Robert ran in a crouched position. The camp wasn’t so sprawling that it would take him long to get back to the garage. The bigger problem was that now Sanso’s men were looking for people like him, hiding, their attention diverted from killing and burning.
By Robert’s estimation, Sanso had no fewer than forty armed men with him, and they’d parked their cars at the perimeter of the camp. Though the kumpanía numbered more than a hundred, nearly two-thirds of the group was comprised of women and children. And as a whole, the community was less organized and less generously armed—more peacefully minded, in other words—than this group of criminal gajé.
“Janeal!” someone shouted. Sanso, Robert thought. “Janeal Mikkado! You have something that belongs to me. So I have taken something that belongs to you!”
A gunshot spit pebbles at Robert’s leg and then snagged the thick sole of his work boot, causing his ankle and knee to wrench out from under him. He fell and rolled and felt glass shards still caught in his hair bite his skull.
His momentum was cut short when his spine connected with the support beam of a tent. The wind left him, and it took him several seconds to get it back. When he did, pain shot through his left leg and ankle.
“Janeal Mikkado, bring me what I want so your father can live!”
Robert quickly examined his shoe, wondering if he’d been hit. A small-caliber bullet had embedded itself in the rubber sole, hot enough to melt the materials and prevent Robert from extracting it for a closer look.
Robert crouched again, teeth clenched against the pain, and scooted across the tent’s wooden floor to the opposite side, which gave him a view down the corridor to the meetinghouse. The silhouettes of two gunmen moved back and forth in front of the stairs, pausing when they saw Sanso approach, guiding the limping rom baro.
“Jason!” Robert’s eyes darted in the direction of the voice. It belonged to a man running out into the open space toward his leader, waving his arms and crying. Robert recognized him immediately as Katie’s father. “Jason, what is happening? My Crystal, my boys, my Katie!”
Jason stumbled and Sanso did not try to prevent him from falling. Katie’s father groaned and reached for Jason as a gunshot cracked the night in two. The man crumpled.
Robert gasped.
A woman screamed, then shouted, “Father!”
Katie.
Katie rushed out in the flickering light toward the still form. Jason pushed himself to his knees and reached out toward her as if begging her to stop and turn away.
Robert was sure Katie didn’t register anything but the horror of what had happened. He scrambled out of his hiding place to stop her and was standing upright in the breezeway between two tents before he realized what he had done.
“Katie, don’t!” he yelled. One of the dark figures in front of the meetinghouse raised his gun.
“No!” Robert shouted, one word appropriate for everyone at the same time.
Katie collapsed over her father, draping his back like a blanket.
The man aiming his gun didn’t fire, and Robert realized in a moment that Sanso’s raised hand held him off.
The drug dealer leaned over the sobbing girl and gripped her long hair in a fist. Robert took a step forward involuntarily. Sanso forced Katie’s face to tilt up at him. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and her mouth was open in a wail.
Sanso smacked her across the temple. “Shut up now so I can get a good look at you.”
Katie closed her mouth but did not open her eyes. She continued to cry loudly enough for Robert to hear her.
“Yes, I thought I recognized you,” Sanso said. “In a photo. With your friend Janeal. A good friend?”
Katie’s shoulders were shaking.
“A good friend, according to my sources. Maybe you can be of help to me. Stand up now. Stand up.”
Sanso lifted Katie by the hair still clenched in his fist. She put her hands on the spot and covered his knuckles as she rose to her knees, then her wobbling ankles. Not once did she open her eyes.
“Yes,” Sanso said. He let her hair go as if throwing it away. She bowed under the force of his thrust and went down on one knee. “Yes, help your rom baro rise and walk, since he is too weak to do it himself. Then you will help me.”
Robert rushed to the nearest tent, shielding himself behind the short flight of steps. Katie slipped a hand under Jason’s arm as if to help him stand, but Robert could see she had no strength. Jason pushed himself up with his free hand.
Robert would follow as closely as possible, assist when he wasn’t so exposed or—
A crack sounded at the base of his skull, and he felt a piece of glass go deep into the skin behind his right ear, driven in by some blunt object.
The world tipped, and he found himself capable of just one thought.
Where was Janeal?