hiss as I pumped harder. The headlights grew brighter. I ditched the bike and ran, straight into the trees that bordered a short hill leading down to a soccer field. My leg wobbled and I fell, tumbling at the edge of the slope. Brakes screeched on the street behind me. I glanced back to see Trey jumping out of a brown panel van. The sight got me to my feet. It felt horribly slow, working my way down the dark hill, around trees and thick bramble bushes. Wanting to run but knowing I’d brain myself on a branch if I moved faster. Trey crashed into the brush behind me.
Then the trees ended suddenly and I dashed out, almost falling onto the soccer field. Open ground. I was fast, not as fast as Davey, but I could really run, most of the time. Right now my legs shook. Trey would be able to catch up, unless I could reach the opposite slope and the arboretum on the other side. Plenty of hiding places there.
A branch snapped and I heard him curse as he broke through the brush to the field. I was halfway across, the yellow boundary line glowing up ahead. Legs still moving. I’d hit the wall soon, that moment when my body would stop doing what my calm cold brain told it to.
Go. Go.
Ten yards to the trees. Five. None. I dashed into a narrow split between two trunks as Trey’s huff of effort sounded near enough to chill the back of my neck. I kept going, slipping and sliding on wet leaves as I pushed through the brambles, up the slope, ignoring the pain in my hands. Too dark to run now. Thorns and spindly winter branches grabbed at my sleeves and jeans. Slowing me down even more. Trey was a freight train, smashing his way through everything. He was catching up.
I ducked behind a thick tree stump, fell to my knees. Tried to quiet my gasping. Would he run right on past?
No. He’d stopped, almost. Twigs crunched under his feet, as he searched for me in the dark.
If he missed me, I could double back. Get help. If he didn’t . . .
I reached into my jeans pocket, found Granddad’s folding knife. Opened it. Fight or flight.
It was so hard to see. Even in winter the trees let no light in from the city or the sky. I focused on the last place I’d heard Trey, listened for the squeak of his soles on the sodden ground.
There. Right next to where I crouched. Leaves shifted underfoot as he turned, seeking.
I plunged forward with the knife held in two hands, almost diving. The blade met something, and Trey yelped. I bumped my head off his knee and the knife fell away as he yelled and cursed. I scramble-crawled away in a panic. Up on my feet, moving, I didn’t care which way.
Lights now, through the trees ahead. Streetlamps. The road through the arboretum. Get there. Hide.
I hurtled out of the woods. Trey was so close. I could hear every one of his staggering steps over the bang of my heartbeat. The road. I was on the pavement.
Headlights boomed, closer even than Trey. I turned, knowing I was about to be flattened, but the headlights veered away and there was a scream and a terrible thudding sound.
I fell down, right on the yellow dashed line in the middle of the road. The pavement was cold against my face.
Granddad was there, bending down, lifting me up.
“Daideo,” I said. Grandfather.
“Van,” he said. “What happened?”
“I lost your knife,” I said. And started crying, for the second time that day.
Big baby.